Cooking is a secondary profession in World of Warcraft: Forever – you learn it on top of your two primary professions – and goes up to skill 300 as in Classic. The Forever Hub data knows 52 recipes, 44 of them new in Forever and 6 from Merchant's Favor. This guide shows the cheapest route the leveling calculator finds with these recipes.
With your own auction house prices, a different start skill, trainer recipes only or without certain recipes, the Cooking leveling calculator works the route out again.
Why Cooking matters to everyone in Forever
Cooking is the secondary profession the whole camping system hangs on. The cooking fire is now the Basic Campfire with three slots for camp features; the blueprint for the Journeyman Campfire (five slots) can be learned at skill 90 and placed from 140, and the Expert Campfire with ten slots is learned at 200 and placed from 220. Whoever provides the fire for a fixed group or raid therefore needs Cooking 220 – the real reason not to leave the profession behind on this realm. On top of that, most food gives bonus experience per enemy killed according to Fixpunkt's profession video; more on that in the profession overview.
Two recipe families are new. Teas are brewed from herbs – Peace Tea from Peacebloom, Royal Tea from Mageroyal, Root Tea from Liferoot, Triage Tea from Fadeleaf, Sunny Tea from Sungrass and Sage's Tea from Mountain Silversage – each with a drink from a vendor. That makes Herbalism a useful partner for Cooking for the first time. The six smoothies are only sold for Merchant's Favor (30, 60 and 90 favor, 300 in total): Venomous Smoothie, Slimy Smoothie, Mrrggl Smrrthle, Calcified Smoothie, Spicy Smoothie and Wicked Smoothie, each with an animal part such as a venom sac, Spider Ichor or a Murloc Fin.
Cookie's Feast and the Iron Oven
Instead of the usual three camp features Cooking has five: the three campfires, Cookie's Feast (skill 140; Mystery Meat, Heavy Kodo Meat, Soothing Spices), which lays out Stamina food for the camp, and the Iron Oven (300; ten Simple Flour, five Refreshing Spring Water, four Soothing Spices). 19 recipes are made at the Iron Oven – the new dishes from 275 such as Bear Bruscitti, Flank au Poivre or Swiftstrike Steak as well as the old Classic fish dishes Grilled Squid, Poached Sunscale Salmon, Baked Salmon and Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops. According to the video the blueprint for Cookie's Feast comes from Cookie in the Deadmines; where the other blueprints drop is not recorded in our data.
Cooking awards no Legacy points – only the six crafting professions do. Two nodes fit it nonetheless: Master Chef (up to a 50% chance for an extra dish) and Gourmand, which makes food buffs last twice as long.
Trainer ranks
Without the next rank the skill stops at the cap. Each rank is taught 25 points before the end of the previous one:
- Apprentice: skill 1–75, from character level 5
- Journeyman: skill 50–150, from character level 10
- Expert: skill 125–225, from character level 20
- Artisan: skill 200–300, from character level 35
The route from 1 to 300
Without prices the calculator sorts by reagents per expected skill-up, trainer recipes first: about 380 crafts for 279 skill points, rounded up – with luck you need fewer.
| Skill | Recipe | Crafts | Colour | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–5 | Basic Campfire | 5 | orange → green | Trainer |
| 5–25 | no suitable recipes in the data | – | – | – |
| 25–35 | Peace Tea | 10 | orange | Recipe item |
| 35–52 | Pincer Bites | 21 | orange → green | Recipe item |
| 52–75 | Tasty Raptor Bites | 94 | yellow → green | Recipe item |
| 75–85 | Twice-Spiced Raptor Slice | 10 | orange | Recipe item |
| 85–90 | Savory Whimsyfin Delight | 5 | orange | Recipe item |
| 90–102 | Journeyman Campfire | 14 | orange → green | Recipe item |
| 102–141 | Savory Whimsyfin Delight | 44 | orange → yellow | Recipe item |
| 141–150 | Root Tea | 9 | orange | Recipe item |
| 150–175 | Root Tea | 37 | orange → green | Recipe item |
| 175–180 | Bear Brisket | 5 | orange | Recipe item |
| 180–200 | Triage Tea | 20 | orange | Recipe item |
| 200–210 | Expert Campfire | 10 | orange | Recipe item |
| 210–219 | Spinefin Halibut | 12 | orange → green | Trainer |
| 219–225 | Sunny Tea | 6 | orange | Recipe item |
| 225–242 | Plated Armorfish | 18 | orange → yellow | Recipe item |
| 242–250 | Grilled Squid | 8 | orange | Recipe item |
| 250–300 | Poached Sunscale Salmon | 52 | orange → yellow | Recipe item |
Bridge the gaps (5–25) with your trainer's unchanged Classic recipes, which the Forever data does not list one by one.
Shopping list
These are the materials the whole route needs, by amount:
| Material | Amount |
|---|---|
| Mild Spices | 445 |
| Raptor Egg | 94 |
| Liferoot | 92 |
| Raw Sunscale Salmon | 52 |
| Whimsyfin | 49 |
| Melon Juice | 46 |
| Fadeleaf | 40 |
| Soothing Spices | 26 |
| Simple Flour | 21 |
| Crawler Claw | 21 |
Plus 14 more materials in small amounts; the full list with price fields is in the calculator.
New recipes in Forever
44 of 52 recipes are new in Forever. The trainer teaches 2 of them, 6 are sold for Merchant's Favor by the trade factions and 36 come from recipe items. 19 recipes need a camp station: the Iron Oven (from skill 240).
For the camp, Cooking makes the Basic Campfire (from skill 1), the Journeyman Campfire (from skill 90, placed from 140), the Expert Campfire (from skill 200, placed from 220), the Cookie's Feast (from skill 140) and the Iron Oven (from skill 300).
How the calculator works
Colours follow the Classic rule (orange from the learning skill, grey from the trivial skill), the skill-up chance in yellow and green the common community approximation (grey − skill) / (grey − yellow) that Blizzard never confirmed. For every point the calculator picks the recipe with the lowest cost per expected skill-up; the formulas are explained in the calculator under "How it is calculated".
2 recipes have no trivial skill above their learning skill in the data and are left out.
Pitfalls on the route
- The Iron Oven comes too late. The last 58 points of the route (Grilled Squid from 242, Poached Sunscale Salmon 250–300) need the Iron Oven, whose blueprint itself requires skill 300. So you depend on another cook's oven at the same campfire. Without an oven you are left with Sage's Tea (250–290) and Raging Raptor Ribs (180–310), which are yellow and green from about 245 – take the oven recipes out of the route in the calculator and it plans with those instead.
- 445 Mild Spices and 94 Raptor Eggs. Tasty Raptor Bites sit in the route for 52–75 with 94 crafts because they are already yellow there. The trainer has Classic recipes for that range that our data lacks; you bridge the 5–25 gap with them anyway.
- Campfire kits as a skill source. The Journeyman Campfire (90–102, 14 Star Wood) and the Expert Campfire (200–210, 10 Thick Logs) are cheap orange steps. The kits can only be placed from 140 and 220; keep a few for later.
- Two recipes without a trivial skill: Cleansing Stew (learning skill 1 in the data, oven) and the Iron Oven itself. Neither gives skill-ups according to the data.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
How do you level Cooking from 1 to 300 in Forever?
The calculated route has 18 steps with about 380 crafts, from Basic Campfire to Poached Sunscale Salmon. The leveling calculator adapts it to your prices and recipes.
When do I need the trainer for Cooking?
Before you reach the caps: 75 (Journeyman), 150 (Expert), 225 (Artisan).
What is new for Cooking in Forever?
44 recipes in the data are new, 6 of them for Merchant's Favor; 19 recipes need a camp station. On top come the camp features Basic Campfire, Journeyman Campfire, Expert Campfire, Cookie's Feast and Iron Oven.
