Cooking Lifeskill Guide - BDFoundry (2024)

Introduction

Cooking is an important life skill in BDO. It is used to create food that provides various buffs when consumed.

High Cooking skills can be quite profitable and is a great way to make money whilst AFK. All you really need to start is a Cooking Utensil and a house to put it in. A basic Cooking Utensil can be bought from a food merchant for 1,000 silver, crafted using a Tool Workshop, or bought from the Central Market.

After you have acquired a cooking utensil and placed it in your house, you can interact with it by pressing the R button to open the cooking window. Here you can select ingredients to cook or select a food/drink from the recipe list of dishes. The recipe list will not tell you the ingredients for items you have not prepared before.

When you prepare some dishes, you have a chance of earning a higher item grade.

There are 5 item grades (lowest to highest):

• White
• Green
• Blue
• Yellow
• Orange

The highest grade you can cook with all basic dishes is yellow grade, and specials have a chance to be orange grade.

I recommend using BDOlytics for Cooking Recipes to help you figure out what you can cook for profit.

Cooking NPC Vendors

There are 2 important Cooking Vendors that you can use to get materials:

• General Cooking Vendors
• Fruit and Vegetable Vendors

General Cooking Vendors sell basic Cooking Utensils and other ingredients such as Sugar, Salt, Leavening Agent, etc. These ingredients are always bought from a Cooking Vendor and cannot be obtained any other way, but they are very cheap to purchase. The General Cooking Vendors can be found all of the main cities/towns, and can be located using the Find NPC function.

• ESC Menu > Function > Find NPC > Search: “Cooking”

Fruit and Vegetable Vendors sell the fruit and vegetable type ingredients, which are often a bottleneck for cooking recipes. These ingredients can be bought from the Central Market, and also gathered, or harvested using the Farming lifeskill. However, you often use a lot more than you can collect or buy. Many players use the Fruit and Vegetable Vendor in Calpheon or Eilton to purchase extra materials as needed for their cooking. You can buy Strawberry fruits for 700 silver each, and Paprika vegetables for 850 silver each.

Fruit and Vegetable Vendor locations:

• Calpheon City – NPC Milano Belucci
• Eilton (Mountain of Eternal Winter) – NPC Biyamba
• Lake Flondor (Kamaslyvia) – NPC Miloberry
• Delmira Plantation (O’dyllita) – NPC Azelin
• Papua Crinea – NPC Benns Moanna

Cooking Utensils

Ideally, you want to use Advanced Cooking Utensils for the cooking time reduction and because of their high durability but this is really one of the biggest bottlenecks when it comes to cooking. You may have a hard time buying these utensils off the marketplace and should make them yourself. The other alternative is to use the Intermediate Cooking Utensil which has less durability but does not give the cooking time reduction.

The base Cooking Utensil and the Balenos Traditional Cooking Utensils can be bought from a cooking vendor for the prices listed below.

Item Name	Durability	Effect	Cost to buy	Workshop	Workshop Recipe
Cooking Utensil	100		1,000	Level 1 Tool Workshop	Rough Stone x15 Melted Iron Shard x10 Black Stone Powder x2
Balenos Traditional Cooking Utensil	500	Cooking time +5 sec	50,000	Level 1 Tool Workshop	Rough Stone x8 Melted Iron Shard x10 Black Stone Powder x10
Intermediate Cooking Utensil	500			Level 2 Tool Workshop	Rough Stone x25 Log x10 Melted Iron Shard x15 Black Stone Powder x7
Serendia Traditional Cooking Utensil	1250	Cooking time +6 sec		Level 2 Tool Workshop	Rough Stone x15 Log x20 Melted Iron Shard x15 Black Stone Powder x15
Advanced Cooking Utensil	900	Cooking time -1 sec		Level 3 Tool Workshop	Polished Stone x20 Usable Scantling x5 Melted Iron Shard x20 Black Stone Powder x14
Calpheon Traditional Cooking Utensil	2000	Cooking time +7 sec		Level 3 Tool Workshop	Polished Stone x15 Maple Plywood x8 Melted Iron Shard x30 Black Stone Powder x30
Morning Light Traditional Cooking Utensil	3000	Cooking time -1 sec		Moodle Village Nampo 2 Byeot County Village Nopsae 4	Polished stone x80 Standardized Timber Square x20 Iron Ingots x20 Firehorn x40

Item Name	Durability	Effect	How to obtain
Supreme Cooking Utensil	5000	Cooking time -1 sec	Exchange one of the following items: Resplendent Medal of Honor x40 Imperial Cooking Seals x500 Dark Spirit’s Greed x15 Oxiterr Crystal x25

How to repair Cooking Utensils

You can repair a Supreme Cooking Utensil or Advanced Cooking Utensil to restore its max durability. To obtain the Repair Tool, you need to exchange a full durability Utensil of the same type.

• For example, to obtain a Repair Tool to restore an Advanced Cooking Utensil, you must exchange a full durability Advanced Cooking Utensil.

Unlike utensils, the repair tools stack in your inventory and have a low weight, so you can keep lots of them in your inventory or storage and use them to repair your Cooking Utensil, instead of having to replace the Utensil each time the durability runs out. Simply use the (F5) key on your utensil to use a repair tool.

Utensil	Repair Tool	Exchange NPCs
Advanced Cooking Utensil	Baermalo Hona’s Advanced Cooking Repair Tool	[Velia] Islin Bartali [Heidel] Constante [Calpheon] Fredelles Herba [Altinova] Edman [Valencia] Nerasabi Alom [Grána] Luansei [Duvencrune] Maopan [O’draxxia] Elena Kanin
Supreme Cooking Utensil	Baermalo Hona’s Supreme Cooking Repair Tool	[Velia] Islin Bartali [Heidel] Constante [Calpheon] Fredelles Herba [Altinova] Edman [Valencia] Nerasabi Alom [Grána] Luansei [Duvencrune] Maopan [O’draxxia] Elena Kanin
Morning Light Traditional Cooking Utensil	Morning Light Traditional Cooking Repair Tool	Nampo Moodle Village Nampo Dalbeol Village Nampo Nopsae Byeot County

Cooking Gear

When cooking you really want to achieve the fastest possible cooking time and also stack as much Cooking Mastery as possible.

• For players just starting out, you want to try to get 1 second cooking time. The base cooking time is 10 seconds, so you will need to use a variation of buffs to reduce it.
• Once you get to higher levels of Cooking, you may find that certain recipes produce higher silver per hour with high Cooking Mastery, so you will want to swap your Silver Embroidered Clothes for Manos Clothing.
  • Use this Google Sheet to help you compare and work out whether it is better to swap to Manos Clothes.

When handing in Imperial Cooking Boxes, you should always use Mastery Cooking Clothes and Accessories to increase your silver profit.

	Item Name	Buffs	How to obtain
	Teff Bread	Cooking/Alchemy Time -0.3 sec	Cooking (Beginner Lv.6) Recipe for one: Teff Flour x5, Mineral Water x3, Leavening Agent x2, Salt x2
	Teff Sandwich	Cooking/Alchemy Time -0.5 sec	Cooking (Professional Lv.1) Recipe for one: Teff Bread x1, Freekeh Snake Stew x1, Grilled Scorpion x1, Red Sauce x3
	Seafood Cron Meal	Cooking/Alchemy Time -0.6 sec Life EXP +10% Processing Success Rate +10% Gathering +2 Movement Speed +2 Fishing +2 Weight Limit +100LT All Life Skill Mastery +25	Processing window (L) > Simple Cooking Recipe for one: Balenos Meal x3, Calpheon Meal x3, Margoria Seafood Meal x1, Ancient Cron Spice x1
	Alchemy Stone of Life	Cooking/Alchemy Time -0.5 to -2 sec (depending on alchemy stone)	Alchemy (Skilled 5) Recipe for one: Shining Powder x8, Blood of the Sinner x5, Powder of Time x6, Pure Powdered Reagent x9, Clear Liquid Reagent x9
	Life Spirit Stone	Cooking/Alchemy Time -1.1 sec	Dropped from monsters in Kamaslyvia region
	Verdure Draught	Alchemy/Cooking Time -1 sec Life EXP+20% Processing Success Rate +20% Gathering +3 Movement Speed +3 Fishing +3 Weight Limit +200LT	Processing window (L) > Simple Cooking Worker’s Elixir x3, Elixir of Swiftness x3, Elixir of Time x3, Tears of the Falling Moon x1
	[Fundamentals of Cooking] Lightstone Set	Cooking Time -2 sec Cooking EXP +13% Cooking Mastery +25 Max Carrying Weight +50LT	Lightstone of Flora: Secret Lightstone of Flora: Stir Lightstone of Wind: Feather Iridescent Lightstone More info in our Artifacts and Lightstone guide
	Sethra’s Artifacts – Cooking EXP	Cooking EXP +5%	Obtained from Imperial Crafting Delivery (low chance when handing in Cooking Boxes)
	Dim Magic Crystal: Life	Life EXP +3%	Obtained from Challenge (Y) rewards when reaching Apprentice in a Life Skill
	Life Crystal	Life EXP +5%	Obtained through Repeatable Quest [Repeat] Life Crystal – from Hyunyong NPC Hand over Forest Crystal, x1, Trace of Forest x50 Forest Crystals are obtained from Black Shrine Bosses
	Vital Crystal	Life Skill Mastery +10	Obtained through Repeatable Quest [Repeat] Vital Crystal – from Hyunyong NPC Hand over Forest Crystal, x1, Trace of Forest x50 Forest Crystals are obtained from Black Shrine Bosses
	Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes (up to +5 enhancement)	Cooking TIme -1 to -7 sec (depending on enhancement)	Costume Mill (Level 1) Cotton Fabric x9, Powder of Earth x10, Black Stone Powder x15
	Canape Costume Set	Cooking Time -2 sec	Pearl Store (F3) > Apparel > Costume (2,900 pearls)
	Manos Cook’s Clothing	Cooking Mastery Increase	Processing (L) > Manufacturing Indigo Lapis Lazuli x15, Dawn Fallen Silk x15, Fundamentals of Cooking x10, Manos Stone x10,

Weight Limit Crystals for Cooking

You can find alternative crystals in our Weight Limit Guide.

Best crystal setup for a total of 490 LT:

• Ancient Magic Crystal – Hystria x4 (or x6 with Fiery Weapon equipped)
• HAN Magic Crystal – Gervish x4
• WON Magic Crsytal- Cobelinus x2
• BON Magic Crystal – Hystria x2

How to start cooking

To batch produce a recipe, you simply go to your Cooking Utensil in your house and press “R” to use it. Right-click your ingredients andmake sure you enter ingredients for 1 result. (Entering more will consume all of your ingredients and only give you 1 result.

Next click “Batch Production”.

Click “Yes” then enter the amount you wish to make. You can click “Maximum quantity” or press “F” to cook as many as possible. Then click “OK” and you will automatically make as many as you have ingredients or energy for.

Imperial Cooking Boxes

You can pack alchemy or cooking boxes each day and deliver them to an Imperial Crafting Delivery NPC for silver. Even a newer player can make a minimum of 50 million silver per day by spending just a few minutes buying the items and turning them into boxes.

For more information about Imperial Crafting Delivery, check our dedicated guide!

Ingredient Exchange

You can swap certain Special grade ingredients for a lower-grade version. This is done so that you don’t waste Special grade ingredients on recipes that only require a small amount of the ingredient.

For example, the Grilled Sausage recipe only needs x1 white-grade Onion, a Special Onion can be substituted as 3-5 white-grade Onions, so you wouldn’t want to waste a Special Onion for each recipe craft.

Exchange locations and NPCs:

• Loggia Farm – Camellia Loggia
• Olvia – Bofin
• Glish – Urahr
• Heidel – Hunt
• Calpheon City – Ahr
• Altinova – Irvin
• Kasula Farm – Bumorki
• Sand Grain Bazaar – Buchrin
• Valencia City – Salebin
• Grána – Vilentia
• Delmira Plantation – Kayle
• Maslan’s Yulas Citron Orchard – Purari

Item Name	Exchanges for
Special Pepper x1	High-Quality Pepper x2 OR Pepper x4
Special Garlic x1	High-Quality Garlic x2 OR Garlic x4
Special Onion x1	High-Quality Onion x2 OR Onion x4
Special Hot Pepper x1	High-Quality Hot Pepper x2 OR Hot Pepper x4

Ingredient Substitutions

When Cooking, there are various ingredient Substitutions you can use.

• For example, if you are Cooking Pickled Vegetables, the recipe requires Vegetables x8, so you can use any of the ingredients that are under the Vegetables group.
  • Such as Paprika x8, Cabbage x8, Pumpkin x8, etc.

As well as substituting the ingredient, higher quality ingredients can also be used. Using the Vegetables category as an example, we can see from the table below that 1 High-Quality ingredient is the same as 6 white-grade ingredients, and 1 Special grade Ingredient is the same as 36 white-grade ingredients.

This means that in a recipe where you need x6 or lower Vegetables, you can use x1 High-Quality Vegetable instead of using x6 white-grade Vegetables.

You can also mix and match the rarities of the ingredients as long as you have at least the number of ingredients required in the recipe.

• For example, if you are Cooking Pickled Vegetables, the recipe requires vegetables x8, so you can use x1 of the Special grade ingredients that are under the vegetables group.
  • Such as Special Paprika x1, Special Cabbage x1, Special Pumpkin x1
  • You can also mix and match by using High-Quality Paprika x1 (equal to x6 Paprika), and Paprika x2 = x8 Vegatables.

Other cases:

• You can use any Dried Fish/Seafood at the same value 1:1. Eg. Dried Cuttlefish x2 can be replaced by Dried Squid x2.
  • x1 Fresh Fish is the same as x2 Dried Fish
• Rare procs of any Dishes can be used at a 1:3 value. Eg. Beer x3 can be replaced by Cold Draft Beer x1
  • However, no recipe will ever require more than x2 of a dish.

Items	White	High-Quality	Special
Group- Vegetables Cabbage Olive Paprika Pumpkin Tomato	1	6	36
Group – Fruits Apple Banana Cherry Grape Pear Pineapple Strawberry	1	6	36
Group – Flowers Rose Sunflower Tulip	1	6	36
Group – Grains Wheat Barley Corn Potato Sweet Potato	1	3	18
Pepper	1	3	18
Garlic	1	3	18
Onion	1	3	18
Hot Pepper	1	3	18
Delotia	1	3	18
Citron	1	6	36

Witch’s Delicacy (Cooking Byproduct)

Witch’s Delicacy can randomly drop whilst cooking. According to players, it has a drop rate of around 2%, meaning you are likely to get one for every 50 dishes you cook.

Once you’ve collected 10 of them, you can exchange them at Nadia Rowen in Olvia for one of the following:

Required Item	Can be Exchanged for
Witch’s Delicacy x10	Beer x500
	Milk x120
	Contribution EXP 900 and Cooking EXP 30

I highly recommend choosing either Milk or Contribution EXP. Milk is difficult to obtain since it has to be gathered by hand and is a bottleneck for cooking, whilst the Contribution EXP you earn from cooking is one of the easiest ways to boost your CP.

Cooking Mastery

For a full look into life skill masteries I recommend taking a look at our guide which explains how to get all the gear and how many points each piece gives.

Higher Cooking Mastery has the following benefits:

• You will receive more profit for Imperial Cooking Boxes (up to 114.9%).
• The chance to obtain the maximum amount of food per cooking will increase up to 61.1% (e.g. if you get 1 to 4 results when cooking a certain food, the chance to get 4 will increase
• The chance to obtain higher-grade food will increase up to 19.3% max.
• You will have a chance of Mass Cooking occurring. This means you will be able to cook in larger batches. (e.g. you will use x10 materials at once and get x10 food at once, but the durability of your Cooking Utensil will only decrease by 1). The chance of this occurring can increase up to 100% depending on your total Cooking Mastery points.

However, mastery gear is not typically used when cooking because it is hard to obtain 1 second cooking time without wearing Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes. The mastery gear is still used though for handing in cooking boxes.

Emergency food quests have also been added which will pop up at random times whilst you are cooking. Emergency food quests require you to cook x1 of the food you are already cooking and then turn it in to an NPC. As a reward, you will receive a large number of cooking ingredients.

For example: [Emergency] Food for Calpheon Slum will require one random food among three types of food. The rewards are either 1000 Eggs or 1000 Milk.

Food recipes to increase Cooking Mastery:

What recipe should I use for Contribution Point EXP?

Cook Essence of Liquor, Vinegar, or Grilled Bird Meat.

The recipes for these are below:

• Essence of Liquor: Leavening Agent x1 + Grain Flour x1 + Fruit x1
• Vinegar: Leavening Agent x1 + Grain x1 + Fruit x1 + Sugar x1
• Grilled Bird Meat: Chicken Meat x2 + Deep Frying Oil x6 + Salt x1 + Cooking Wine x2

Grain = Wheat, Barley, Potato, Sweet Potato, or Corn
Fruit = Strawberry, Grape, Apple, Cherry, Pear, Banana, or Pineapple

You will get an item called Witch’s Delicacy and once you have of these you can exchange them for Contribution Point EXP from Nadia Rowen in Olvia.

I also recommend using this calculator to work out how long it will take you to reach your CP goal! Gaining CP through cooking can be slow and you shouldn’t expect great results overnight, but it is still an AFK activity.

How do I get 1 second cooking time?

Use an Advanced Cooking Utensil, Pearl store costume, +3 Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes, Sharp Alchemy Stone of Life, Seafood Cron Meal.

If you are using an Intermediate Cooking Utensil, or don’t have the pearl store costume, you can use a +4 Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes and Verdure Cron Elixir.

Should I use Life Skill Mastery clothing?

For cooking it’s really important to achieve the 1 second cooking time, this is hard to obtain whilst wearing the mastery clothing because the Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothing greatly reduces cooking time.

• Once you get to higher levels of Cooking, you may find that certain recipes produce higher silver per hour with high Cooking Mastery, so you will want to swap your Silver Embroidered Clothes for Manos Clothing.
  • Use this Google Sheet to help you compare and work out whether it is better to swap to Manos Clothes.

Mastery clothing is still used when handing in cooking boxes for the extra profit the mastery bonus gives.

How often do special recipes proc?

When crafting yellow-grade meals (such as the valencia meal) they can proc and become orange-grade “special” meals. The proc rate starts at 15% and can go up to a maximum of 30% once you are over 10 cooking levels over the required level to cook the recipe. In other words, if the recipe requires master 1+ to cook, you will have a 15% chance of getting a special proc. If you are master 11 or higher you will have a 30% chance to get the special proc.

Per craft you get 2.5 + 1.5 * mastery_bonus of the main recipe.

What substitutions can I use whilst cooking?

You can substitute some ingredients when cooking. There are exceptions to the rule but here are some guidelines you can follow:

– 1 ingredient of green grade can be replaced by 2-3 white grade ingredients and vice versa.
– 1 ingredient of blue grade can be replaced by 3-5 white grade ingredients and vice versa.
– 1 fresh fish can be replaced by 2 dried fish and vice versa.
– 1 dried fish will usually work for most recipes where 1 fresh fish is required.

You can also swap certain Special grade ingredients for a lower-grade version. This is done so that you don’t waste Special grade ingredients on recipes that only require a small amount of the ingredient.

For example, the Grilled Sausage recipe only needs x1 white-grade Onion, a Special Onion can be substituted as 3-5 white-grade Onions, so you wouldn’t want to waste a Special Onion for each recipe craft.

Exchange locations and NPCs:

• Loggia Farm – Camellia Loggia
• Olvia – Bofin
• Glish – Urahr
• Heidel – Hunt
• Calpheon City – Ahr
• Altinova – Irvin
• Kasula Farm – Bumorki
• Sand Grain Bazaar – Buchrin
• Valencia City – Salebin
• Grána – Vilentia
• Delmira Plantation – Kayle
• Maslan’s Yulas Citron Orchard – Purari

Item Name	Exchanges for
Special Pepper x1	High-Quality Pepper x2 OR Pepper x4
Special Garlic x1	High-Quality Garlic x2 OR Garlic x4
Special Onion x1	High-Quality Onion x2 OR Onion x4
Special Hot Pepper x1	High-Quality Hot Pepper x2 OR Hot Pepper x4

What should I cook for profit?

For profit most of the profits come from the Imperial Cooking Boxes, or cooking recipes depending on the current market. For this, I recommend using BDOlytics, which provides recipes using Market Data, and can help you work out what is best to cook.

You can also start by cooking the meals to pack into imperial cooking boxes for your current cooking level. You can buy the meals straight from the market but this really starts to cut into your profit. Cooking goes very well with farming as well to obtain materials that are more of a bottleneck, such as onions and garlic, and doing these together can increase your overall silver per day.