How can I make "rare food or higher"?

[Kharis]

Without using gold crops that are too much difficult to grow w/o having maxed out the farming skill... I want to craft the luxury christmas gift XD

[tonberrion76]

There's also the cooking skill that can increase additional food's rank occasionally. Either way it seems you'll have to grind some skills. Thankfully both cooking and farming are some of the easier skills to grind.

[Neirgara]

Rare food is only possible by either using at least one gold ingredient, or by leveling the cooking skill to 80+ so you can invest in the perk that increases the chance for additional food to be rare/epic. But if you get cooking this high, your farming skill is probably very high, too.

There is no other way.

But leveling farming has its merits besides getting gold food. The perks are quite useful, and you can use all that farmed plants to level up your cooking and/or trade it for coins. So you should definitiely go at it.

Also, farming is very easy, especially if you have access to scarlet ore. It just requires some patience and time, but as it is a repetitive thing, you won't need any special skills or non-craftable equipment.

[ZeroGravitas]

As per above replies. But just to note, the Helperlings should continue to work the same after the event has ended. In case that was a concern.

And you can legitimately revisit any event at any time, with the following method: https://corekeeper.wikizet.com/en/How_to_enable_or_disable_any_seasonal_event

[Soloist]

Kill the Hive boss, the old man will then sell gold larva meat and you can use it to craft, It is very very slow though because the meat takes time to replenish. I was glad that my guy had just about enough gardening points to grow the gold stuff. I had never grown any before Xmas so I had to grow all the gold stuff from scratch. You will probably need about 200+ food before you can get all the gifts.
Just use 1 gold+ 1 common and you will get a rare to give to the helperling.

[Kharis]

Originally posted by Soloist:

Kill the Hive boss, the old man will then sell gold larva meat and you can use it to craft, It is very very slow though because the meat takes time to replenish. I was glad that my guy had just about enough gardening points to grow the gold stuff. I had never grown any before Xmas so I had to grow all the gold stuff from scratch. You will probably need about 200+ food before you can get all the gifts.
Just use 1 gold+ 1 common and you will get a rare to give to the helperling.

Uhm... it doesen't work for me, I use the larva gold meat + 1 common and it gives me a common food... I also tried gold larva meat + blue ingrediente but still, it gave me a green food...

[VulpesFulguralis]

Originally posted by Soloist:

Kill the Hive boss, the old man will then sell gold larva meat and you can use it to craft, It is very very slow though because the meat takes time to replenish. I was glad that my guy had just about enough gardening points to grow the gold stuff. I had never grown any before Xmas so I had to grow all the gold stuff from scratch. You will probably need about 200+ food before you can get all the gifts.
Just use 1 gold+ 1 common and you will get a rare to give to the helperling.

That was changed with the desert update. Gold larva no longer raises the foods quality the way gold plants do.

[ZeroGravitas]

I don't believe Gold Larva meat ever did raise rarity like golden veg. The name name was just changed from "Gold" to "Shiny" to help clarify that. As it confused players.

[pale_horse]

Originally posted by ZeroGravitas:

I don't believe Gold Larva meat ever did raise rarity like golden veg. The name name was just changed from "Gold" to "Shiny" to help clarify that. As it confused players.

Yeah, I ran into this earlier.

[Soloist]

Could have sworn I used gold larva meat with no issues. I don't recall what I used it with though.

[Soloist]

As long as there is a blue border around the food it gives me the luxury one

[NinjaL1nk]

For those looking for an update on this answer. I was able to get rare food by cooking the Starlight Nautilus with another uncommon fish. I'd imagine it is because of the legendary rareness of one of the ingredients.