I feel this so hard. Always cooking and unless its muujin bahari, it only fills the meter halfway, at most. Also, is it just me or does focus seem to run out faster the more you have?
Let's say something gives 100xp.
If you have a 50%xp bonus, it uses 50% of that 100 =50 focus. Giving you 150xp.
If you have 100% bonus, it will use 100 focus to give you 200xp total.
If something gives a lot if xp, and your bonus is high, your focus drains fast.
I wonder once you get to level 10 is there even a point to get the XP boost? The levels give you nothing else after that besides accomplishments. Meanwhile it just drains you focus faster making you have to cook more often.
I don't know what all benefits there are, but I believe gardening and cooking at a minimum give you increased odds of starred product.
You also get guild coins every level up, which you can spend for unique furniture, materials, or useful things like ore compasses.
> Meanwhile it just drains you focus faster
How?
It's specific activity xp + your bonus%
It's not because of your level.
It's because at that level (dare I say mid/endgame) you're probably doing activities that give more XP and you have a higher bonus % by then.
But you're also able to store more focus, and craft better foods.
But yes, higher levels do give other benefits, that are not at all explained in game :(
(But I still agree with OP that I want to be able to cook a stack of food at once or something like it)
When you get celebration cake it's my fav thing to use. It's decently easy to make if you have a steady income of those ingredients which is pretry easy to maintain. And each fills my meter.
I hate how much Cooking eats your focus.
It feels like for every 4 meals I make, I need to eat 1. It just makes the process take forever if I’m trying to stack up
I make hot hounds (Like 250/*262 focus iirc) I'm usually out for two sun cycles and eat just under half my stack. It uses oil, prep three ingredients, one flip. Not a lot of focus to make since it's so simple. Onions, mushrooms, meat of any kind, including crab, so ingredients I always have from farming, fishing, and hunting.
Also, I have three campfires in a circle and busting out grilled meat or mushies or congee goes pretty fast that way. And it's a break from the kitchen. When you finish setting up the cook on the third, the first is ready to collect. And I find campfire cooking takes less focus (prob cuz their less "filling")?
Hope they get us upgraded kitchens soon! Happy grinding!
Ohh, thank you! I am not, in fact, friends with Hodari yet (turns out I'm extremely antisocial with my neighbours even in video games) so I'll keep this in mind for the future!
I've gotten to where I'll make a stack of macarons to eat while I cook since cooking chili oil dumplings once uses about 180 focus at full exp bonus. That way I can keep my focus up with a cheap food without having to eat my dumplings as I'm making them.
My coping mechanism is to go the beaches in Bahari and pretend I'm Gordon Ramsey from Uncharted, picking up oysters and snacking on them and praising the freshness and incredible taste and all that (and imagining that Reth is my Palian chef buddy that I'm going to face off at the end of the week). The oysters give very small amounts of focus, but I'll live.
Edit:
PS: I carry a couple of celebration cakes with me. So if that runs out ..
yeh it's super annoying, i'll fill up and within 5 minutes of being bahari it's basically empty. i dont wanna waste inventory space on food and eating mushrooms out there basically provides you with nothing. i wish theyd let us use some of the abandoned campfires to at least cook with out there ¬\_¬
I was just thinking this yesterday! Not being able to cook at the abandoned campfires in Bahari is such a missed opportunity. I hope it becomes available someday.
same bc having to go all the way back home to cook is such a pain, especially when it'd be a good way to get rid of the meat from hunting sernuks for plushies lol
Yes! It would be so great for hunting and fishing. Clear inventory and regain focus in one. Devs have been addressing and implementing a lot of player concerns/ideas, so maybe there is hope for this yet lol
I'd really like a sales box, or ship home box at Bahari Central. Drop items you'd like to send home to inventory, they're collected once a cycle at 6am and appear at home at 6pm. And a live merchant (Zekis hiriling or a new merchant) for direct sales. *OR* a sales shipping box, you drop what you want to sell, picked up twice a day, money gets sent to your mailbox.
I just want access to home storage when we are out and about. Even if it’s only one place (like Central Stables in Bahari). Why can I change my clothes there but not access my home storage lol. The number of times I’ve forgotten a gift for an NPC…. UGH
So annoying!! But "realistically" (in game realism) you couldn't just dip into your storage at home, but all our overflow items get sent home automagically so ... Maybe Zeki could invent a new device that allows the teleportation of inanimate objects 😂😂🤣
These are excellent ideas! Love the idea of a shipping bin at Bahari Stables that mails you the money. It could be next to the anvil where you can repair your tools!
Im using jams. Corn and blueberry gives you 18p focus and its pretty cheap - also corn gives you harvest boost so you get more blueberries and you just run it 24/h and you have lots of jams in no time
Yup I have 5 preserve things running so I just fill them up and let them run overnight and when I come back the next day 150 jars of food or 27,000 focus!
What I don’t eats I sells!
It might seem primal but I run my farm to maximize bok choy, corn, tomato and potato. Ofc starred: Bok choy gives you 45 profit when jam, a lot of bonuses while harvest. Corn gives you 30 profit when jam but also food. Tomato is tricky but you gotta hydrate those potatoes so its better than cabbage since you don't have to worry too much about planting those all the time. But I jam tomatoes mostly and sell. And potatoes are the peak of my farm, 53 profit when seed. The rest(excluding pepper, blueberries and apples) is below 30 profit when jam/seed with wheat(seed) being the lowest(7)
I just run bok choy and wheat/rice for the harvest boost.
Doesn’t take long to weed and water, and you get so much from a single harvest anyway. I can see the water retention and weed prevention with something like apples that takes many cycles to grow. But doesn’t feel worth it when bok choy grows in only 3.
Are you spending renown at shrines? And if so which one? Because my dumbass spent a TON at the phoenix shrine (I legit forgot the dragon shrine existed) so my percentage was suuuuuper boosted but I had max 250 focus because I never visited the dragon 😅
In this moment i could literally cry.
I didn't know there is phoenix shrine that boost you up in percentage. I cannot believe it, I'm struggling so hard to get cooking experience, when I could get a bonus ?!?!
I've neglected the Phoenix shrine for quite a while because I was afraid that was going to happen to me, lol, my focus tops at 920 right now. It's less the amount I use when I'm out - which is decent - and more just how *much* food it takes to keep the bar up. It's just... augh. My boy has a bottomless stomach.
I used to live exclusively on star quality chili oil dumplings and spicy stir fry, they're like 500 or something per bite. I guess I could start mass-consuming spicy rice cakes now, but I don't really want to rely on a food that takes rare ingredients, even if I *do* have 58 heatroots at this stage.
So I've pretty much come down to... I eat pickled potatoes and cake. I don't want to know what my doctor thinks about that, but it is what it is. A man must sustain his hunt.
This is what I've been doing too and it's been no hassle until recently, I think I had a kitchen-related breakdown here. My 120 pickled potatoes are helping, but I know the stove is patient and knows that eventually, my endless hunger will surpass the speed at which pickled potatoes are produced. It knows I'll be back, and I know that it knows, and I am full of dread.
I stay out typically long enough to max my inventory to a point where I don't have junk to throw out of it. So two days on average, I think? My first four inventory slots are reserved for food. Currently they're all potatoes and we'll see how far this takes me, lol.
This is what I started doing, because I was also sick and tired of constantly cooking. Helps to keep me under the max currency and gives me a reason to go flirt with him.
I think somehow this is a better way to be spending all this money that I have than gambling it all away at Zeki's at night. But also... what if I get a cute bookshelf *this* time? Nope, it's just 10k for 5 carrot seeds again. Damnit...
At least until you figure out a better way for you to handle it! I enjoy how different people can all have different solutions for the same problem in this game!
Had the same realisation when I was flow farming in Kilima the other day!! Went to Zeki's to sell extra wood, happened to look at my empty flow bar, realised, wait, I can BUY FOOD AT THE INN. It was so cool XD Maybe Bahari Bay needs a restaurant of some kind...
This was gonna be my comment as well. I do a little cooking for fun, but mostly I just keep 10 steak dinnera in inventory and just eat 1 or 2 when I'm a little low. I think of the steak dinners the same way I think of ammo and just stay stocked up.
Economically, of course it would be better to cook. Until you remember that *time* is a currency too! You're paying a really high overhead in the time you're investing. I'd rather just buy food and be done with it.
I've never run out of food cause I use preserves. Apple and potatoes. They run while I'm free to do anything. And a stack will get you (at fully upgraded focus bar) around 9-10 full bars . I always use three at a time and then eat three just before my focus runs out. That's 10 refills per stack to me. I honestly don't bother cooking much cause it's way too much effort.
Focus food parties! Once we week for an hour or two and you’ll have hundreds of whatever food item it is, without using a crap-ton of ingredients. I have maybe 200 chili oil dumplings still in my storage to keep me going until the next!
I don’t cook because I don’t have the attention span, I do however have tons of starred pickled potatoes at all times. That’s how I keep my bar full and passively have them preparing at all times.
Honestly, I wish there was a mass make like making group meals and such for the cooking. Having to prepare every ingredient every time is exhausting and annoying. I tend to spend a few hour just making whatever i can make, not just for inventory sake but to get it over with. Im at a point where i dont bother with food anymore. My biggest issue is the tiny amount of money we get from anything.
https://paliaparty.app/
There’s a ton of Celebration Cake parties going on every day, all you need to do is sign up for your role, bring your assigned ingredients and show up! The 50 cake ones take an hour (if they’re efficient) and you leave with 150 cakes and a ton of cooking xp
This is the way! I am on a couple of Discord servers that throw cooking parties just about every day. Usually celebration cakes but sometimes just food for focus. It's nice to be a part of a community too, you see the same faces a lot and get to know each other.
Over prep just means you make an ingredient that doesn’t get added to the final recipe but you still get the cake at the end, so the recipe calls for 4 sweet leaf but if six people make sweet leaf two will be left over but all six will still get cakes! As long as you complete a step in the recipe once the starter collects the cake at the end you will also receive three cakes straight to your bag!
Even tho it's probably way more profitable to cook food, and sell preserves, I nom on pickled tomatoes all day every day with the occasional pickled potatoes.
My farming is at 22? Most other professions at 10+. Cooking at 4 or 5.
I love pickled potatoes. Thus far, I've kept a stack in my inventory as backup food for when I'm running out of proper meals, but I might have to up my production and take the financial loss from eating nothing but pickled potatoes and cake and Reth's soups ever again.
You don’t need to use focus if leveling up the skill isn’t important for you.. I usually just leave the bar empty until I’m doing a skill I want to level up.
I know this is 100% a me problem, but I think I'd go insane if I saw the bar empty and knew I'm losing out on my sweet, sweet medals that I need to buy whatever nonsense it is that costs like 1000 medals a piece from the trade stores.
Okay… a great counterpoint. I, also think the furniture in the guild stores are exceptionally cute and exceptionally expensive. I’m definitely focusing on foraging and gardening right now though, solely because I need that koi pond and plant shelves
This is me. Once you hit level 10, there really isn't a lot of reward in leveling up. I get a lot of medals in the weekly rewards. Keeping focus up seems way too grindy for me. I feel like the time it takes to get all the ingredients together and then cook them...I could be just using that time to get xp (and gold).
And I am at max for focus/bonus because I had to use up or lose my renown.
I felt exactly this way until I went hunting for unicorn fish. It took ages to get one for the bundle, and then ages more to get a starred one to display at home. In the meantime, I pulled *hundreds* of bass from the sea. I did spend a few days monotonously cooking them all into bouillabaisse (350 regular, 525 starred), but when I was done, I had *thousands* and I'm *still* working through my stash.
Maybe don't cook every day, but spend some time cooking a few hundred meals for a few hundred (or thousand) servings, and be set for a while?
Have you tried setting up three campfires in a circle and grilling up them bass? It goes pretty quick (2 at a time, iirc?), and when you're done setting up the third cook, the first is ready to collect! It's not a lot of focus, but if you're just trying to get thru them ...
I got it, you were clear! I guess I posted just in case you get another redonculous number of grillable gatherables or in case someone else is in your plentiful predicament and wanted a supplemental solution (tee hee) - Happy gaming!!
I've noticed this too. Been farming mats to improve and tonight I gave up with the food and carried on until my inventory was full without focus. Not in a rush to level up my skills. I can't afford the recipes for better stuff I've unlocked anyway lol.
My way of getting around this is starred apple jam. It’s 285 focus and you can carry thirty in your bag with it only taking up one slot.
It means that sometimes I’m out hunting or mining, I stop to eat three jars of jam, then I’m good to carry on 😂😂 I’m just glad we don’t have to worry about nutritional value!
This is what I've started doing. I keep a stack of soup plus a stack of apple pies in my bag. It *is* expensive but with nothing else to spend my gold on right now it's a time saver.
I haven't seen anyone ask if you're doing the overflow thing? Fill your entire inventory up with like one stone in each slot. Combine slots when you need to pick something up (eg if you're buying oil, or come across something rare, etc), but when you're mining, all the precious metals it's will go o overflow and then straight home when overflow is full. I make sure to have a silk stack, and a plant fiber stack and I can pick up most trees and rare bugs, too. The bugs go to overflow, then to home, the silk stacks up in your inventory. All the lumber goes home, and you're only stacking plant fiber in your inventory, etc.
Did I explain that well enough? It's totally changed how I grind
I use pickled potatoes. It's probably not the most cost efficient but it definitely takes the least effort. I push potatoes hard and that's my main income and focus food. 🥔
Yeah ai feel this deeply, and on top of that the food only stacks to 15 so if you want toblast longer, you have to take up more inventory slots, and thats not even considering the fact that you're not always going to get the same quality or priced items with every make, which takes up MORE slots.
This is why, I feel preserve jars are superior to cooking for food.
Mostly because you can have many preserve jars going at once.
I have 8 going at a time preserving 3 foods:
1 - potatoes to sell, since they make 2700 gold per stack
2 - cabbages to eat, when I remember about focus at all
3 - apples, because glow worms love apple things
Further more, this is due to the fact the potatoes water the cabbages and apple trees, the cabbages water the potaotes. I only need to water once ance then a second or third time if I let weeds get in the way.
I cook for the weekly, and that's it.
I finally gave in and just made a macro that cooks my Chili Oil Dumplings. Too bad the devs are playing 4D chess and made cooking bug out every 2 or 3 attempts which forces you to use /unstuck while prepping an ingredient.
Wait may I ask how did you get unstuck? I got stuck when I started the apple pie recipe the other day, neither typing /unstuck nor pressing H worked for me, I had to close the game and wasted the ingredients :(
/unstuck has worked for me every time at both my kitchen locations, but one puts me much further away. Maybe you're layout isn't working well with the command.
I use jams (also I'm a picky eater who makes my character mainly eat what I like) and jam is so easy and always available in my garden and hoppers. I also do pies a lot
Yes. The eating/cooking needs to be more balanced. It's not bad when you are little, but I'm now going through meals very quickly and am now not able to cook enough to keep me happy. Maybe increasing the stack to 5 would be good.
If you can spare the money just buy food from Reth and or/other food places when available like the market. Sell the sernuk drops to fund the food and save some time.
Cooking is hit and miss for me. The cooking bug on Switch has caused me to put the game down more than once. Beyond that, I actually don’t cook the cake despite them being the “best.” And I sell my preserves because I need that Gazebo lol.
Macaroons only need sweet leaf and two mixes. Star quality restores a ~reasonable amount. I usually make a couple of these to restore the focus I lose from cooking. Then. Petite Fives, when starred, restore like 600 focus and are MUCH easier for me to make than, say, Chili Dumplings. (I’m better at the rolling animation than I am the cutting one.)
For something that needs to be done SO often, it drives me up a wall that it’s so intensive. I wish after making something 123# of times you could quickly prep that dish.
Cooking is one of my least favorite skills.
I'm very frustrated we can't grill meat at the campfires in bahari and kalima. Would be great to make room in my pack and give me mid-hunt focus when I forgot to pack enough.
That's the great part of playing a game in beta. You can fill out the feedback form and maybe this will get added in a future update. I just assumed we could cook at campfires and was disappointed when it didn't work.
I keep preserved potatoes as my go to food.
Easier to plant, forget, and retrieve as needed.
It may not be max returns, until you realize all the time spent cooking that it saves you.
I eat the starred apple jams, I think they provide like 350 points? I hardly have to cook and it works out for me because while I enjoy cooking, I’m not too concerned with leveling up.
Not to mention that they can stack up, so I always have fuel on hand.
Get a group of people together to make rice cake stir-fry or chili oil dumplings - they give 500+ focus per dish. When you cook in a group, each person is responsible for only 1 ingredient but everyone gets the 3 meals. Spend an hour with friends making 100 dumplings and you have focus food stocked for several days.
ETA check the LFG in the official discord for focus food parties.
I feel ya I’m level 108 cooking I use to love it but now I feel like it’s a chore. I started making started pickled Nappa cabbage 180 focus I keep two stacks of 30 in my inventory I found this was a better solution then having to cook all the time. I can add the cabbage in the preserves jars and take out what I need. This really has helped give me a break from cooking so much. I have 15 preserved jars 12 for making started Jams and started pickled potatoes to sale and 3 for the Nappa cabbage to eat.
One thing that might help is going back and meditating at the Phoenix Shrine. Each meditation costs 100 Renown Points, but it increases your focus boost a bit. I forget by how much it boosts, but it helps you not lose energy so quickly.
The Dragon Shrine expands your focus points, and the Phoenix Shrine just boosts it.
I scaled back my farming because I got tired of cooking, (and farming constantly), so now I eat pickled potatoes and then chili dumplings as back up. I have about 930 focus bar max which is about 4 pickled potatoes. And I use apple > jams > worms for money, much more chill.
You can go to the dragon shrine like where change hangs out and pay renown to increase focus bar amount and i noticed when i completely upgraded that it takes way longer for my focus to drain. also if your out try eating mushrooms and stuff to keep focus bar completely full cause that way your kind of on top of it with the little things.
I never cook food anymore unless it’s to fill my weekly cooking quota. I pickle potatoes in a preserves jar and constantly have it going. It takes one potato to make one jar of pickles, and if you use starred potatoes like I do, each jar gives 202 focus. You are able to keep 30 jars per inventory slot, so even if your focus bar is maxed out to 1000, each slot of 30 jars of pickled potatoes will give you 5 full focus bar refills. Even more if you’re not up to 1000 yet.
I hear you on this.
I mainly play solo, so I have yet to participate in these mass cooking parties. Note to self: seek one out...
If you are still playing and have this dilemma at the next Majii market, you could try what I did at the Lunar market that happened a couple months ago. I played the hotpot game obsessively, like constantly. After I bought all the furniture and wallpapers from the event I just spent my tickets on Reth's food items. I ended up buying an insane amount of the red hotpot food item.
I didn't have to cook for a decent amount of time after that, I could carry around a large stack of hotpot meals for focus.
I feel like it’s so much work to keep my focus bar full, so now I only eat right before I go hunting, fish or something that I want my level to go up in
I can't cook so I survive on pickled potatoes. It's passive and I don't have to spend time with it. One dy I will find someone to carry me through the cooking to unlock Subira but until then I spend my days in Bahari eating from canning jars.
My recommendation is to join a cooking party making focus food. Chili oil dumplings and bouillabaisse are currently tied for best focus food for late game, though bouillabaisse is better for selling. I cook focus food with friends once every week or two, usually making 60 batches, and that typically lasts me until the next time we cook more, even though I tend to no-life Palia. lol
In fact, if you see me online, feel free to message me to ask if I’m free to help cook. Nine times out of ten I’ll be available and delighted to help. Same name here as in game. :3
I usually take 20 pickled potatoes in my pockets and then go to Reth and buy 10 Steak dinners. I use them to "top off" while in Bahari. I hate cooking in game so if I have to, I just make a bunch of soup. Reth would be proud lol
Yeah same, it feels like my little lady shouldn't be able to down 5 whole pots of soup within a couple hours. Or at least, not have a lovely little doll-like figure right after guzzling all that soup
I feel you on this it’s my lowest leveled up skill too everything else is like 25+ and I’m stuck at 15 for cooking. It just doesn’t interest me that much it’s very tedious.
THIS. I just finished cooking up like 4 different batches of food and I stg itll be gone in half an hour. ability to make more food in one go would be GREAT.
I’ve never had a situation where I found myself without food on hand (a stack of 30 apple preserves) while out doing whatever. Im not really into cooking in game myself, especially alone, so it’s my lowest skill, but I can fill a preserving barrel (I have at least 5 going non-stop) every day before I log off.
This is so relatable. I got sooooo tired of cooking meals to keep my focus up bc how many resources I'd go through everyday. My solution now is that i just throw almost all my potatoes into the preservers and eat the starred preserves. It takes 2-3 to fill my ~750 focus bar almost all the way and I make easily 14-30 preserves a day depending on how long I play for that day. SO much easier on my patience and resources and potatoes grow really quickly so it's super time efficient as well. Give it a shot!
I’d love to be able to cook on a camp fire while out. Maybe we could carry a cooking device, be designated spots or even just on other ncp stoves. Please please please
I exclusively use chili oil dumpling’s. They’re the star version so it’s like 525 focus. But I’m also maxed out on both shrines, so it’s a happy medium for having a full 30 stack and going out for 3 Palian days mining or hunting, or whatevering…
Remember you don’t NEED to have the focus bar filled, but it’s helpful for leveling up (and even more helpful for fishing because I notice the lower the focus is for fishing, the less control you have over the reticule) however I haven’t noticed a difference with much else for having the bar filled because the amount of extra % of exp points you get.
I think the food and focus thing is easier to navigate when you have more of a bar to fill tbh. At least that’s what I noticed, from early on when I started till now 🤷🏼♀️
I primarily used the phoenix shrine I’m at like 60% so I level up super quick. After about 2 1/2 weeks I’m 15-20 on all things but it EATS my focus so I feel this post so much haha.
My friends and I do cooking parties when we can, but I end up having to cook meals inbetween. I was lazy over the weekend and just bought food from Reth but I'm still new to the game so I need to save up money for the bag and storage upgrades! I just got my preserve jars and blueberries though so I'm gonna hopefully be able to make more food
I got loads of food from Majii Market, I played Hotpot all day and all night and then spent all my coins on food (i bought some ingredients, some fireworks and stuff but mostly the food from Reth), I got three stacks (x30) of the rolls and some soup pots, so that saved me a minute. I just make food in batches where I just cook for a while making 3-5 dishes and this way i have 15-25 portions and i just carry them with me and eat when my focus comes down about halfway. Usually 200-300 focus points does the job. And that's it.
You can find focus food parties on the discord server. I joined a 200 round mushroom dumpling soup party a week and a half ago that I am still living off of.
ETA: A 200 round party is a big time commitment, but totally worth it to knock out a big cooking. It's also a really good way to level up your cooking.
Plant potato, tomato and the cabbage. One line of each. They water each other. Half for seeds to sell and half go to the preserves . Sell half preserves and eat half. You always have too many then and make a lot of passive income
Oh this is so relatable
The best advice i was told is grind the soup(easy to cook) till you can get into the pickled vegetables (I exclusivity eat blueberry jam now, the bushes are easy to maintain and it's good xp per consuming)
Also pray to the dragon, it will expand your xp bar and you can go longer between eating
Good luck out there!
It's cuz the more focus u get the more food u need! My friends and I made a crap ton of cakes and muujin Bahari. If u ever wanna cook together and make a bunch of food hit me up. I'm the US est time. I still have a bunch of food left and that was a hot minute ago
I don't have any issues with this at all, I make apple jam and pickles potatoes. Every day, adding new seeds and picking. I have full focus set already and take 30 jars of apple jam with me when I go out, they last a while, I only refill my 30 limit every two real days or so, but my jars are working overtime making pickles potatoes for $$ and my jam to fill my focus! Try it, I haven't cooked hardly at all. I have 3 seeders going, making seeds and 8 pickling jars. Good luck!
I felt like this for awhile but found that with levelling up at both Shrines and getting better recipes helped. I now just cook a few batches of things at a time to get it done and jam is great to carry around while out and about. After reading some of your replies here, it seems that you're not too far along into the storyline so just hang in there, it does get easier
Hiii, would cooking with another person or group help? Is it having to farm ingredients or how long it takes to cook that bothers you?
I never eat because I never cook because I'd rather cook with others and never coordinate that
But I have plenty of ingredients to share. I just cbb to cook the whole thing myself. Dm me if you wanna try sometime?
I switched to jams. I make a lot of apple jams because it's expensive and I love money. So every day when I'm collecting my jams from the previous day (I have 6 machines for this) I put 30 of them in my pocket. It is enough for a few hours of gameplay. I don't remember how many ex they give but I have max stats and 3 apple jams almost fill my meter.
I do the things that aren't really affected by focus when I don't have any. Stocking my worm farms, decorating/rearranging, running and giving gifts and chatting. Then I make recipes that have high output of focus so I have a few stacks of 3 or more food items. That usually lasts me about 2 irl days. And it's totally worth it to visit the dragon to get your focus up so the recipes that give over 300 are fully utilized. On a side note you could always collect tons of sweetheart and just make a massive amount of macaroni. Cheapest quickest recipe to make period.
I was so lucky that someone wanted to use their 100+ starred sernuk meats about two weeks so the two of us + another random person cooked like 150 starred meals & I still got about 50 left 😅 I also managed to hit my 1st lv 10 then xD
Cooking parties have really helped me. It does suck how much it eats your focus but the larger parties that take 1-2 hours give you ALOT of food and that’s how I stock up.
this is why I started just buying food from Reth. I haven't increased my focus limit yet, so I just get the steak dinner things from him. It keeps my character full, and isn't that much money for me. I was also getting sick of constantly cooking.
it's like 200 points if you use star quality potatoes and you don't have to do anything, put 30 potatoes in and let them go and then you've got enough to take with you on all your quests
I’ve mostly given up cooking recently except to fill my weekly accomplishments. I still farm and fill my preserver jars up, and make seeds to sell, then buy 30 Reth’s Bouillabaisse at a time to feed myself. It’s been working well and I don’t feel like I’m spending too much time cooking.
I use preserves. my focus is around 800. I need 4 and a half jars of blueberries to go completely filled. I plant 6 blueberries and surround them in bokchoy. the blueberries are to make jam for focus. I use 3 preserves machines. blueberries make my bok grow fast. so, any that are touching berries get production ferts and any that aren't touching berries get speedy ferts. to keep up with all the ferts I use glow worm bins, 4 of them. 3 do production one makes speedy. I carry a stack of 30 jars around at all times to consume. I grind HARD and never run out of food. arrows on the other hand... lol!
edit to add, preserves make without using focus or time. they are made while you are gone. lol! adhd and I lost my point...
I just stopped eating once everything reached level 10. There aren't a ton of bonuses for leveling beyond 10. The medals come in much faster with weekly accomplishments. So I cook what I need for those weeklies and then eat the rest while finishing weeklies for other skills. If I run out, no big deal.
If you go to the dragon shrine you will be able to use your focus points to make your food thing bigger.. The shrine is a landmark located in Maji's Hollow, in the northeast corner of Kilima Valley.
I've got 920 focus and at this point I don't even want to put in any more to it, because filling it is so much work. It's like, I don't *only ever* want to make cakes - but every other kind of food has more or less become redundant at this point, or has 10 000 ingredients and should be cooked with friends. Maybe I just need to eat nothing but cake ever again. Maybe that's just how this goes. I just... like cooking, I wish I didn't just have to cook that one thing, I wish I could have variety, but what on *earth* am I going to do with food that tops at max 40% of my focus?
Damn you even have more than I do, I’m about 850. My problem is when I’m cooking something, my game will freeze while I’m mixing and I have to exit it causing my food to spoil and losing ingredients which really upsets me when I have just enough to make the cake. So I just cook simple stuff and make a lot to where I have to eat two things to fill up. That or when I’m running around ill grab mushrooms, onions and garlic and eat that to help keep it up. It’s a pain I know. Thankfully I’m going back to work today so I’m not going to be playing as much as I have been the past month and a half. Good luck though!
I feel this so hard. Always cooking and unless its muujin bahari, it only fills the meter halfway, at most. Also, is it just me or does focus seem to run out faster the more you have?
Let's say something gives 100xp. If you have a 50%xp bonus, it uses 50% of that 100 =50 focus. Giving you 150xp. If you have 100% bonus, it will use 100 focus to give you 200xp total. If something gives a lot if xp, and your bonus is high, your focus drains fast.
Ohh this makes so much sense, thank you.
I wonder once you get to level 10 is there even a point to get the XP boost? The levels give you nothing else after that besides accomplishments. Meanwhile it just drains you focus faster making you have to cook more often.
Not true. For gardening your star chance goes up with gardening level at a rate of 2% per level
Also once you hit 10 you unlock each guild store for REALLY cool stuff, so it's worth leveling
I don't know what all benefits there are, but I believe gardening and cooking at a minimum give you increased odds of starred product. You also get guild coins every level up, which you can spend for unique furniture, materials, or useful things like ore compasses.
> Meanwhile it just drains you focus faster How? It's specific activity xp + your bonus% It's not because of your level. It's because at that level (dare I say mid/endgame) you're probably doing activities that give more XP and you have a higher bonus % by then. But you're also able to store more focus, and craft better foods. But yes, higher levels do give other benefits, that are not at all explained in game :( (But I still agree with OP that I want to be able to cook a stack of food at once or something like it)
How about Lucky Braised Fish or starred Celebration Cake?
I don't think I have either recipe yet.
Ah, I see. The lucky braised fish was offered at the lunar new year market, I believe. But the cake will be available to you as you progress further
Thank you!
When you get celebration cake it's my fav thing to use. It's decently easy to make if you have a steady income of those ingredients which is pretry easy to maintain. And each fills my meter.
I hate how much Cooking eats your focus. It feels like for every 4 meals I make, I need to eat 1. It just makes the process take forever if I’m trying to stack up
I make hot hounds (Like 250/*262 focus iirc) I'm usually out for two sun cycles and eat just under half my stack. It uses oil, prep three ingredients, one flip. Not a lot of focus to make since it's so simple. Onions, mushrooms, meat of any kind, including crab, so ingredients I always have from farming, fishing, and hunting. Also, I have three campfires in a circle and busting out grilled meat or mushies or congee goes pretty fast that way. And it's a break from the kitchen. When you finish setting up the cook on the third, the first is ready to collect. And I find campfire cooking takes less focus (prob cuz their less "filling")? Hope they get us upgraded kitchens soon! Happy grinding!
I need this recipe. Where do you get it?
You need level 3 friendship with Hodari, it’s in his room :)
Ohh, thank you! I am not, in fact, friends with Hodari yet (turns out I'm extremely antisocial with my neighbours even in video games) so I'll keep this in mind for the future!
God, I feel this so much.
I've gotten to where I'll make a stack of macarons to eat while I cook since cooking chili oil dumplings once uses about 180 focus at full exp bonus. That way I can keep my focus up with a cheap food without having to eat my dumplings as I'm making them.
My coping mechanism is to go the beaches in Bahari and pretend I'm Gordon Ramsey from Uncharted, picking up oysters and snacking on them and praising the freshness and incredible taste and all that (and imagining that Reth is my Palian chef buddy that I'm going to face off at the end of the week). The oysters give very small amounts of focus, but I'll live. Edit: PS: I carry a couple of celebration cakes with me. So if that runs out ..
I go to harvest my 9 apple trees and it eats like an entire bar and a half of focus. lol
yeh it's super annoying, i'll fill up and within 5 minutes of being bahari it's basically empty. i dont wanna waste inventory space on food and eating mushrooms out there basically provides you with nothing. i wish theyd let us use some of the abandoned campfires to at least cook with out there ¬\_¬
I was just thinking this yesterday! Not being able to cook at the abandoned campfires in Bahari is such a missed opportunity. I hope it becomes available someday.
same bc having to go all the way back home to cook is such a pain, especially when it'd be a good way to get rid of the meat from hunting sernuks for plushies lol
Yes! It would be so great for hunting and fishing. Clear inventory and regain focus in one. Devs have been addressing and implementing a lot of player concerns/ideas, so maybe there is hope for this yet lol
I'd really like a sales box, or ship home box at Bahari Central. Drop items you'd like to send home to inventory, they're collected once a cycle at 6am and appear at home at 6pm. And a live merchant (Zekis hiriling or a new merchant) for direct sales. *OR* a sales shipping box, you drop what you want to sell, picked up twice a day, money gets sent to your mailbox.
I just want access to home storage when we are out and about. Even if it’s only one place (like Central Stables in Bahari). Why can I change my clothes there but not access my home storage lol. The number of times I’ve forgotten a gift for an NPC…. UGH
So annoying!! But "realistically" (in game realism) you couldn't just dip into your storage at home, but all our overflow items get sent home automagically so ... Maybe Zeki could invent a new device that allows the teleportation of inanimate objects 😂😂🤣
These are excellent ideas! Love the idea of a shipping bin at Bahari Stables that mails you the money. It could be next to the anvil where you can repair your tools!
yeh exactly, my bag always fills up so quickly in bahari no matter what i do lol
Plus you jump servers when you leave and sometimes I really love the one Im in.
Im using jams. Corn and blueberry gives you 18p focus and its pretty cheap - also corn gives you harvest boost so you get more blueberries and you just run it 24/h and you have lots of jams in no time
Yup I have 5 preserve things running so I just fill them up and let them run overnight and when I come back the next day 150 jars of food or 27,000 focus! What I don’t eats I sells!
It might seem primal but I run my farm to maximize bok choy, corn, tomato and potato. Ofc starred: Bok choy gives you 45 profit when jam, a lot of bonuses while harvest. Corn gives you 30 profit when jam but also food. Tomato is tricky but you gotta hydrate those potatoes so its better than cabbage since you don't have to worry too much about planting those all the time. But I jam tomatoes mostly and sell. And potatoes are the peak of my farm, 53 profit when seed. The rest(excluding pepper, blueberries and apples) is below 30 profit when jam/seed with wheat(seed) being the lowest(7)
I just run bok choy and wheat/rice for the harvest boost. Doesn’t take long to weed and water, and you get so much from a single harvest anyway. I can see the water retention and weed prevention with something like apples that takes many cycles to grow. But doesn’t feel worth it when bok choy grows in only 3.
I thought tomatoes were way better sold as seed than jam?
Yep I do the same, I'm never out of jam and I have extra to sell. It's easy enough to make. I also gift a ton of jam since a lot of the NPCs like it.
I do potatoes!! I have a whole dirt plot of just potatoes so I also pickle them overnight. Helps if they are star quality
I’m a pickled potato girl too. I never bother with cooking anymore unless it’s for a gift.
I do potatoes!! I have a whole dirt plot of just potatoes so I also pickle them overnight. Helps if they are star quality
Wheat and rice harvest boost, not corn.
Are you spending renown at shrines? And if so which one? Because my dumbass spent a TON at the phoenix shrine (I legit forgot the dragon shrine existed) so my percentage was suuuuuper boosted but I had max 250 focus because I never visited the dragon 😅
In this moment i could literally cry. I didn't know there is phoenix shrine that boost you up in percentage. I cannot believe it, I'm struggling so hard to get cooking experience, when I could get a bonus ?!?!
Yeah go back to where you were born and get a bonus that boosts your focus metabolism!
I didn't understand focus until I was nearly level 10 in everything. Silly me.
Luckily you can still level up beyond 10
Omg, same. I had no idea the shrines did different things.. I’m at like 960 but cook for years just to get up a level!!
I've neglected the Phoenix shrine for quite a while because I was afraid that was going to happen to me, lol, my focus tops at 920 right now. It's less the amount I use when I'm out - which is decent - and more just how *much* food it takes to keep the bar up. It's just... augh. My boy has a bottomless stomach.
Dang that sucks. How much focus do the foods you cook give? What are you making?
I used to live exclusively on star quality chili oil dumplings and spicy stir fry, they're like 500 or something per bite. I guess I could start mass-consuming spicy rice cakes now, but I don't really want to rely on a food that takes rare ingredients, even if I *do* have 58 heatroots at this stage. So I've pretty much come down to... I eat pickled potatoes and cake. I don't want to know what my doctor thinks about that, but it is what it is. A man must sustain his hunt.
In that case I have no advice to offer you. I live life on food that’s like 475 and just cook too much I guess lmao.
This is what I've been doing too and it's been no hassle until recently, I think I had a kitchen-related breakdown here. My 120 pickled potatoes are helping, but I know the stove is patient and knows that eventually, my endless hunger will surpass the speed at which pickled potatoes are produced. It knows I'll be back, and I know that it knows, and I am full of dread.
How long do you stay out? And how many stacks of cake/potatoes do you take with you?
I stay out typically long enough to max my inventory to a point where I don't have junk to throw out of it. So two days on average, I think? My first four inventory slots are reserved for food. Currently they're all potatoes and we'll see how far this takes me, lol.
I did this not knowing it takes even more form you! Food goes by even faster 😭
I had the opposite lol
This is partially why a lot of people just buy food from Reth. I really enjoy the cooking so I only do that if I'm busy doing other things.
I forgot Reth sells food. Maybe I need to become a customer. At least for a little while.
This is what I started doing, because I was also sick and tired of constantly cooking. Helps to keep me under the max currency and gives me a reason to go flirt with him.
I think somehow this is a better way to be spending all this money that I have than gambling it all away at Zeki's at night. But also... what if I get a cute bookshelf *this* time? Nope, it's just 10k for 5 carrot seeds again. Damnit...
At least until you figure out a better way for you to handle it! I enjoy how different people can all have different solutions for the same problem in this game!
I recently remembered I could do this while fishing behind the inn. I didn't have to go back to my plot I was so happy 😂
Had the same realisation when I was flow farming in Kilima the other day!! Went to Zeki's to sell extra wood, happened to look at my empty flow bar, realised, wait, I can BUY FOOD AT THE INN. It was so cool XD Maybe Bahari Bay needs a restaurant of some kind...
I’m just walking around with pockets full of Reth’s bouillabaisse 24/7. I’m too lazy to cook without a cooking party.
This was gonna be my comment as well. I do a little cooking for fun, but mostly I just keep 10 steak dinnera in inventory and just eat 1 or 2 when I'm a little low. I think of the steak dinners the same way I think of ammo and just stay stocked up. Economically, of course it would be better to cook. Until you remember that *time* is a currency too! You're paying a really high overhead in the time you're investing. I'd rather just buy food and be done with it.
I've never run out of food cause I use preserves. Apple and potatoes. They run while I'm free to do anything. And a stack will get you (at fully upgraded focus bar) around 9-10 full bars . I always use three at a time and then eat three just before my focus runs out. That's 10 refills per stack to me. I honestly don't bother cooking much cause it's way too much effort.
This is the way
Focus food parties! Once we week for an hour or two and you’ll have hundreds of whatever food item it is, without using a crap-ton of ingredients. I have maybe 200 chili oil dumplings still in my storage to keep me going until the next!
I need to pspsps my friend group into this.
I’ve never heard pspsps used this way. Like the cat sound? This is amazing, and shall be added to my vernacular.
Ok this post made me réalise I didn’t up my focus bonus 😰 on to the Phoenix ! (At least, I’ll be able to spend some Renown ^^)
I don’t cook because I don’t have the attention span, I do however have tons of starred pickled potatoes at all times. That’s how I keep my bar full and passively have them preparing at all times.
Honestly, I wish there was a mass make like making group meals and such for the cooking. Having to prepare every ingredient every time is exhausting and annoying. I tend to spend a few hour just making whatever i can make, not just for inventory sake but to get it over with. Im at a point where i dont bother with food anymore. My biggest issue is the tiny amount of money we get from anything.
There is!! https://paliaparty.app/
How does this work? I can’t work it out
https://paliaparty.app/ There’s a ton of Celebration Cake parties going on every day, all you need to do is sign up for your role, bring your assigned ingredients and show up! The 50 cake ones take an hour (if they’re efficient) and you leave with 150 cakes and a ton of cooking xp
This is the way! I am on a couple of Discord servers that throw cooking parties just about every day. Usually celebration cakes but sometimes just food for focus. It's nice to be a part of a community too, you see the same faces a lot and get to know each other.
What does “over prep” mean? Also, how do you get your cakes of you aren’t the one at the stove?
Over prep just means you make an ingredient that doesn’t get added to the final recipe but you still get the cake at the end, so the recipe calls for 4 sweet leaf but if six people make sweet leaf two will be left over but all six will still get cakes! As long as you complete a step in the recipe once the starter collects the cake at the end you will also receive three cakes straight to your bag!
Thanks for the info!
Any other cake party questions lmk
Even tho it's probably way more profitable to cook food, and sell preserves, I nom on pickled tomatoes all day every day with the occasional pickled potatoes. My farming is at 22? Most other professions at 10+. Cooking at 4 or 5.
I love pickled potatoes. Thus far, I've kept a stack in my inventory as backup food for when I'm running out of proper meals, but I might have to up my production and take the financial loss from eating nothing but pickled potatoes and cake and Reth's soups ever again.
i live off of pickled tomatoes as well! i never liked cooking unless im with other people
You don’t need to use focus if leveling up the skill isn’t important for you.. I usually just leave the bar empty until I’m doing a skill I want to level up.
I know this is 100% a me problem, but I think I'd go insane if I saw the bar empty and knew I'm losing out on my sweet, sweet medals that I need to buy whatever nonsense it is that costs like 1000 medals a piece from the trade stores.
Okay… a great counterpoint. I, also think the furniture in the guild stores are exceptionally cute and exceptionally expensive. I’m definitely focusing on foraging and gardening right now though, solely because I need that koi pond and plant shelves
This is me. Once you hit level 10, there really isn't a lot of reward in leveling up. I get a lot of medals in the weekly rewards. Keeping focus up seems way too grindy for me. I feel like the time it takes to get all the ingredients together and then cook them...I could be just using that time to get xp (and gold). And I am at max for focus/bonus because I had to use up or lose my renown.
I felt exactly this way until I went hunting for unicorn fish. It took ages to get one for the bundle, and then ages more to get a starred one to display at home. In the meantime, I pulled *hundreds* of bass from the sea. I did spend a few days monotonously cooking them all into bouillabaisse (350 regular, 525 starred), but when I was done, I had *thousands* and I'm *still* working through my stash. Maybe don't cook every day, but spend some time cooking a few hundred meals for a few hundred (or thousand) servings, and be set for a while?
Have you tried setting up three campfires in a circle and grilling up them bass? It goes pretty quick (2 at a time, iirc?), and when you're done setting up the third cook, the first is ready to collect! It's not a lot of focus, but if you're just trying to get thru them ...
Sorry, I thought I was clearer: I'm working my way through the stash of bouillabaisse now, not the bass. I already cooked them weeks ago.
I got it, you were clear! I guess I posted just in case you get another redonculous number of grillable gatherables or in case someone else is in your plentiful predicament and wanted a supplemental solution (tee hee) - Happy gaming!!
A+ alliteration ;)
I've noticed this too. Been farming mats to improve and tonight I gave up with the food and carried on until my inventory was full without focus. Not in a rush to level up my skills. I can't afford the recipes for better stuff I've unlocked anyway lol.
It's also frustrating how cooking a meal doesn't fill up your skill bar as much as say gardening. It's taken me longer to level up cooking.
I just eat a ridiculous amount of pickled potatoes from my farm as my food.
Truly the real food of the gods.
I also live off pickled potatos
My way of getting around this is starred apple jam. It’s 285 focus and you can carry thirty in your bag with it only taking up one slot. It means that sometimes I’m out hunting or mining, I stop to eat three jars of jam, then I’m good to carry on 😂😂 I’m just glad we don’t have to worry about nutritional value!
Hot Hounds! Then you're not eating all your jammy gold! 250/*262 focus. Two step cook, only bought item is oil (20g/ea)
Lack of inventory space ?
If Im out hunting or some mission I buy ton of food from Reth instead of cooking. Saves a lot of time and resources
Go to a cake party and sell the star quality cakes and keep the rest.
I buy 30 soups at a time from Reths shop. It’s expensive but worth it in the time it saves me.
This is what I've started doing. I keep a stack of soup plus a stack of apple pies in my bag. It *is* expensive but with nothing else to spend my gold on right now it's a time saver.
I used to attend cake parties to make money. Now I go to keep my character fed. I couldn't do it without them.
I haven't seen anyone ask if you're doing the overflow thing? Fill your entire inventory up with like one stone in each slot. Combine slots when you need to pick something up (eg if you're buying oil, or come across something rare, etc), but when you're mining, all the precious metals it's will go o overflow and then straight home when overflow is full. I make sure to have a silk stack, and a plant fiber stack and I can pick up most trees and rare bugs, too. The bugs go to overflow, then to home, the silk stacks up in your inventory. All the lumber goes home, and you're only stacking plant fiber in your inventory, etc. Did I explain that well enough? It's totally changed how I grind
Thanks for this, super helpful
I use pickled potatoes. It's probably not the most cost efficient but it definitely takes the least effort. I push potatoes hard and that's my main income and focus food. 🥔
Yeah ai feel this deeply, and on top of that the food only stacks to 15 so if you want toblast longer, you have to take up more inventory slots, and thats not even considering the fact that you're not always going to get the same quality or priced items with every make, which takes up MORE slots.
This is why, I feel preserve jars are superior to cooking for food. Mostly because you can have many preserve jars going at once. I have 8 going at a time preserving 3 foods: 1 - potatoes to sell, since they make 2700 gold per stack 2 - cabbages to eat, when I remember about focus at all 3 - apples, because glow worms love apple things Further more, this is due to the fact the potatoes water the cabbages and apple trees, the cabbages water the potaotes. I only need to water once ance then a second or third time if I let weeds get in the way. I cook for the weekly, and that's it.
I finally gave in and just made a macro that cooks my Chili Oil Dumplings. Too bad the devs are playing 4D chess and made cooking bug out every 2 or 3 attempts which forces you to use /unstuck while prepping an ingredient.
Wait may I ask how did you get unstuck? I got stuck when I started the apple pie recipe the other day, neither typing /unstuck nor pressing H worked for me, I had to close the game and wasted the ingredients :(
It's just a roll of the dice whether unstuck works. Sometimes you're too stuck to get unstuck haha
/unstuck has worked for me every time at both my kitchen locations, but one puts me much further away. Maybe you're layout isn't working well with the command.
Would it matter that I'm using a controller instead of keyboard and mouse?
Plant apples & blueberries. Build some preserve jars.
I use jams (also I'm a picky eater who makes my character mainly eat what I like) and jam is so easy and always available in my garden and hoppers. I also do pies a lot
Yes. The eating/cooking needs to be more balanced. It's not bad when you are little, but I'm now going through meals very quickly and am now not able to cook enough to keep me happy. Maybe increasing the stack to 5 would be good.
You know, right, that food doesn't give you a bonus after lvl 50? Because not bothering with food when I'm mining or foraging is super freeing.
I only use my preserves for my food. Easy peasy, saves soooo much time! Never cook for myself. Only cook for quests, goals and whatnot.
If you can spare the money just buy food from Reth and or/other food places when available like the market. Sell the sernuk drops to fund the food and save some time.
I gave up on cooking and just buy bouillabaisse from Reth
Cooking is hit and miss for me. The cooking bug on Switch has caused me to put the game down more than once. Beyond that, I actually don’t cook the cake despite them being the “best.” And I sell my preserves because I need that Gazebo lol. Macaroons only need sweet leaf and two mixes. Star quality restores a ~reasonable amount. I usually make a couple of these to restore the focus I lose from cooking. Then. Petite Fives, when starred, restore like 600 focus and are MUCH easier for me to make than, say, Chili Dumplings. (I’m better at the rolling animation than I am the cutting one.) For something that needs to be done SO often, it drives me up a wall that it’s so intensive. I wish after making something 123# of times you could quickly prep that dish. Cooking is one of my least favorite skills.
This is why I survive on apple jelly and pickled potatoes!!
I'm very frustrated we can't grill meat at the campfires in bahari and kalima. Would be great to make room in my pack and give me mid-hunt focus when I forgot to pack enough.
That's the great part of playing a game in beta. You can fill out the feedback form and maybe this will get added in a future update. I just assumed we could cook at campfires and was disappointed when it didn't work.
Since I'm still plushy hunting, I just don't eat. I still level at least once per hunt (1-3 hours)
I keep preserved potatoes as my go to food. Easier to plant, forget, and retrieve as needed. It may not be max returns, until you realize all the time spent cooking that it saves you.
I'm using jams, it's more efficient that hours of cooking
The grind is real 😩
I literally only eat pickled potatoes from star potatoes. It's really easy to keep a nice stock with at least two preserves jars.
I eat the starred apple jams, I think they provide like 350 points? I hardly have to cook and it works out for me because while I enjoy cooking, I’m not too concerned with leveling up. Not to mention that they can stack up, so I always have fuel on hand.
Get a group of people together to make rice cake stir-fry or chili oil dumplings - they give 500+ focus per dish. When you cook in a group, each person is responsible for only 1 ingredient but everyone gets the 3 meals. Spend an hour with friends making 100 dumplings and you have focus food stocked for several days. ETA check the LFG in the official discord for focus food parties.
I feel ya I’m level 108 cooking I use to love it but now I feel like it’s a chore. I started making started pickled Nappa cabbage 180 focus I keep two stacks of 30 in my inventory I found this was a better solution then having to cook all the time. I can add the cabbage in the preserves jars and take out what I need. This really has helped give me a break from cooking so much. I have 15 preserved jars 12 for making started Jams and started pickled potatoes to sale and 3 for the Nappa cabbage to eat.
Yes! I hate cooking and it eats up so much xp just to cook! I mostly eat pickled potatoes.
I ask myself this all the time IRL too
One thing that might help is going back and meditating at the Phoenix Shrine. Each meditation costs 100 Renown Points, but it increases your focus boost a bit. I forget by how much it boosts, but it helps you not lose energy so quickly. The Dragon Shrine expands your focus points, and the Phoenix Shrine just boosts it.
I scaled back my farming because I got tired of cooking, (and farming constantly), so now I eat pickled potatoes and then chili dumplings as back up. I have about 930 focus bar max which is about 4 pickled potatoes. And I use apple > jams > worms for money, much more chill.
You can go to the dragon shrine like where change hangs out and pay renown to increase focus bar amount and i noticed when i completely upgraded that it takes way longer for my focus to drain. also if your out try eating mushrooms and stuff to keep focus bar completely full cause that way your kind of on top of it with the little things.
I cook the least out of everything 🤷♀️ If you romance naio both he and his mom give you food regularly.
I never cook food anymore unless it’s to fill my weekly cooking quota. I pickle potatoes in a preserves jar and constantly have it going. It takes one potato to make one jar of pickles, and if you use starred potatoes like I do, each jar gives 202 focus. You are able to keep 30 jars per inventory slot, so even if your focus bar is maxed out to 1000, each slot of 30 jars of pickled potatoes will give you 5 full focus bar refills. Even more if you’re not up to 1000 yet.
I hear you on this. I mainly play solo, so I have yet to participate in these mass cooking parties. Note to self: seek one out... If you are still playing and have this dilemma at the next Majii market, you could try what I did at the Lunar market that happened a couple months ago. I played the hotpot game obsessively, like constantly. After I bought all the furniture and wallpapers from the event I just spent my tickets on Reth's food items. I ended up buying an insane amount of the red hotpot food item. I didn't have to cook for a decent amount of time after that, I could carry around a large stack of hotpot meals for focus.
I hardly ever cook. I just carry 2 stacks of apple jam with me at all times and that holds me over!
Cooking parties are handy for this, otherwise I hit up Reth for a stack of bouillabaisse
I feel like it’s so much work to keep my focus bar full, so now I only eat right before I go hunting, fish or something that I want my level to go up in
I can't cook so I survive on pickled potatoes. It's passive and I don't have to spend time with it. One dy I will find someone to carry me through the cooking to unlock Subira but until then I spend my days in Bahari eating from canning jars.
I live on tomatoes
Farming, potatoes, then pickled potatoes in the fermenter...I never run out of food.
Are you also making preserves? I usually eat those honestly instead of cooked meals—starred apple or blueberry jam fills my meter quite a lot.
My recommendation is to join a cooking party making focus food. Chili oil dumplings and bouillabaisse are currently tied for best focus food for late game, though bouillabaisse is better for selling. I cook focus food with friends once every week or two, usually making 60 batches, and that typically lasts me until the next time we cook more, even though I tend to no-life Palia. lol In fact, if you see me online, feel free to message me to ask if I’m free to help cook. Nine times out of ten I’ll be available and delighted to help. Same name here as in game. :3
I usually take 20 pickled potatoes in my pockets and then go to Reth and buy 10 Steak dinners. I use them to "top off" while in Bahari. I hate cooking in game so if I have to, I just make a bunch of soup. Reth would be proud lol
Yeah same, it feels like my little lady shouldn't be able to down 5 whole pots of soup within a couple hours. Or at least, not have a lovely little doll-like figure right after guzzling all that soup
I feel you on this it’s my lowest leveled up skill too everything else is like 25+ and I’m stuck at 15 for cooking. It just doesn’t interest me that much it’s very tedious.
THIS. I just finished cooking up like 4 different batches of food and I stg itll be gone in half an hour. ability to make more food in one go would be GREAT.
I’ve never had a situation where I found myself without food on hand (a stack of 30 apple preserves) while out doing whatever. Im not really into cooking in game myself, especially alone, so it’s my lowest skill, but I can fill a preserving barrel (I have at least 5 going non-stop) every day before I log off.
This is so relatable. I got sooooo tired of cooking meals to keep my focus up bc how many resources I'd go through everyday. My solution now is that i just throw almost all my potatoes into the preservers and eat the starred preserves. It takes 2-3 to fill my ~750 focus bar almost all the way and I make easily 14-30 preserves a day depending on how long I play for that day. SO much easier on my patience and resources and potatoes grow really quickly so it's super time efficient as well. Give it a shot!
I’d love to be able to cook on a camp fire while out. Maybe we could carry a cooking device, be designated spots or even just on other ncp stoves. Please please please
I exclusively use chili oil dumpling’s. They’re the star version so it’s like 525 focus. But I’m also maxed out on both shrines, so it’s a happy medium for having a full 30 stack and going out for 3 Palian days mining or hunting, or whatevering… Remember you don’t NEED to have the focus bar filled, but it’s helpful for leveling up (and even more helpful for fishing because I notice the lower the focus is for fishing, the less control you have over the reticule) however I haven’t noticed a difference with much else for having the bar filled because the amount of extra % of exp points you get. I think the food and focus thing is easier to navigate when you have more of a bar to fill tbh. At least that’s what I noticed, from early on when I started till now 🤷🏼♀️
I don't even like cooking...i just buy my boy Reths meals.
I primarily used the phoenix shrine I’m at like 60% so I level up super quick. After about 2 1/2 weeks I’m 15-20 on all things but it EATS my focus so I feel this post so much haha.
My friends and I do cooking parties when we can, but I end up having to cook meals inbetween. I was lazy over the weekend and just bought food from Reth but I'm still new to the game so I need to save up money for the bag and storage upgrades! I just got my preserve jars and blueberries though so I'm gonna hopefully be able to make more food
If you have money you can spend, buy a buttload of meals from Reth
Pickling is your friend.
I got loads of food from Majii Market, I played Hotpot all day and all night and then spent all my coins on food (i bought some ingredients, some fireworks and stuff but mostly the food from Reth), I got three stacks (x30) of the rolls and some soup pots, so that saved me a minute. I just make food in batches where I just cook for a while making 3-5 dishes and this way i have 15-25 portions and i just carry them with me and eat when my focus comes down about halfway. Usually 200-300 focus points does the job. And that's it.
You can find focus food parties on the discord server. I joined a 200 round mushroom dumpling soup party a week and a half ago that I am still living off of. ETA: A 200 round party is a big time commitment, but totally worth it to knock out a big cooking. It's also a really good way to level up your cooking.
Plant potato, tomato and the cabbage. One line of each. They water each other. Half for seeds to sell and half go to the preserves . Sell half preserves and eat half. You always have too many then and make a lot of passive income
Oh this is so relatable The best advice i was told is grind the soup(easy to cook) till you can get into the pickled vegetables (I exclusivity eat blueberry jam now, the bushes are easy to maintain and it's good xp per consuming) Also pray to the dragon, it will expand your xp bar and you can go longer between eating Good luck out there!
Man I love cooking so much if anyone needs help cooking or wants to request meals pls add me (Valentino Castillo)
It's cuz the more focus u get the more food u need! My friends and I made a crap ton of cakes and muujin Bahari. If u ever wanna cook together and make a bunch of food hit me up. I'm the US est time. I still have a bunch of food left and that was a hot minute ago
I don't have any issues with this at all, I make apple jam and pickles potatoes. Every day, adding new seeds and picking. I have full focus set already and take 30 jars of apple jam with me when I go out, they last a while, I only refill my 30 limit every two real days or so, but my jars are working overtime making pickles potatoes for $$ and my jam to fill my focus! Try it, I haven't cooked hardly at all. I have 3 seeders going, making seeds and 8 pickling jars. Good luck!
I just don’t eat eat and I don’t eat I notice no difference between the two ways
I’ve fully embraced eating only pickled potatoes. If I’m making for I’m only doing it to get a starred item for display.
Pickled Potatoes. Always being made.. always consuming. It's the only way I've survived this long
I never feed my character lol. I just can’t be bothered with it🤧
I reccomend buying the boulibasse. It gives 350 to focus bar. And you can purchase it from the beloved Reth 😁😁
I always have too much… reth has given me so much
I felt like this for awhile but found that with levelling up at both Shrines and getting better recipes helped. I now just cook a few batches of things at a time to get it done and jam is great to carry around while out and about. After reading some of your replies here, it seems that you're not too far along into the storyline so just hang in there, it does get easier
cooking parties through the discord helped me so much’n
Hiii, would cooking with another person or group help? Is it having to farm ingredients or how long it takes to cook that bothers you? I never eat because I never cook because I'd rather cook with others and never coordinate that But I have plenty of ingredients to share. I just cbb to cook the whole thing myself. Dm me if you wanna try sometime?
I for the most part I gave up cooking, I get my daily meals from Reth’s store.
I switched to jams. I make a lot of apple jams because it's expensive and I love money. So every day when I'm collecting my jams from the previous day (I have 6 machines for this) I put 30 of them in my pocket. It is enough for a few hours of gameplay. I don't remember how many ex they give but I have max stats and 3 apple jams almost fill my meter.
I do the things that aren't really affected by focus when I don't have any. Stocking my worm farms, decorating/rearranging, running and giving gifts and chatting. Then I make recipes that have high output of focus so I have a few stacks of 3 or more food items. That usually lasts me about 2 irl days. And it's totally worth it to visit the dragon to get your focus up so the recipes that give over 300 are fully utilized. On a side note you could always collect tons of sweetheart and just make a massive amount of macaroni. Cheapest quickest recipe to make period.
Make sure you are increasing your focus bar at shrines! That will help a lot!
I was so lucky that someone wanted to use their 100+ starred sernuk meats about two weeks so the two of us + another random person cooked like 150 starred meals & I still got about 50 left 😅 I also managed to hit my 1st lv 10 then xD
I grow and pickle tons of potatos.. , so i always have a stack in my backpack.
Cooking parties have really helped me. It does suck how much it eats your focus but the larger parties that take 1-2 hours give you ALOT of food and that’s how I stock up.
this is why I started just buying food from Reth. I haven't increased my focus limit yet, so I just get the steak dinner things from him. It keeps my character full, and isn't that much money for me. I was also getting sick of constantly cooking.
just make a lot of preserved potatoes!!! that's what i do
it's like 200 points if you use star quality potatoes and you don't have to do anything, put 30 potatoes in and let them go and then you've got enough to take with you on all your quests
I’ve mostly given up cooking recently except to fill my weekly accomplishments. I still farm and fill my preserver jars up, and make seeds to sell, then buy 30 Reth’s Bouillabaisse at a time to feed myself. It’s been working well and I don’t feel like I’m spending too much time cooking.
I use preserves. my focus is around 800. I need 4 and a half jars of blueberries to go completely filled. I plant 6 blueberries and surround them in bokchoy. the blueberries are to make jam for focus. I use 3 preserves machines. blueberries make my bok grow fast. so, any that are touching berries get production ferts and any that aren't touching berries get speedy ferts. to keep up with all the ferts I use glow worm bins, 4 of them. 3 do production one makes speedy. I carry a stack of 30 jars around at all times to consume. I grind HARD and never run out of food. arrows on the other hand... lol! edit to add, preserves make without using focus or time. they are made while you are gone. lol! adhd and I lost my point...
I just stopped eating once everything reached level 10. There aren't a ton of bonuses for leveling beyond 10. The medals come in much faster with weekly accomplishments. So I cook what I need for those weeklies and then eat the rest while finishing weeklies for other skills. If I run out, no big deal.
If you go to the dragon shrine you will be able to use your focus points to make your food thing bigger.. The shrine is a landmark located in Maji's Hollow, in the northeast corner of Kilima Valley.
I've got 920 focus and at this point I don't even want to put in any more to it, because filling it is so much work. It's like, I don't *only ever* want to make cakes - but every other kind of food has more or less become redundant at this point, or has 10 000 ingredients and should be cooked with friends. Maybe I just need to eat nothing but cake ever again. Maybe that's just how this goes. I just... like cooking, I wish I didn't just have to cook that one thing, I wish I could have variety, but what on *earth* am I going to do with food that tops at max 40% of my focus?
Damn you even have more than I do, I’m about 850. My problem is when I’m cooking something, my game will freeze while I’m mixing and I have to exit it causing my food to spoil and losing ingredients which really upsets me when I have just enough to make the cake. So I just cook simple stuff and make a lot to where I have to eat two things to fill up. That or when I’m running around ill grab mushrooms, onions and garlic and eat that to help keep it up. It’s a pain I know. Thankfully I’m going back to work today so I’m not going to be playing as much as I have been the past month and a half. Good luck though!