ASA: Custom Cooking Guide

In ARK: Survival Evolved survivors are able to cook various standard Recipes in a Cooking Pot or an Industrial Cooker.

Recipes can be used to:

• craft dishes that grant temporary buffs or useful effects. For example, Medical Brew and Enduro Stew.

• make dyes to customize many items, creatures and structures. For example, Black Dye.

• create special food for taming or feeding animals. For example, the various Kibbles and Sweet Vegetable Cake.

These recipes are not a learned skill, require no experience or engrams. Any survivor can cook any of these recipes at any time with nothing more than the cooker of choice, and the required ingredients.

Multiple recipes can cook concurrently, however be aware that some combinations of ingredients for multiple recipes may produce other unwanted dishes, as there are limited recipe ingredients creating considerable overlap in recipes. This feature is of the most use when mass cooking kibble; by placing all the required kibble ingredients into a cooker at once, it is possible to cook all the kibble types at the same time, without producing unwanted dishes.

All standard recipes require water. Water can be provided to the Industrial Cooker through pipes, or placed by hand into either cooker using Water Flasks and so on.

Basically there are a few considerations to make when planning a custom food. They are: HP, stamina, food, and weight. Making a good recipe requires a delicate balance of all these. Its also important to note that this is a great way to store surplus food that would otherwise rot. Custom consumables have an extremely long shelf life when refrigerated compared to normal food.

When you make a Custom recipe you must use a normal cooking pot. You cannot create a recipe page in an Industrial Cooker. Other important tips:

• Only eight stacks of ingredients can be in a single recipe.

• Drugs and pre-made Dishes can not be used in a recipe.

• If eggs are used in the recipe, the recipe is specific to that type of egg.

For a food filler, it's typically made of RAW meat. The best one I have is 10 raw meat for 101 food. Cooked meat technically gives more food, but I like the extra heal from raw

Element dust is a FANTASTIC ingredient. High stats evenly distributed with good weight

For healing recipes, try to use 2-4 bee honey and the rest of your 8 recipe slots some prime meat.

Mushrooms in general just make better recipes; primarily because they have more balanced stats. The downside is they lack real sustenance as food to fill your hunger. However, food is the easiest stat to fill almost without trying.

Stimberries and Auric mushrooms would normally decrease your water; but in a food recipe, they do not lower your water stat. It still does reduce the water given by a drink though when included in the drink's recipe.

DO NOT USE EGGS - THEY ARE MASSIVELY HEAVY! You're better off turning the eggs into kibble and using that in a recipe for the insane stamina regen. KIBBLE GIVES A TON OF STAMINA

Crops/veggies are best used in drinks. 2-4 on a good crafter will fill your water to 100 Please pay attention to weight. You would not believe how much extra room you can make just by getting rid of your egg recipes and doing meat or mushrooms instead.

KEEP IT SIMPLE. I tried making recipes with 4 or 5 different ingredients but it just leads to a big hassle that totally isn't worth it.

Also, note that recipes don't really become "worth it" until about 500% - 550% CS. That is the turning point when you start to reap benefits instead of taking losses.

To find out what ingredients have what effect, check out this guide: Ingredient Effects