5 Best MMOs With The Best Cooking Mechanics

Highlights

• Elder Scrolls Online offers lore-friendly food & drink buffs with a provisioning skill line for players to master.
• Black Desert Online offers an in-depth cooking system with synergies & an Imperial Crafting Delivery system for profit.
• Final Fantasy 14 requires active gameplay for cooking, mirroring real-life chef work, with dedicated questlines for chefs.

Like respawning wandering boars in forest areas, loot farmers, and players still naming their characters some variation of "Sephiroth," cooking is a near-ineluctable feature of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. In exchange for their long-term investment, these games invite players to make themselves at home, and the very human act of crafting food is a great way to settle in (with or without player housing).

Besides helping to build on an immersive fantasy, culinary activities are a great way to get a player-driven economy going and give all those food nodes a purpose. Plenty of players out there would happily cook up a storm of delectable dishes in town rather than blast enemies with a chain of lightning bolts or skewer monsters with a searing greatsword, but which MMOs have discovered the secret recipe for the freshest cooking gameplay?

The Elder Scrolls Online

An Immersive Profession Worth The Investment

• The food featured in The Elder Scrolls Online should be recognizable to fans of the series
• Players can invest in provisioner skill lines, which allows them to produce more potent consumables more efficiently

Food and drink crafters in The Elder Scrolls Online are called "provisioners." This crafting profession can produce lore-friendly foods from every corner of Tamriel, which means fans of The Elder Scrolls series can expect some iconic dishes and beverages, including sujamma from Morrowind, horker loaf from Skyrim, and Cyrodiil's own Colovian corn chow. Depending on the quality of the consumable, food offers a buff to stamina, health, magicka, or a combination of two or all three.

Provisioners have their own skill line (which the gourmets of Skyrim may recognize as similar to perk trees) that offers passive buffs to players while they craft. For example, the "chef" passive buff grants extra servings with every consumable crafted, and the gourmand and connoisseur extend the benefits of supping or sipping, respectively. Just like any other skill, books can also be found and read to gain free Provisioner levels and cooking lore. Ingredients and recipes can be found in containers across the land, meaning that prospective cooks have as much a reason to adventure as anyone else.

Black Desert Online

A Profitable And Synergistic Lifeskill

• The cooking system in Black Desert Online offers depth and viability for those who want to focus mainly on gastronomic pursuits to make money
• Equipment and clothing play a part in crafting consumables as well as ingredients

Like many of its other systems, the cooking life skill in Black Desert Online has plenty of meaty depth and complexity to digest. For example, recipes leave room for ingredient substitutions, and the life skill has some excellent synergy with others, such as farming, gathering, and fishing. Players will want to make use of the tool workshop (or hire workers to make use of it) to produce quality cooking utensils for the best results. The more mathematical-minded players will be able to find ways to get the most out of their laboring, but new players shouldn't feel too lost in the broth. Once a batch of food items has been whipped up, they can be delivered to an Imperial Crafting Delivery NPC in exchange for a pretty penny.

Chefs must dress the part to perform at their best, which involves donning chef's whites (embroidered with flavor-enhancing silver). Players can live out a little heroism through their craft by participating in emergency food quests. These involve bringing crates of much-needed nutrition to various people in need, and as a reward, players receive thanks and a large stock of ingredients (usually dairy products) for their valiant efforts.

RuneScape

Old-School Cooking Techniques From A Classic MMO

• Food in RuneScape restores health, making it an incredibly important resource for players
• There is a chance to burn food without the requisite skill level, and a gnome questline offers a challenging but fun way to pursue the culinary art

While it is true that RuneScape is as old as MMOs come, it will have aged like a fine wine for those looking to live out the chef fantasy, as there is a texture, flavor, and base of mechanical realism to cooking that can't be found anywhere else. Food is used to regain HP, which makes cooks highly prized members of the community. Food is cooked on a campfire or range, and brewing beverages requires special equipment, timing, and expertise. Unlike most MMOs that lock off rarer (and more potent) meals with levels, RuneScape allows players to cook anything with a chance of success but at the risk of burning the more complex raw ingredients.

As players improve their cooking skill, they reduce the random chance of burning until they can serve a dish with a 100% chance of success. Just like in real life, the culinary art can take almost a lifetime to master. Eating certain foods grants XP and skill boosts. For hardcore gastronomists, RuneScape has a questline around gnome cooking, which sees players craft an escalating complicated list of exotic dishes for a gnome restaurant, each with their own whimsical names and recipes.

Guild Wars 2

The Thrill Of Discovering Taste Sensations

• The "discovery" feature makes cooking in Guild Wars 2 a deductive puzzle for foodies to figure out on their quest for chef mastery
• Once players master the chef profession, they can embark on a quest to craft ascended food, which can be used to grant powerful communal buffs

The cooking mechanics in Guild Wars 2 have a lot in common with other MMOs: food and drink buffs players for an hour with a particular bonus. Players can choose "chef" as one of their two crafting professions; ingredients are gathered from drops or gathering nodes across the world, and more dishes can be unlocked as event awards and gaining levels in cooking. However, one feature makes it stand out: the discovery system. Although some recipes are locked by level tiers, players can experiment with the ingredients they have on hand to create something new, gaining large bites of crafting experience in the process.

For example, flour and water will make the dough, which can be used as a base for pizza, pie, cookie mix, or pasta. These ingredients can be used to make elaborately hearty meals (veggie pizza, raspberry peach compote, chocolate chip cookies, or poultry tarragon pasta). Discovery becomes an intuitive, player-friendly mini-game in which players are encouraged to use their real-life knowledge to deduce a potential dish logically. Ascended cooking, unlocked after the player hits level 400, can be used to create feasts, communally-minded items that allow other players to eat from the table and gain powerful hour-long buffs.

Final Fantasy 14

A More Active Approach To Kitchen Work

• Players have movesets for cooking while working as a culinarian and must use each action tactically to get the best out of their ingredients
• Final Fantasy 14 offers a dedicated questline for chefs that runs parallel with the main story

These Disciples of the Hand hail from every corner of Eorzea; where there are hungry souls in bountiful lands, there are sure to be culinarians to feed them. One of the job's most interesting features is its active gameplay. Rather than only dealing with ingredient resources and menus while crafting consumable items, Final Fantasy 14 players must be active in the kitchen, plan, and execute with care, just as they would be with combat action rotations against enemies in the field.

This more closely reflects the work of a real-life chef, who must apply expert timing in often stressful environments. Culinarian characters can combine actions such as Observe and Focused Synthesis to improve their meals combined with culinarian-specific traits to produce powerful buffs to enhance their combat prowess. Like the other disciplines, culinarians have their own compelling questlines (that follow the exploits of some major characters) that cater to their hunger for gastronomic knowledge, each with delightfully FF14 punny names.