Cooking is one of the easiest life skill features of Black Desert that everyone can enjoy with just a little bit of preparation. The output of cooking is dishes that can be consumed to gain all kinds of buffs useful for all types of content one can find throughout the world. This food can also be sold to both other Adventurers and NPCs, in this way serving as a stable source of income.

Even if you purchase the food you need from the Central Market, or even find that to be bothersome, all you have to do is just follow this guide to enjoy a bountiful life as an excellent cook. Let’s take an in-depth look at what you have to do to succeed as a cook in Black Desert’s world.

Additionally, cook’s clothes that can reduce your cooking time are one of the best first investments you can make when you delve into the world of cooking.

◈ Cooking Utensil

The first thing you need for cooking is your own residence. This is because the cooking utensils that are needed can only be installed in a residence.
It is more convenient to have your residence near the storage where the ingredients for cooking are piled up. You can also have multiple residences, so it is recommended to have a cheap residence (one that costs only 1 contribution point) that is close to the town’s storage.

There are several types of cooking utensils. The simpler and less durable ones can be purchased at NPC shops, such as an innkeeper or food vendor. The more durable ones, such as intermediate or advanced cooking utensils, need to be crafted at a town workshop.

➤ You can read more about this activity to produce cooking utensils in the [Crafting] page.

Until you participate in imperial crafting delivery and can obtain supreme cooking utensils, we recommend obtaining & installing an advanced cooking utensil with which you can cook a minimum of 900 times and reduces cooking time by 1 second.
The cooking utensil you can purchase at NPC shops is inconvenient in many ways, having no special effect and only being able to be used for around 100 times, and is not proper for cooking for a long time. It will, however, help you when you need to cook small quantities and you’re in a hurry.

You can craft advanced cooking utensils in level 3 tool workshops by yourself, or purchase them at the Central Market. If you find it hard to get an advanced cooking utensil, then you can use an intermediate cooking utensil (durability 500) instead.
Other types of cooking utensils, such as regional traditional variations, exist, and they last longer than an intermediate cooking utensil, and even an advanced one, but they come with the special effect of cooking time taking longer.

The following is a list of some of the first tool workshops you will find as you travel the world.

Crafting materials for an advanced cooking utensil: x20 polished stones, x5 usable scantlings, x20 melted iron shards, x14 black stone powder.

Crafting Materials for an intermediate cooking utensil: x25 rough stones, x10 logs, x15 melted iron shards, x7 black stone powder.

Alternatively, if you’re currently in the Land of the Morning Light, or began your adventure there, you might be interested in crafting a Morning Light Traditional Cooking Utensil, which offers -1 cooking time like the advanced cooking utensil, and has a lot more durability. These can be crafted in the houses Morning Light Nampo 2 and Morning Light Nopsae 4, and require the following materials: x80 polished stone, x20 standardized timber square, x20 iron ingot, and x40 fire horn.

◈ Cooking Ingredients

There are basically two types of cooking ingredients: Seasonings such as sugar and salt you can get from any cooking vendor, and ingredients such as apples and pork that you can gather, process, and cultivate yourself. A great variety of cooking ingredients can be collected by workers you send to nodes to work.
The difficulty of cooking can be defined by how the ingredients you need are supplied, so a stable supply of ingredients is really important. Node production, sending workers out into the world to collect materials for you, is directly related to managing contribution points, so you need to put some thought into this.

You can find where to get the ingredients you require by checking the crafting notes, accessible from the Adventurer’s Board (hotkey: F1 or F2).

◈ Cook’s Clothes

Silver embroidered cook's clothes have enough options to satisfy and greatly help everyone trying to delve into cooking. The base form of this equipment piece improves your character’s movement speed, and reduces its cooking time by 1 second. As the piece is enhanced, its effects increase and expand to include bonus cooking experience while cooking.

You can craft these clothes at any costume mill  town workshop with x9 cotton fabrics, x10 powder of earth, and x15 black stone powder.

At its maximum enhancement level, they provide +4 movement speed, +40% cooking experience, and a cooking time reduction of 7 seconds.

Once you have all the above set up, you need to bring the ingredients to your residence where your cooking utensils are installed. You can place cooking utensils in it with the Place Mode function that pops up when you enter your residence.

When you move to the front of the cooking utensils after placing them, you will see the interaction menu. You can activate the Start Cooking interface by pressing the R key or by clicking the Controls button with the mouse.
On the right side of this window you can see all the dishes you can make in Black Desert. Dishes you haven’t cooked yet will be ambiguously displayed as “sauce for meat” or “sour seasoning” since you do not know exactly what the dishes are. On the other hand, if you have already cooked the dish, even just once, and therefore acquired knowledge about it, it will be marked with the dish’s exact name. Clicking on any dish you’ve already prepared in the past will let you check what recipe you used to cook the dish.

When the cooking window is displayed your character’s inventory will open as well. You can right-click the ingredients from there to add them to the cooking window. Do not worry about losing your ingredients, as until you press the Start Cooking button no item will be lost.

Cooking a dish usually requires a combination of 1 ~ 3 ingredients and 1 ~ 3 seasonings. Some dishes require finished dishes as ingredients. When you press the Start Cooking button after putting all the ingredients in, it will start the cooking process.

You can also select how many times you want to repeat cooking with the remaining ingredients you have in the inventory by putting in the ingredients required for one-time cooking and clicking the Batch Production button. The default is set to be ingredients required for cooking a dish only once, so you need to press the F key when you see the number window, or click the Maximum Quantity button.
One thing you need to remember in batch production is that you have to put the ingredients required just for cooking once. Even if you put all the ingredients into the cooking slots and press the Batch Production button, it will only make one dish out of them.

Put in the ingredients for one dish and press the Start Cooking button to start making dishes!

If wheat is required for a dish, does it mean we can only put wheat and nothing else instead? The answer is no! That is because we can substitute certain ingredients. We can replace wheat with another grain, and that is the substitute. The category of grain includes not only wheat, but also barley, potato, sweet potato, and corn. Therefore, you can use another grain for the dish that requires grain and still have the same result.

However, it doesn’t mean that you can use a substitute unconditionally. Some dishes require more substitutes than the original ingredient when replacing the latter with the former. If you failed the cooking process after using a substitute, you might need more of it.

Please note that for certain dishes, such as gukbap, you cannot employ substitutes, only the intended ingredient.

You will never fail in cooking if you prepare the ingredients as specified in the recipe, even if you put more than required. If you succeed in cooking for the first time, you acquire the dish’s knowledge entry, which will detail the ingredients required for it.

Once you get a dish’s knowledge, go to the Knowledge interface (hotkey: H) and you’ll find it recorded there.

However, keep in mind that a specific cooking level is required for preparing certain dishes. That means you will fail in cooking, even if you have the right recipe and ingredients, if your cooking level is too low.

There are two main other reasons why you can fail cooking: You’ve got the wrong ingredients, or not enough of them. The probability of failure for the former case is 100%, but you might occasionally succeed in the latter case. If you sometimes succeed and sometimes don’t with the same ingredients, it is because you’re not using the correct ratio of ingredients.

If you have completed cooking successfully, you might get an interesting extra along with the food: witch’s delicacy. You can exchange it with an NPC for cooking & contribution experience, milk, or beer. Milk is a precious ingredient that can only be obtained manually from cows, and beer is the traditional item used to keep your workers motivated. However, it would be inconvenient to exchange these items you obtain from cooking bit by bit, so it is recommended that you keep them in your storage and exchange them later all at once.

So far, we have looked into the basics of cooking and its results. Now, let’s take a look at some helpful tips. First, let’s see how to level up the life skill faster.

1. Vinegar

You can use wheat, barley, potato, sweet potato, and corn as the grain. Intensively produce one of them with node production, or purchase it in the Central Market. You can purchase leavening agent and sugar from food vendors in each territory.
Vinegar is often required as an ingredient for other dishes, so instead of disposing of it, make sure to save it for later.

2. Beer

For grain, you can use wheat, barley, potato, sweet potato, and corn, same as in vinegar. You can purchase other ingredients from a food vendor.

In regard to the grain produced by garden farming, high-quality grain can be exchanged for 2, and special grain for 1. This means that instead of 5 wheat, you can use 2 high-quality wheat, or 1 special wheat.

Beer restores the stamina of your workers, so remember to always have them in stock.

3. Essence of Liquor

For flour, you need to process (hotkey: L) any grain via the grinding method.
As seen previously, for fruit you can choose any of the available ones. We recommend grapes and strawberries, as they can be obtained via node production.
Last, as you know very well by now, leavening agent can be purchased at any food vendor NPC.

Essence of liquor is used when preparing other dishes such as citron cider, coconut cocktail, or fruit wine, which in turn are needed for further elaborate meals.

Since cooking buffs are essential for all aspects of the game, you can earn money by selling your dishes. You need to know the latest trend in cooking and be quick to make a profit.

Beer is definitely one of the most popular in the Central Market, but it is not good for making a lot of money because of its low price. Regional meals, such as Balenos meal, are always in high demand as well.

You need to make sure you study what your objective is and the efficiency of the method you’re going to use to reach it. You can sell beer for profit, but would perhaps using the beer to prepare more complex dishes be more profitable? Investigate on your own and ask other Adventurers to find out what better fits your options and playstyle.

Additionally, not only you can sell dishes to other Adventurers via the Central Market, but you can also deliver packaged dishes to the imperial court via the Imperial Crafting Delivery NPCs, so you will need to figure out what is more profitable with each dish, be it selling it to other Adventurers, using it for more elaborate dishes to then sell as well, package and deliver them to the imperial court, or any mix of the different options.

Cooking mastery increases the maximum number of dishes prepared while cooking.
It also affects the number of extra dishes you can receive from the process, the chance of obtaining higher quality dishes, as well as the profit from turning in cooking boxes at the Imperial Crafting Delivery NPCs.

More importantly, cooking mastery increases your chance of activating mass cooking, which uses 10 times the ingredients to cook 10 portions of food all at once. This can reduce the time you spend cooking significantly, as the proc for this to happen does not negate either the one for the maximum number of dishes, nor the one for the number of extra dishes.

If you only want an increase in profit when turning in boxes of packed dishes, we recommend you swap your equipment for the pieces that increase cooking mastery only for the time you spend turning in the boxes.

One can accept cooking-related quests from a variety of NPCs in the world of Black Desert.
First, we recommend that you proceed with the cooking quests you can find in Balenos, the first territory most Adventurers explore. In particular, in the town of Velia.
 
We also recommend that you proceed with advancement quests, called leap quests, to help you reach a higher alchemy level quicker.

It requires some time and effort to complete these quests, but for rewards, you can obtain contribution EXP, cooking EXP, as well as rare items like hard & sharp black crystal shards.
 
You can accept the first leap quest once you reach the cooking level beginner 10.
Once you’re at this cooking level, summon the Black Spirit and check its guide menu, where you can find the available leap quests for all life skills. You can be guided to the NPC you can receive the quests from more easily by simply pressing them from the list.​​​​​​​

* The content of the game guide may differ from the actual game content, depending on the update and content changes.