Guides/Cooking for Dummies

The Foundation of this Guide

Cooking in ATITD is great. It gives you stats! Who doesn't want to be able to run faster, carry more, or get more from a hookah? Everyone should be able to do it.

People who want to learn to cook are most commonly referred to the Recipes page, [[ ]] These pages will tell you all about the basics of cooking

This approach would perhaps be better called Food Science, since it is very involved in the science and maths you need to create recipes. But creating recipes is not cooking; cooking is throwing some food in a pot to make a meal. In other words, to make an omelette, I don't need to know the science of an egg's albumin breakdown; I just need to know that for a country omelette, I hardly stir my eggs in the pan at all, and for a classic French omelette, I stir them almost constantly as they cook. (Thanks, | Jacques Pippin!)

Most of us do not start out (or ever get to) creating new recipes; we cook from existing recipes on the Wiki. So this guide is for the budding cook who just wants to be able to throw some things together in a pot, feed some people, and not kill everyone in the process.

Step 1: Get Some Cooking Skills

You cannot use a kitchen until you have the Cooking skill. Your cooking level (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7) determines how many ingredients you can cook with. The more ingredients you can use, the sexier the resulting stats will be, and generally the longer the magic of your recipe will last.

So, the more levels you can get the better. At Cooking 4, some nice recipes with attractive stats open to you, so it is worth getting this skill level if you can!

Step 2: Understand Recipe Fundamentals

Recipes are made from two parts mixed together: base ingredients and additives. For the purposes of this guide, we're going to say that base provides the bulk and additives provide the magic.

Go look at the Recipes page, which is broken down by Cooking skill level. You will see that for Cooking 1, all of the recipes involve just one kind of "base" ingredient like camel meat or mutton or a single herb. These Cooking 1 recipes also call for just one additive, like one kind of herb or dates or a single mushroom type. Cooking 4 recipes uses four bases, like camel meat and mutton and royal jelly and carrots. You will also see that each recipe for Cooking 4 uses four different additives, normally four different herbs.

Step 3: Understand Serving Calculations

You will see that any example Cooking 1 recipe calls for 6 debens of base (like 6 mutton) and 1 deben of additive (like 1 leek), for a recipe totaling 7 deben of ingredients. This makes one serving of food, because A single serving of any meals is always 7 debens.

"Oh great," you're probably thinking, "so if I want 10 servings, I just need to multiply those ingredients times 10 and put in 60 mutton and 10 leeks."

No.

Remember: the base provides the bulk; the additives provide the magic. To add additional servings, you add more base. You NEVER add more additives.

So, a Cooking 1 recipe might look like:

BASE	ADDITIVES	TOTAL DEBEN	SERVES
6 mutton	1 leek	7	1
69 mutton	1 leek	70	10
349 mutton	1 leek	350	50

And a Cooking 4 recipe might look like:

BASE	ADDITIVES	TOTAL DEBEN	SERVES
6 Dates, 6 Oyster Meat, 6 Mutton, 6 Camel Meat	1 Thyme, 1 Morpha, 1 Sagar Ghota, 1 Dusty Blue Sage	28	4
29 Dates, 20 Oyster Meat, 20 Mutton, 20 Camel Meat	1 Thyme, 1 Morpha, 1 Sagar Ghota, 1 Dusty Blue Sage	84	12
262 Dates, 262 Oyster Meat, 262 Mutton, 262 Camel Meat	1 Thyme, 1 Morpha, 1 Sagar Ghota, 1 Dusty Blue Sage	350	50

Servings Calculator

These serving calculations become complicated for those of us who are math challenged and trying to figure out "OK, I know I'm only using a set number of additives, but how much of each base do I need in order to make 10 servings? Or 50? or 300?" or whatever your goal is. Luckily, there is a calculator.

  » Please don't make me do math. Take me to the calculator!

Step 4: Ready, Set, SINK!

Before you eat any meal, you must first eat a helping of Sink Food. Why? Because if you don't, Bad Things Happen when you eat your meal.

Step 6: This Has All Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong

If you suddenly can't carry anything or can barely move or something else unexpected has happened, it is likely your recipe proportions were wrong. (Unless you're making up your own recipes, in which case it is likely your food pairings were wrong, and since I don't even know what that really means, I can't help you.)

Eat your sink food or eat some grilled cabbage to reset your stats. Throw the pot of bad food against the wall and start over. Welcome to the joy of cooking!