In Praise of the Cookbook

[kiwikenobi]

I just want to say that I think the addition of the cookbook is brilliant. It gives purpose to cooking every unique dish in the game at least once. I never bothered making any of the recipes that call for barnacles, for example, because it's so much work to gather them, and the dishes themselves don't seem worth the effort. But now that they're required to fill slots in the cookbook, I was happy to have a new mini-goal to accomplish, and it was satisfying to finally cook the barnacle-based dishes.

It also gave me a reason to finally play as Warly, who I wound up enjoying playing as while gathering ingredients for his special foods.

And the clever thing about the cookbook is that DST itself is still the same, just now that the game keeps track of the foods you've cooked, it provides motivation to actually cook everything that's been available all this time. And I've been having a lot of fun doing it.

Well done, Klei.

[DaZoul]

yep, the cookbook helped me realise one thing: How really good the Lobster Bisque is for healing! Catching lobsters is easy, you craft an Ocean Fishing Rod once, then dont have to worry about it again. You catch a wobster, again, easy, get 1 ice, put in 2 twigs and boom, 60 health for ya

[kiwikenobi]

What I most recently learned from the cookbook is that seafood gumbo is ridiculously difficult to make, since, unless I'm misunderstanding something, it requires either eels or barnacles, otherwise any other combination of fishes will turn into surf'n'turf or something else. I seem to recall making seafood gumbo unintentionally a lot in Shipwrecked. What's different in DST? Recipe priority? Is this intentional or some kind of oversight?

Either way, I'm still really happy with the cookbook. I've learned about a lot of dishes that I never made before that I probably will make more often now that I can easily see what stats they recover and what ingredients they use. Plus you get to see all of the foods in nice, high-quality art in the cookbook.

[cropo]

Another thing I love is that it actually tells you what the item does and heals. I love this because I have really bad memory so it helps to have a ''mini wiki'' that I myself have completed and I can look up what so-and-so actually healed and gave to me so I can make it(or avoid making it) in the future. 

[SonicDen220]

11 minutes ago, kiwikenobi said:

I seem to recall making seafood gumbo unintentionally a lot in Shipwrecked. What's different in DST? Recipe priority? Is this intentional or some kind of oversight?

What's different is that in DST fish morsels have 0.5 fish & 0.5 meat value and big fish has 1 fish & 0.5 meat value. In singleplayer fish morsels/limpets/mussels only have 0.5 fish value and no meat value (though pond fish, tropical fish, etc. have 1 fish & 0.5 meat). The added 0.5 meat value in DST makes it easier to make Surf n Turf and harder to make Seafood Gumbo. Surf n Turf is just a better dish that requires less. For example, it's easier to do 3 fish morsels and 1 monster meat for SnT than 3 fish morsels and an eel for Gumbo.

[SinancoTheBest]

31 minutes ago, SonicDen220 said:

Fish value changes

They made it sooo not worth it to make Ceviche in the prosess, I don't know why it requires 2 fish  value to make. That's the only bad thing about Hook Line Inker. Before, 2 freshwater fish and two ice made Ceviche, making it a situationally good recipe, especislly in summer, in thr oasis.. Now it absolutely serves no purpose. Reviewing the cookbook. I think it is the single most useless recipe in the game.

[Malby]

(quietly waiting for in-game Bestiary)

[Terra B Welch]

I love the new cookbook, not only does it have spots for all vanilla recipes but theres a mod recipe tab too, I've been doing a playthrough with feast and famine + island adventures where I attempt to cook every single dish in the mod recipes tab and fill out the entries. So far I'm still getting the necessary stuff set up.