Cooking

Cooking (Skill)
Activity	Cooking raw fish and chicken into food, and multi-ingredient dishes that give buffs
Tool required	Roast pit
XP per action	125–160 per successful fish or chicken cook; 80–380 per dish
Max level	40
Counts to Total Level	Yes

Cooking turns raw ingredients into food at roast pits. It pairs naturally with Fishing and gives strong XP per action, making it one of the faster skills to level.

Training

Cook at a roast pit (about 10 seconds per item). Roast pits are found at The Pond and in Whisperwood, and since 29 October 2026 a Grill on the palm isle of The Sunken Isles cooks the same recipes at the same rates and burn chances. While a batch runs you can fold the recipe list away with the ▾ button in the window's top-left corner (▸ brings it back), and open the Marketplace, Friends or your backpack without stopping the batch. Each cook consumes 1 Wood as fuel plus 1 raw ingredient.

There are eight fish species, each with its own Cooking level gate and XP, plus chicken:

Ingredient	Cooking level	Makes	XP	Notes
Raw Herring	1	Cooked Herring	125	Can burn
Raw Trout	6	Cooked Trout	130	Can burn
Raw Bass	13	Cooked Bass	135	Can burn
Raw Tuna	20	Cooked Tuna	140	Can burn
Raw Swordfish	28	Cooked Swordfish	145	Can burn
Raw Parrotfish	32	Cooked Parrotfish	150	Can burn
Raw Grouper	36	Cooked Grouper	155	Can burn
Raw Fangtooth	40	Cooked Fangtooth	160	Can burn
Raw Chicken	1	Cooked Chicken	125	Never burns · Feeding one to a Wild Wolf has a 1 in 10 chance to tame it into a Wolf Mount (free accounts can't tame)

Dishes

From Cooking 10 you can also cook dishes — recipes that combine two or three ingredients (plus the usual 1 Wood). A dish heals and gives you a 10-minute buff, such as faster fishing, extra Woodcutting & Mining XP, bonus sword damage against monsters, or less damage taken from monsters. Dishes never burn.

Dish	Cooking level	Cooking XP
Fisher's Chowder	10	300
Cactus Salad	14	190
Hunter's Roast	18	340
Coal-Smoked Bass	22	350
Seared Tuna Steak	26	360
Brute Horn Broth	30	80
Ember-Seared Swordfish	34	360
Reef Feast	38	380

See Cooking Dishes for every recipe's ingredients, heal and buff, and how food buffs work. Dishes don't count as cooked fish for quests or the Fish Cooked total.

This page previously described the old one-fish system ("Fish + Wood → Cooked Fish Meat"). That system has been retired — the old generic fish was renamed to Herring, and four higher species were added. See Fishing for where each fish is caught.

Burning

Every fish cook is a roll against your Cooking level:

• Burn chance is 30.0% at Cooking 5 and below, falling roughly linearly to 5.0% at Cooking 40.
• A burnt fish heals nothing and pays 0 Cooking XP — but 5 burnt fish of a species can be traded for 5 of that species' bait (see Fishing).
• Chicken never burns, and neither do dishes.

The roast pit shows your exact current burn chance.

Rare drops

Since 28 September 2026, every cook at a roast pit that comes out cooked can drop one of two cosmetics:

• Chef Hat — 1 in 40,000 chance per cook.
• Apron — 1 in 20,000 chance per cook.
• The Chef Hat is rolled first, so one cook drops at most one piece. Burnt food never rolls; chicken never burns, so every chicken cook rolls. No relic changes these odds.
• The piece goes to your cosmetic bag. If the bag is full, the piece is lost — the cook itself still goes through.
• Free accounts (holding under 1,000 $KINS) never receive these drops.

EXP rates

A successful cook pays 125–160 XP depending on the recipe, and each cook takes about 10 seconds. At the base 125 XP that is a ceiling of 750 XP per minute, or 45,000 XP per hour, before burn losses — burns pay nothing, so real rates are lower until your Cooking level climbs.

Fish to max level

The level cap is now 40. Reaching level 30 takes roughly 472,353 XP, and reaching the level 40 cap takes roughly 2,937,143 XP. At 125–160 XP per successful cook, a full grind to the cap is on the order of 18,400–23,500 successful cooks, plus whatever the burn chance costs you along the way.

Why cook

• Dishes give 10-minute buffs for fishing, gathering and fighting monsters.
• Cooked Chicken can tame a Wild Wolf into a Wolf Mount (1 in 10 per chicken fed) — the only mount you get by feeding an animal.
• Cook next to Fishing at The Pond to train both skills simultaneously.
• Cooked fish is what the Angler Outfit raffle is paid in — burnt fish don't count.
• All recipes require Wood as fuel — stock up before long cooking sessions.

Tips

• Gather Wood from the Wilderness before heading to the roast pits — every recipe consumes 1 Wood per cook.
• The roast pit at The Pond is the most efficient location since you can fish and cook in the same spot without travelling.
• Expect burns early on — the burn chance starts at 30% and only falls to 5% at Cooking 40. Chicken never burns, so it is the safest early XP.
• Cooked fish of every species is the currency of The Angler's raffle — cooking sessions double as Angler prep.
• Cooking 500 fish unlocks the Line Cook achievement (3,000 Cooking XP).

Skills of Kintara
Gathering	Woodcutting  ·  Mining  ·  Fishing
Production	Cooking  ·  Smithing
Combat	Combat