Freeform cooking

Instead of specific recipes, allow freeform cooking where the player learns how to use each ingredient and separately learns how to make more complex dishes.

• Each time the player uses an ingredient in cooking, they add some experience to how to use that ingredient, until they are "proficient". Until then, there is a chance that they will ruin the element in the dish, reducing its stat contribution to zero in the dish.

• Cooking is learnt in stages where the player slowly learns to combine more and more ingredients.

  • Raw food might only contribute 50% of its stat values.

  • Basic cooking or preparation is one ingredient only and brings out 100% of the ingredient's stat values.

  • More advanced cooking lets the player combine more ingredients at a time, and successful cooking adds all the stat values of the ingredients used. Once the player has learned one-ingredient cooking they can advance to try two-ingredient cooking, then three-ingredient, etcetera, with each stage requiring more learning-by-doing.

  • Failing a halves the total stats (in addition to taking into account whether the player failed to properly use each ingredient).

• Certain combinations are "traditional recipes" that can be learned from player background or NPCs, and trying to make that specific recipe can provide a bonus to success as well as a small bonus to final stats.

  • If the player doesn't have all the ingredients for a traditional recipe, the freeform cooking still allows them to mash together something palatable with what they have.

• If the net Hunger Mitigation exceeds 80%, halve it and produce more portions instead -- half the hunger and buff duration. This way, food won't be at or over 100 Hunger mitigation, which usually results in wasted food.