Everything You Need To Know About Cooking In Genshin Impact

Many action RPGs, from The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim to Monster Hunter, feature a cooking system. When you are out of health potions, a grilled fish will heal you right up, and if you add peppers and water to the mix, you can create a spicy fish stew that keeps you nice and toasty for 10 minutes. Cooking is a key mechanic in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that it has a role in Breath of the Wild clone Genshin Impact.

However, since Genshin Impact isn't a one-to-one copy of Breath of the Wild, cooking doesn't function the same way. You can't toss a few random ingredients in a pot, watch them magically jump around for five seconds and expect something edible to pop out. Genshin Impact's cooking system takes a bit more effort, and it also features a few hidden treats you might not be aware of.

If cooking in Genshin Impact has you steamed, fret not, because this article will whip up a full course meal of crunchy information, chock full of vitamins, minerals, and cooking tips.

While Genshin Impact takes place in a fantasy world full of magic and monsters, cooking still requires ingredients. After all, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and you can't get eggs without finding some chickens.

Ingredients are found all over Genshin Impact's world by scrounging around, busting open containers, slaughtering animals, and more. And, if RNG isn't on your side, just visit a food merchant and buy ingredients for all your culinary needs. However, before you can transform your supplies into edible buffs, you need recipes. You can talk to every NPC and open every chest you find to purchase recipes, earn some recipes as quest rewards, or discover them by random chance.

Once you have all the necessary ingredients and recipes, you're almost ready to start cooking. While some recipes ask for raw ingredients such as milk and raw meat, others require fixings like cheese and bacon. You could purchase these materials at vendors, but you are better off processing ingredients to create new ones. Just visit a stove or an active campfire (if it isn't active, ignite it with a fire ability), open your cooking menu, navigate to the processing tab, and select what you want to process. Processing takes time, but you can queue multiple ingredients so you can continue adventuring uninterrupted. Just remember to visit a campfire when processing is finished.

After you collect/process the necessary ingredients, you can start cooking by facing a roaring campfire/stove, selecting the cook option, and choosing what you want to cook (recipes that you can't create are greyed out).

When you cook a new recipe, Genshin Impact takes you to a minigame, which is as easy as lining up an indicator on a bar. This bar has three colors: grey, yellow, and orange. If the indicator lands on yellow, you create a normal dish that does everything as advertised (e.g., heal you for x over y seconds). But, if you nail the orange bar, you craft a perfect dish with even stronger buffs and healing. However, if your timing is horrendous and you land on the grey bar, you've burned your meal. It's still edible, but the benefits are as bad as the taste.

After you cook enough of a certain dish, you max out its proficiency. When that happens, congrats, you can cook the recipe without the minigame. Best of all, each auto-cooked meal comes out perfectly.

Just keep practicing and you can auto-cook all your meals. In addition, be sure to experiment with characters while cooking. Some have special affinities with certain recipes, which result in special dishes more powerful than even perfectly cooked meals.