Runescape Tips and Information: Cooking in Three Parts

Cooking is one of the most useful skills for two reasons. One, the food you makes heals you during battle. Two, some of the food is worth a lot and can be a great source of income. It is also one of the easiest skills to learn, and many of the items you cook are free to acquire.

First: The basics

When you first make a character in Runescape you run through a tutorial. After the tutorial you find yourself in front of Lumbridge. If you go to the east, across the bridge, you can find cattle pens and chicken coops. This is the easiest place to start cooking.

If you go to your skill menu and click on "cooking" a new menu will appear that will show you what you can cook.

Gather raw steaks or chickens, make a fire, and cook. Remember to right click the fire to cook more then one item at a time. You can often get free chicken and steak by scavenging as players are always hunting in these areas and leaving behind the drops.

Once you've cooked the meat it can be used to make meat pies at level twenty, or to eat when you are hurt. Cooked meat doesn't give you a lot of hit points back, but as you are starting out it is perfect. Pies give you 11 hit points, and usually have two servings per pie.

You can also make bread from flour and water in an oven.

If you are a member, then at level five you can go up to the potato fields and pick potatoes. They must be baked on the stove inside the farmers hut. If not, then you will want to start fishing. You can cook what you catch over an open fire. This will raise both your cooking and fishing skills at the same time. This is helpful because some of the best money making items for the cooking skill must be fished for. Fishing also makes it so that you do not have to go looking for new items since your cooking and fishing will raise together and you will get new items from one spot. The only problem with this is that it can get boring.

Stew is another item that is easy to make. You can get bowls for free, or make one from clay. Fill the bowl with water, then add meat and a potato. Always click on the bowl first or you may inadvertently eat the meat or potato. Once you've mixed the items bake in an oven. Stews are good for 11 hit points and are one serving.

I have found pies to be the most useful in the mid levels. While lobsters and other higher level fish give a lot more hit points, pies have two servings and take up less room in your inventory.

For pies you must make flour by grinding it at the mill, mix it with water to make dough, then place it in a pie tin. Add filling and bake. If you do each section by itself you can gather the items, like the flour, into stacks in your bank and it will go a little faster. In the end you'll have raised your cooking skills and have a supply of pies to last for some time. You can also save time by mixing water and flour right at the well or pump, and by having a stack of pie tins and pie filling in the bank to mix the items there. Once you have stacks of uncooked pie in the bank you can cart them off to the ovens. Members who join the Cooking Guild can make pies that give you stats.

Once you get to level 35 you can start making pizzas, as well. Pizzas start with flour and water, and you add cheese and tomatoes to it. Cheese and tomatoes are spawned in a few places, or you can buy it in Port Sarim.

Second: Cooking quests

Quests are listed in your quest log, and they tell you where they start. The first cooking quest is "Cooks Assistant" in which you have to help the cook find items he forgot to buy. He will teach you to make cake, then give you access to his stove inside the castle which doesn't burn your food quite as often as other places.

Other quests are members only, like the Hero's Quest and the Tai Bwo Wannai Trio Quest. Members can also make gnome food and take it to various gnomes around the world.

Third: The Cooking Guild

While out hunting goblins or imps you will occasionally come across a chef's hat. These hats, by themselves, are worth nothing. You can not sell them. You can not make them into anything. However, once you have one, and a level of 32 in cooking, you can gain entrance into the Chefs Guild (West of Varrock). Put on the hat and enter, the head chef will greet you at the door.

Inside the Cooking Guild you can gather spawns of chocolate, and cooking apples, as well as baking utensils like pie tins. You can also use stoves, flour mills, and a churn (churns are members only). You can also make wine here.

On the bottom level is a pie shop with a recipe book for how to make the various pies. This shop is members only though.

Also, there is a bank just inside Varrock where you can get your items. Spend time elsewhere gathering spawned vegetables and buckets of water, then cook inside the guild. It simplifies everything greatly.