How am I earning cooking skill?

[Animalman]

Does making salad, adding to salad, and maxing out salad to reduce depression am I gaining cooking skill for this? Or am I only gaining cooking skill for having stuff in the oven?

[Shaw]

Yes salads count as cooking skill. Just pull up your skills panel and hover over the cooking skill bar and see what the number value is before and after adding ingredients.

[Sick Boy]

Anything you do that interacts with food, that ISN'T eating it, will give you cooking points. Opening a can, cooking a piece of meat before you cut it up into a different meal, cooking a meal, making a salad, making a sandwich, pouring beans in a bowl, microwaving the bowl of beans.

All worth cooking points.

[Animalman]

The art of the sandwich. I thought these things were increasing the stat but cooking is such a slow riser it’s sometimes hard to tell.

It makes sense since there’s a tonne of stuff you can do with food. Slice the bacon into strips. Etc etc.


When you have high cooking skill is there a longer time limit on some foods before burning?

[Sick Boy]

No, higher cooking skill slightly reduces the amount of food used to make a meal. So you get little bits of left overs from preparing veggies and meats when you cut them up for soups, salads, sandwiches, stir-fry and roasts.

I like to use the little left-over bits as compost, but you can also make little appetizer salads with them too.

And at real high cooking skill you can use rotten food to make healthy meals and not get sick. (I imagine its you being able to find "the good parts" still in the rotten piece of food.)

If you're trying to maximize the cooking skill, use the cooking skill books and find the 2 Cook books with the different bread recipes in them. Being able to make bread for sandwiches is super helpful for food on the go and not have any extra items (like the bowl or pan taking up space.)

[Animalman]

Is it generally the more stuff you put into a sandwich the better it is, or can you ruin the unhappiness of food by adding types of ingredients that you wouldn’t combine IRL.

[Sick Boy]

For the most part as long as you add variety you will keep the food appetizing. So your fish, cabbage, tomato, and carrot sandwich with mustard will be delicious.

Adding more than 2 of the same ingredient will reduce the happiness, and using stale bread or ingredients will also ruin the sandwich.

[Animalman]

How often do you eat half ear quarter and eat whole because I very rarely eat when peckish I wait until it’s fully hungry and eat whole. But I wonder if there’s a more efficient way to spread out food.

Or is this more of like you might eat a quarter of something just for the happiness boost. Say if you have no other way to be happy except eating.

Also if I am peckish and I find mint or candy cane usually I just eat those on the spot but in retrospect now this might not be a good idea since these foods satisfy at the expense of happiness.


If you create a top tier sandwich that yields mega happiness and nutrients, is it more worth while to eat just abit of it now and abit of it later? Should I be consuming anything containing unhappiness value within the first few days of a game? Because that depression can kick in pretty quickly

[Sick Boy]

I eat at breakfast (morning), lunch (midday) and dinner (evening). Depending on how hungry I am. Usually just 1/2 will take care of it.

It also depends on how filling your meals are. If you eat a densely caloric/protein heavy meal it will take you a while to get hungry afterwards.

But if you eat a veggie salad you'll be hungry again in a few hours.

Yes, I would hold onto the lollipops and mints. Stash them just in case.

[katsuragi]

Originally posted by Animalman:

How often do you eat half ear quarter and eat whole because I very rarely eat when peckish I wait until it’s fully hungry and eat whole. But I wonder if there’s a more efficient way to spread out food.

Or is this more of like you might eat a quarter of something just for the happiness boost. Say if you have no other way to be happy except eating.

Also if I am peckish and I find mint or candy cane usually I just eat those on the spot.

I do it the opposite way. As soon as the peckish moodle pops up I eat a quarter. Rarely ever eat all of anything at once unless the full value is already less than 10 hunger

[Shady Allie]

Even if you don't eat them, you can butcher up those dead rats you find in houses. Skin it and toss it. An Xp ritual when walking along the road, door to door.

And speaking of rituals, I ran across a new thing for me. I went into a house and found one zombie girl in there and she had on a lab coat. In the bedroom was a pile of skeletons...like 5 or 6 in there. I thought, "Wow! Did she turn mad scientist and Eat her roommates?"

There's got to be a load of XP in cooking and eating your neighbors.