/// Cooking with Kiiva [A Mabinogi Cooking Skill Guide Book].
Head over to
Dunbarton, find
Glenis at the restaurant and talk about "Skills." She'll give you a book entitled "
Step-by-Step Cooking Skill 101," select "Advance Reading" from the menu.
Congratulations, you now have knowledge about the Cooking Skill. You may now refer to yourself as an Apprentice Chef or Chef-in-Training, whichever you prefer.
*Note: This skill is affected by Dex. The higher your Dexterity the steadier the mini-game Ingredient Bar will be and the better your chances are for creating 5-star meals.
The Tools
Cooking utensils can be purchased from
Walter (
Dunbarton General Store) or
Nora (
Tir Chonaill Inn).
Practice Rank and Rank F - First, Mixing Ingredients.
Head over to the General Store and pick up your utensils. Click on the right arrow with the shop window open until you see the tab "
Cooking Appliances." For now, just purchase a
Cooking Knife (830g) and a
Cooking Table (1821g). Equip them.
Before we begin cooking, we'll need something just as important as our tools, a recipe. These are the three that I started off with
Strawberry Milk,
Assorted Fruits and
Mayonnaise.
DO NOT follow the recipes from the
in-game cook books! The ratios are completely off.
Strawberry Milk - Cost to make: 25g.
Strawberry (30%) Milk (65%) Sugar (5%)
Assorted Fruits - Cost to make: 15g.
Strawberry (46%) Apple (30%) Berry (24%)
Mayonnaise - Cost to make: 40g.
Egg (75%) Olive Oil (20%) Salt (5%)
If you make equal amounts of
Assorted Fruits and
Mayonnaise you can use them with a little Sugar to make
Fruit Salad.
To get through the
Practice Rank, you need to successfully make
six dishes. You'll also need to read the book
"Master Chef's Cooking Class: Baking" which can be purchased from Aeira at the Bookstore in Dunbarton for 5500 gold.
You do not need any Ability Points (AP) to Advance to Rank F.
Fruit Salad - Cost to make: 65g.
Assorted Fruits (75%) Mayonnaise (15%) Sugar (10%)
Now we have our recipes. Once all the ingredients have been gathered and you have a Cooking Knife in your Right-hand and a Cooking Table in your Left-hand, we're ready to start. Click "Use" on your Cooking Skill and a new window will pop up.
*Note: To get Milk, you'll need an Empty Bottle. (You can purchase one from a General Store, catch one while fishing, or get it as a Quest Reward after completing certain Part-Time Jobs.) Find a cow grazing in the fields outside Dunbarton or Emain Macha. With the Empty Bottle in your right hand and nothing in your left hand, click on a cow. Your character will begin milking the cow and if successful... Yata! You'll have a bottle of Milk.
Also, Deian and Caitin in Tir Chonaill reward Milk after certain Part-Time Job quests.
Place
one of each ingredient in the squares. You need to use the ratios in the recipe and properly balance your ingredients...
If you don't, you'll end up with a plate of worthless Food Waste.
Let's start with
Strawberry Milk, it's the most common item for new cooks. Click "
Add" under the Strawberry and hold it down. You'll notice that the gray bar at the bottom will start to fill up. You can fill it up slowly by releasing the mouse-button, so you don't put in too much of any ingredient.
The red preparation bar stabilizes with the amount of Dexterity your character has. Stop adding Strawberry when the bar is 30% full. Now add Milk until the bar is 95% full and top it off with Sugar. When the bar turns yellow, the Start button will light up. Click "Start" to finalize your masterpiece.
Depending on how well you did in the ratio mini-game, you'll end up with a result between 1 and 5-stars. Well, to help you with ratios I'll show you a little something I came up with, it helps me a lot, so hopefully, it will help you too.
Shhh.... Here's my little secret. 
I graphed the preparation bar so it's easier to see ratios. Increments of 5 (
red) and 10s (black). The image is scaled at approximately 200% the original size. The trick is to find something in the image that is close to the marker you're aiming for. Let's take a look at the Strawberry Milk recipe once again.
[Milk 65%] The marker is above the letter
C in "Cancel" and in front of the ending
line of the second "Add" button. Fill the bar to there and then continue with the rest of the ingredients. Find the next marker and other points in the image that will assist you. And voila! You're one step closer to that 5-star meal!
For
Rank F, you'll need to succeed at Mixing
50 times. Read the book
"Master Chef's Cooking Class: Simmering" which can be purchased from Aeira for another 5500 gold; you don't have to do this right away, we're not through yet...
Part II - Baking.
To continue gaining experience with Rank F, you'll need to succeed at Baking (
10) times, get (
10) 4-star or better baked results and eat (
20) 4 or 5-star baked food.
First, you'll need a new set of cooking equipment - a
Cooking Dipper (874) and a
Cooking Pot (23000), if you wait 'til Friday, you can get a shop discount from the daily bonus. You'll also need to find a
Cooking Oven or be near a
Campfire to Bake.
Now for the recipes. Let's go with the two cost efficient Baking recipes in the game:
Fried Egg and
Baked Potato.
Fried Egg - Cost to make: 10g.
Egg (90%) Salt (10%)
Baked Potato - Cost to make: 10g.
Potato (90%) Salt OR Pepper (10%)
The last Training Method for
Rank F is listed as "
Unknown Training Method" to complete this part, you'll need to eat (
20) Boiled food without sharing.
*This step is optional, you can "Advance" to Rank E as long as you've completed all the other Training Methods. You'll need 3 AP in order to Advance.