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The Band of Brothers
This WoW Cooking guide will show you the fastest way how to level your Cooking skill from 1 to 525. This cooking guide uses a lot of vendor bought recipes, so be prepared to travel around because you have to buy cooking recipes and farm meats, eggs etc. a lot. Updated for WoW patch 4.3.3
I recommend to pick up Cooking as soon as you can, because killing level 10 boars when you are level 85...it's not fun.
If you are low on gold, I recommend you to try this Gold Making Guide, it can help you to make loads of gold.
If you are still leveling your character or you just started a new alt, I recommend you to use a leveling guide. You can level your character to level 85 in 5 days with this guide.
Cooking guide sections:Apprentice 1 - 80 Journeyman 80 - 130 Expert 130 - 225 Artisan 225 - 300 Master 300 - 350 Grand Master 350 - 450 Illustrious Grand Master 450 - 525
Cooking Leveling Guide 1 - 80
First, visit any trainer in the main cities of old Azeroth - just ask a guard, and learn Apprentice Cooking.
If it's November, you might want to check out my Pilgrim's Bounty cooking leveling guide. You can level cooking to 350 in about an hour.
You can make [Basic Campfire] to cook your food.
If you are not planning on to level cooking to 450 in one day, you should visit Marogg (Horde) or Robby Flay (Alliance). These NPCs will give you daily quests which you will have to complete in order to level cooking up to 525. Upon completing the quests, you will get 1-2 Cooking skill and one [Chef's Award]. Chef's Award can be used to purchase new cooking recipes from the Sous Chef in your home city, more on this later on when you reach 450.
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1 - 40
60 x [Spice Bread] - 60 [Simple Flour], 60 Mild Spices
Please read the section above this part, if you didn't read it already. It is important.
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40-80
40 x [Smoked Bear Meat] - 40 [Bear Meat] - Recipe sold by these vendors
Usually where bears are, there are Wolves too. Kill those and you can cook [Spiced Wolf Meat].
At 75, you have to visit your trainer in order to to learn Journeyman Cooking.
80 - 130
Learn Journeyman Cooking.
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80 - 130
Go to Ashenvale and head to the Zoram Strand, where the sea is (north-west).
[Boiled Clams] - 1 Clam Meat, 1 Refreshing Spring Water - clam meat can be found in [Small Barnacled Clam][Crab Cake] - 1 Crawler Meat
Alliance:
Alliance players can buy the following recipe because the Crawlers drop Crawler Claws. (kind of obvious)
[Cooked Crab Claw] - 1 Crawler Claw - Recipe sold by these vendors
130 - 225
Learn Expert Cooking.
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130 - 175
The Raptors will drop [Raptor Flesh], don't sell or destroy them because you will need them in the next step of the Cooking guide.
50 x [Curiously Tasty Omelet] - 50 [Raptor Egg] - Recipe sold by these vendors
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175 - 225
50 x [Roast Raptor] - 50 [Raptor Flesh] - Recipe sold by these vendors
225 - 300
Learn Artisan Cooking.
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225 - 250
25 x [Monster Omelet] - 25 Giant Egg - Recipe sold by these vendors
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250 - 28540 x [Juicy Bear Burger] - 40 [Bear Flank]
There is another really good recipe for the 275-300 part, but you have to run one Dire Maul east. The recipe is dropped by Pusillin and it's called [Recipe: Runn Tum Tuber Surprise].
When you enter the instance, you can find Pusillin at the entrance, he is on the left side, then you just have to go and talk to him then follow him and talk to him again as soon as you catch up to him. At the end the imp will become hostile and you can kill him (Finally! Annoying little bastard!).
You can solo this instance if you are around level 70, but it's a lot easier for higher levels. The recipe binds when picked up, this means it's a bit harder to get it with a group at low level, I would not recommend it to get a group of low levels just for this one recipe, you can level Cooking faster with the other recipes.
The recipe uses [Runn Tum Tuber] as material, you can find these in [Warpwood Pods], they are all around in the instance (read the first comments on wowhead). I could get 25 of them in one run, which is enough to level Cooking to 300 with this one recipe.
I must also mention that you could use this recipe to level up your Cooking to 325, just make a few more instance runs. This way you won't have to do the quests at the next part.
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285 - 300
15 x [Smoked Desert Dumplings] - 15 [Sandworm Meat]
You have to complete two quests to get this cooking recipe.
300 - 350
Visit your trainer and learn Cooking Master.
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300 - 325
30 x [Ravager Dog] - 30 [Ravager Flesh] - Recipe Sold by these NPCs
or
30 x [Buzzard Bites] - 30 [Buzzard Meat]
You have to complete a quest chain to get this cooking recipe.
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325 - 350
You have 3 choices now. I would farm Talbuk Venison and Clefthoof Meat because it is a lot easier to farm those.
You have to be neutral with the Mag'har(Horde) or Kurenai(Alliance) before you can talk the NPC in Nagrand.
35 x [Talbuk Steak] - 35 [Talbuk Venison ]35 x [Roasted Clefthoof] - 35 [Clefthoof Meat]35 x [Warp Burger] - 35 [Warped Flesh]
350 - 450
Visit your trainer and learn Cooking Grand Master.
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350 - 365
Get the Northern Cooking quest at Northrend and complete it. It requires 4 Chilled Meat. Completing this quest will teach you how to create [Northern Stew]
If you click on the link above and scroll down, you will see all the quest givers that gives you the Northern Cooking quest. For both Horde and Alliance.
20 x [Northern Stew] - 20 Chilled Meat
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365 - 375
The Cooking trainer will teach you a lot of recipes, all of them will turn green at 382 and gray at 415. Any of these recipes are good for skilling up Cooking. I recommend Rhino Dogs if you want to farm the materials. There are a lot of Rhinos around Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra, and they respawn really quickly.
If you want to buy the materials, you should check the prices for Rhino Meat, Worm Meat and Fangtooth Herring. These are usually the cheapest ones.
13 x [Rhino Dogs] - 13 [Rhino Meat]
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375 - 400Making one Kungaloosh costs 66 silver, so if you find out that Rhino Dogs, Worm Meat or Fangtooth Herring are cheaper than that, buy those instead.
You have to finish a quest chain first. It starts with the quest called Some Make Lemonade, Some Make Liquor and ends with The Taste Test. After you completed the quest chain, go to Dalaran and find theWashed-Up Mage, he is in the underbelly (sewers). He will teach you how to make [Kungaloosh]. After that, go to the Dalaran Fruit Vendor and you can just buy the materials from him.
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400 - 415Make that recipe what you made at the 365 - 375 part if you don't want to do the daily quests mentioned below. The recipe will be green which means you will not gain skill points for every craft, I only recommend this if you want to reach 525 as fast as possible.
The cooking recipe will be purchased with [Dalaran Cooking Awards] for this part, which are obtained by completing the daily cooking quest given by Katherine Lee (Alliance) or Awilo Lon'gomba (Horde)in Dalaran.
Choose one recipe from these, and make that until you reach 415. The recipes are sold by Derek Odds (Alliance) and Misensi (Horde). If you want to buy the materials, you should buy [Recipe: Critter Bites], Chilled Meat is usually the cheapest.
If you bought the recipe [Recipe: Critter Bites] and there are a lot of Chilled Meat and Northern Spices at the Auction House, you could try to make Critter Bites up to 450 or even 475, this way you will only need 6[Chef's Award] in total.
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415 - 43015 x [Darkbrew Lager] - 30 Skin of Dwarven Stout, 15 Jug of Bourbon
You can actually make this one up to 440 if you want to. The reagents are sold by these vendors, don't buy them at the Auction House.
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430 - 45020 x [Blackened Surprise] - 20 Toughened Flesh
450 - 525
Visit your trainer and learn Cooking Illustrious Grand Master.
From this point, every recipe will be purchased with [Chef's Award], which are obtained by completing the daily cooking quest given by Marogg (Horde) or Robby Flay (Alliance). Once you have enough awards, you can visitShazdar (Horde) or Bario Matalli (Alliance) and buy new recipes. One recipe usually cost 3 [Chef's Award].
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450 - 475Check the prices at the Auction House for the following items and choose the one that is the cheapest and you can buy about 28-35 of it. If you have Fishing, you should catch Striped Lurker at Twilight Highlands.
[Striped Lurker] - [Recipe: Lightly Fried Lurker] or [Recipe: Lurker Lunch][Lavascale Catfish] - [Recipe: Lavascale Fillet][Blood Shrimp] - [Recipe: Whitecrest Gumbo][Monstrous Claw] - [Recipe: Seasoned Crab][Snake Eye] - [Recipe: Salted Eye]
If you want to farm the reagents, the easiest item to farm is [Blood Shrimp]. Blood Shrimp can be found in [Abyssal Clam], which is dropped by most mobs in Vashj'ir.
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475 - 500Same as above, check the prices at the Auction House and choose the one that is the cheapest and you can buy about 28-35 of it. If you have Fishing, you should catch Highland Guppy at Twilight Highlands.
[Highland Guppy] - [Recipe: Pickled Guppy][Blood Shrimp] - [Recipe: Hearty Seafood Soup]
Check your Calendar in-game to see if the Darkmoon Faire is open, the event starts at 00:01 on the Sunday before the 1st Monday of each month.
You can gain +5 skill points by completing a single quest. Click here to read more about the quests.
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500 - 525I'm not going to write it down again, you know what you should do! :)
[Algaefin Rockfish] - [Recipe: Baked Rockfish][Basilisk "Liver"] - [Recipe: Basilisk Liverdog][Crocolisk Tail] - [Recipe: Beer-Basted Crocolisk] or [Recipe: Crocolisk Au Gratin][Blackbelly Mudfish] - [Recipe: Blackbelly Sushi] or [Recipe: Mushroom Sauce Mudfish][Deepsea Sagefish] - [Recipe: Delicious Sagefish Tail] or [Recipe: Severed Sagefish Head][Dragon Flank] - [Recipe: Grilled Dragon][Lavascale Catfish] - [Recipe: Lavascale Minestrone][Fathom Eel] - [Recipe: Skewered Eel]
I hope you liked this Cooking Guide, GZ to 525!
Cooking Leveling Guide 1-525
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