How Cooking Buffs Work in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

There are a lot of Hidden Mechanics of Cooking in The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. This video explains cooking calculations, critical cooks, buffs, buff levels, buff duration, extra stamina, extra hearts, and more. This is The Hidden Cooking Mechanics of Tears of the Kingdom Explained

0:00 Please Don’t Eat Raw Food
0:54 Heart Recovery Calculations & Recovery Bonuses
2:19 Dubious Food & Recycling Dubious Food
3:16 Critical Cooks Chances & Ingredient Increased Chance
5:06 Buff Duration Explained
7:03 Attack Up Buff Calculation
8:26 Defense Up, Speed Up, Glow, & Slip Resistance
9:25 Cold Weather Attack, Hot Weather Attack, Stormy Weather Attack, Swim Speed up, Shock Resistance, & Stealth Up
10:45 Cold Resistance, Hot Resistance, & Flame Guard
11:36 Gloom Resistance, Stamina Recovery, & Extra Stamina
13:52 Gloom Recovery & Extra Hearts

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Welcome to the official Austin John Plays YouTube channel! On this channel you will find a variety of content like News, Tips & Tricks for Pokemon Violet & Scarlet, Legends Arceus, Tears of the Kingdom, The Legend of Zelda, and more!

[AustinJohnPlays]

This is a revised video and the original is removed. I strive for accurate info at the cost of views for my videos.
Changes:
Added unachievable levels of buffs
Added notes for when ciritcal cooks exceed natural max buffs
Added a section to explain ingredient quantity adds to buff duration in addition to bonus duration
Changed on-screen popups to emphasize critical cooks having a chance at outcomes
Fixed Gramatical Errors

[TankCatBetter]

Austin should win an award for the best consistent videos 😅

[KeiranTrick]

An extremely admirable move.

I wouldn't have batted an eye if you'd left the other one with just an updated title stating it was outdated, but once again, you went above and beyond for the community.

Extremely well researched, great visual aids, wonderful audio quality. All standard for your vids, but still impressive every time.

Thanks for being such an amazing content creator!

[BenthovenMusic]

One really good detail when roasting ingredients in fire I just found out recently. Roastable ingredients like apples and raw meats will steam. Non-roastable ingredients like herbs and flowers will smoke. This is a good way to help complete the roasted items in the recipe book.

[sadiedg]

Hearing the hyrule field and gerudo valley themes making me remember how much I miss the older style of Zelda music 😢

[YamishiMizuandDracus]

Austin, this actually helped me a lot in figuring out "optimal" food and how to make it.

Something I figured out is that foods with only a level 2 buff at max can in fact achieve a level 2 30 minute buff while also having "full recovery" in terms of hearts. basically if they have a 3 point food you use 1 of that, 1 dragon horn, and 3 fairies (I'm still playing Patch 1.1.1). It may take few tries, but the dragon horn guarantees a critical cook as you mentioned, which can sometimes push a level 1 buff up to level 2.

This works for heat/cold resistance, swimming speed, and all elemental weather attack buffs.

For attack, defense and stealth you can maximize hearts restore at something like 26 and 3/4 hearts by using the 2 porgies/Silent Princess + 2 fairies + 1 dragon horn.

Elixirs become useless if you use a fairy so raw gourmet meat/whole bird can add extra healing. If you use Gleeok or Lynel guts they sell for more. I'm pretty sure the best fireproof elixir is 1 smoldering butterfly + 1 Gleeok or Lynel guts + 2 raw gourmet meat or whole bird + 1 dragon horn.

My final note is that sadly speed can only get away with 1 fairy if you want a level 3 buff. Fleet-lotus seeds are better than swift violets because they add hearts to a meal, and since violets can't be eaten you don't get any bonus hearts from using them.

[cowserthekhelinace]

Keep in mind early game, you may want to stack Hearty foods, especially Big Hearty Radishes (doubly so if you dupe them lol), as you can get much more survivability with the +25 hearts. Just stay away from Gloom, as the first thing to go WILL be ALL your Temp HP.

[jasoncarliruckman]

Your attention to detail and the information you give is mwah (chefs kiss) amazing. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to your channel.

[Polopollo]

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate this video! Cooking was a really daunting task for me in both BOTW and TOTK, but with this guide it makes sense.
I keep going back to the 5:35 mark with the buff durations per effects,
then 6:52 for the chart about adding duration with monster parts,
then I find my part about the effect I want, like 11:20 for the flame guard for instance. This is really useful!
I also learned that the big hearty radishes are better than the big hearty truffles, which is weird to me as I find a lot more of these big radishes!
What recipes do recommend for the gloom recovery? I kind of cooked them one by one but they take a lot of space then in the limited 60 cooked meal tab. I wonder if I could do better than that.
Also when master mode drops and all dupe glitches are fixed, I think a video on some early recipes might be useful then! Thanks for your content!

[Salmontres]

That blood moon tip is invaluable. I have no idea why it was done this way, but I'll be saving my cook time for that, thanks!

[UnstableEquilibrium]

Amazing video. Can't tell you what a relief it was to find this after skimming a dozen useless articles.
Knowing that cooking just doubles the hearts recovered will make getting any specific number of target hearts soooo much easier.

[danicakelly]

I got the game late so I'm just now getting into your videos and I just wanted to say thank you. Yours is the most helpful gaming channel I've ever come across and your videos are always high quality and accurate which is really valuable when most other channels I watch are entertainment only. So seriously, thanks for these!

[mattcy]

2:05 there is an NPC that hints that you should try adding a nut to recipes for extra effect. I wish I remembered which npc it was

[dennisreynolds]

Austin thank you from britain bud. In a game where the exact mechanics arent abundsntly clear your videos have given me much needed guidance. I wouldve thought the pristine weapons were usless had i not watched your video. All the ones ive found were travellers or knights and pretty much wrote off going near them

[The_Steel_Arrow]

Hey Austin absolutely loving the TOTK content!! But I was wondering if you could make a video on how to get all the schema stones and yiga schematics.

[JRR]

Your videos inspired me to get this game a few days ago. I can honestly say I never owned a Zelda game before, and this game frickin rocks!

[mariah]

These videos have all been amazing, the quality is top notch and packed with useful information. Thank you and keep it up the great videos.

[zacharyryan]

This was a well put together guide. Very much appreciated the clear concise way you broke it down into simple math.

[amiahuman]

I have also found that silent princesses increase chances for critical cooks!

[DoomFinger]

You left out the food items that increase buff time, you only included what works for elixirs. For food bird eggs and Goron spice are best at 1:30, but duplicate ingredients are nerfed to 30 seconds. Oil, cheese, butter, milk, and sugar are next at 1:20. Also adding Monster Extract to any food dish will randomly change the buff time to 1, 10, or 30 minutes. So you can save, use monster extract, and then reload if you didn't get the 30-minute buff.