The buffs from each ingredient in cooked food are the same no matter which other ingredient they are cooked with. Or which order. So, don't try to explore all 2775 combinations, each with 2 of 3 possible rarity modifiers! Instead, simply consider which buffs compliment and have similar duration. Thus avoid wastage from overlapping or unwanted buffs and unused duration (when re-applying buffs).

Golden Veg - Stats include guaranteed rare (+25%) modifier. Two gold veg gain extra +15%.

Notes:
(a) Cooked food takes on the highest of each buff value type across both ingredients.
(b) Eating multiple different dishes does not stack buffs of the same type. The last one eaten will overwrite!
(c) All cooked food helps refill the food bar to some extent (from +2 to +52food). See table in part 2.
(d) Most ingredients also give some health per second for 20s, in addition to their main effects (above).




• "Health Per Second" and "Food" values are shown by ingredient but are only given when eating the dish they are cooked into.
• "Utilizing Every Nutrient" talent gives (up to 25%) extra food.
• "Eat Your Vegetables!" talent gives (up to 25%) extra food, if containing veg.

Notes:
(e) Golden vegetables grow from seeds planted with (up to 15%) chance from "Expert Gardener" talent.
(f) Cooking skill level gives (up to 20%) chance of a bonus cooked food item when taking a dish out of a cook pot.
(g) "Master Chef" talent gives (up to 25%) chance that bonus cooked food gains increased stats from uncommon -> rare (+25%) or rare -> epic (+50%).
(h) One gold vegetable or Starlight Nautilus ingredient guarantees dish is rare (+25% stats) at minimum. Two gold veg adds a silent additional +15% stats modifier.
(i) "Long-Lasting Food" talent extends all food buff durations by 6-30%.
(j)"Fast Food" talent gives (up to 5%) melee attack speed on eating cooked food.
(k) "Power of Omega-3" talent gives (up to 15%) damage against bosses on eating cooked food with fish in.

Ingredient buff values from: https://corekeeper.atma.gg/en/Cooking
Fishing values from: https://corekeeper.atma.gg/en/Fishing

Core Keeper is able to have such a huge number of foods because it uses a procedural system to create their names and thumbnail images, based solely on the ingredients used.

There are 77 ingredients (in 1.0). Any can be combined together in a pot, including with themselves. The order in the cooking pot is ignored. This gives n*(n+1)/2 = 2775 different ingredient combinations. However, there are actually 5550 unique dishes, once considering each combination can come in 2 of the 3 possible rarities: "uncommon" (green border), "rare" (blue) and "epic" (purple):



All cooked food is at least uncommon (which is omitted from the name). Adding one golden vegetable to the pot guarantees elevating the cooked dish to rare. The legendary fish, Starlight Nautilus, also has this effect. Rare gives a 25% increase to all the stats of that dish! (Excluding permanent health buffs.)

Combining two golden veg guarantees a rare dish and silently adds an additional +15% multiplier to all stats. So that's 25 + 15 = 40% total multiplier.

Epic food is only achievable when "Master Chef" cooking skill acts on a dish that would otherwise be rare. With 5 skill points in this talent, Masterchef acts with a 25% chance, on bonus cooked food, only. These two abilities are only triggered at the moment a player takes finished dishes out of the pot. (Ignoring who, or what, put the ingredients in.)



A character's number of cooking level points increases the chance of gaining "extra" (bonus) food from 0%, up to 20% per dish (at level 100). So, if you cooked 100 of a specific dish, when at max cooking level, with 5 points in Master Chef, you should get (on average) 20 extra bonus dishes. 15 of these will come out at the default rarity and 5 at one rarity level above that. I.e. very few!

Dishes not including a golden vegetable ingredient should only be able to go up from uncommon to rare, with Master Chef. Shiny Larva Meat does not increase rarity, like golden vegetables do.

The entire point of the cheat sheet is to give you the information to quickly decide, yourself, what's going to be best for you to cook. This is going to change drastically throughout the course of game progression and depend heavily on how much gardening and fishing you have done. So please, take these examples with a pinch of salt, purely to illustrate what factors to consider.

(1) Spicy Tulip Salad - is my everyday go-to for exploration and general tasks. It is almost pure utility: move speed and illumination. Unfortunately no other main effect matches the 1 minute duration of the move speed buffs. But, at 2 minutes, glow tulips are as close as anything. And it doesn't matter if their effect is wasted, since they are very easy to access and farm. It's more obvious to notice the end of the glow effect, than movement slow-down, so it can act as a reminder to eat more. Although the dish has minimal food value, using it continuously will keep the food bar topped up.




(2) Moldy Feather Fillet - These fish both give 5 minute buffs to a melee damage setup. The mould shark is the easiest of all the fish to catch a lot of (50% from mold water) and the Emerald Feather Fish isn't too bad either (24% from regular water in Aseos Wilderness). So you could very plausibly use this food to help fight hard mobs (e.g. mold dungeon), as well as bosses.

The Emerald Feather Fish's 7% additional critical hit chance will increase average DPS output, support crit loadouts and synergise with the melee skill tree tree talent "Fast and Furious" (more hits means more chances to crit). So, late game (spoiler) it will help trigger the Thunder Beam soul (from defeating Azeos).



However, if/when you start to produce golden vegetables, it will probably be a better plan to mix one in to elevate each key dish to rare, for a 25% stats boost. For example...

(3) Moldy Mold Cheese - combines a Golden Puffungi with the Mold Shark's hefty 38.6% melee damage, cranking that up to at least 48.25%. And some lucky bonus dishes can possibly hit +57.9% with epic bonus food (1 in 20, at max cooking level). While also doing at least 17% additional damage to bosses, possibly 21%. In total, that makes for 65.25% increased melee damage against bosses (with rare), for 5 minutes, from one dish. Or 78.9% (with epic)!

• A big thanks to Aldria for updating the the main sheet for Shimmering Fronteir (1.0)(0.7.1.0)! 😃👍
Updated Google Sheets file for 1.0 0.7.1.0 here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1erMQU7OUfXMyWR5qAl40zdcnLtQPTR9KpID4KqQdZt0/edit?usp=sharing

• Credit: to all the sources mentioned and linked above. Plus additional input from Discord users Xech, nineforty, PyroKnight, Peace and most recently bearharry (for many corrections given to my 0.5.0.1 update draft sheets).


• Corrections or tweaks?: Please let me know if I've made any big blunders, omissions or oversights! I'm somewhat error prone and perhaps the wiki itself has discrepancies - this is a rapidly changing Early Access game. Hence this guide will soon be outdated, as new items are added and values tweaked. Correct as of 0.3.13 0.4.2 0.5.0.1 1.0? maybe


• Printer friendly copy (old version) - Full brightness cheat sheet images with white background here on Imgur: Part 1[imgur.com], Part 2[imgur.com].

Original Google Sheets file here. Please ask before publishing copies or modified versions. You may have to copy the address to your browser's address bar to circumvent Steam's overzealous link filtering: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a2_ZtGftDeLG3UKb8JyWMqUg-owJhqrLtKi9yDSeaag/edit?usp=sharing


• Fellow creatives: if this material inspires some of your content, I'd appreciate a quick shout-out and link back to this guide. 👍


• Core Keeper content and materials are the intellectual property of their respective owners. The above textual and graphical guide information is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0[creativecommons.org]). For as far as this is compatible with Steam community terms and conditions. Specifically, I do not consent to duplication of of my original work for commercial use. That includes websites running advertisements besides copies of this material (you know who you are).

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