Cooking is an essential skill in RuneScape, offering benefits to all types of players. Whether you’re a combat enthusiast needing reliable food sources or a skiller aiming for a quick 99, cooking provides an accessible and often profitable path. It’s notable for its consistent training methods across both Old School RuneScape and RuneScape 3, making it a timeless and straightforward skill to master. This guide outlines efficient strategies to level your cooking, whether you’re starting with minimal gold or seeking the fastest experience rates. Before you begin, consider completing the Cook’s Assistant quest in Lumbridge, as it unlocks a special range that significantly reduces your burn rate for early-game foods. If you’re a member, acquiring cooking gauntlets can further enhance your training by lowering burn rates for specific fish. Prepare to gather some basic fishing gear like a small net, fishing rod, and feathers, as we’ll be incorporating some self-sufficiency into this journey.
Level 1 to 15: Shrimp and Anchovies
Your journey into culinary mastery begins in the heart of Lumbridge. For these initial levels, focus on catching and cooking raw shrimp and raw anchovies. The Lumbridge River is an excellent spot for acquiring these, requiring only a small fishing net. Once caught, head directly to the range in the Lumbridge Castle kitchen. This particular range offers a reduced chance of burning food, maximizing your experience gains and minimizing wasted resources. Reaching level 15 through this method is remarkably fast, often taking less than an hour. As you cook, you have a couple of options for the finished products: you can sell your cooked fish on the Grand Exchange for a quick profit to fund future training materials, or, if you’re a member, you might consider banking any cooked anchovies. These will be valuable later for creating anchovy pizzas, a high-experience method. Beyond fish, don’t overlook the opportunity to collect raw chicken and feathers from the chicken coops just north or east of Lumbridge. Cooking raw chicken provides a small but useful experience boost, and the feathers will serve as bait for your next fishing endeavors, ensuring you’re well-prepared for the next stage of your cooking adventure.
Levels 15 to 32: Trout and Salmon
Upon reaching approximately level 15, it’s time to shift your focus to more substantial catches: trout and salmon. A prime location for this phase is the Barbarian Village, specifically near the fishing spots. Here, you’ll often encounter numerous players (or bots) power-fishing, dropping large quantities of raw trout and salmon on the ground. This presents a fantastic opportunity to collect free ingredients if your fishing level isn’t high enough or if you prefer a faster cooking-only approach. Simply pick up the dropped fish and use the nearby fires or ranges to cook them. If you prefer to fish your own, ensure you have a fishing rod and a steady supply of feathers for bait. You can gather feathers from the chicken coops in Lumbridge, or buy them from the Grand Exchange. Cooking these fish provides significantly more experience per item than shrimp or anchovies, accelerating your progress towards level 32. You can choose to drop the cooked fish for maximum experience per hour, or bank them for a modest profit, depending on your financial needs and storage capacity. Your primary goal here is efficient experience gain, preparing you for the next major milestone at the Cook’s Guild.
Level 32 to 55: Cooks Guild
At cooking level 32, a new and highly efficient training ground opens up: the Cook’s Guild in Varrock. To enter, you’ll need to wear a Chef’s Hat, which can be purchased from various general stores or the Grand Exchange. Inside this multi-story building, you’ll find everything needed to create apple pies and wine. For apple pies, gather grain from the ground floor, grind it into flour, combine with water for dough, collect cooking apples, and bake them all on the guild’s range. This integrated setup minimizes travel time, making pie-making a swift experience method. While some players might world-hop for faster ingredient respawns, the natural respawn rate is usually sufficient for consistent training. Banking your finished pies is often a good idea, as they can sell for a reasonable profit or be used for personal consumption. At level 35, you unlock the ability to make wine. Combine grapes (found on the guild’s second floor) with jugs of water to create unfermented wine, which then ferments into mature wine over time. Wine offers substantial experience per item for minimal effort, although grape spawns are slower than apple spawns. Balancing pie making with wine production, or focusing solely on the latter for its higher individual experience, will rapidly advance your cooking skill towards level 55.
Level 55+: High-level Fish or Anchovy Pizzas
Reaching level 55 opens up the most profitable and fastest experience methods in cooking, giving you two excellent pathways to 99. Your first option involves focusing on high-level fish. Head to Karamja, a popular fishing location for tuna, swordfish, and lobsters. You can either fish these yourself (provided you have the appropriate Fishing level) or take advantage of the generous drops from other players, particularly bots, who often discard their raw catches. Cooking these high-tier fish provides excellent experience and, due to your now significantly reduced burn rate, can be a very profitable endeavor. Selling cooked tuna, swordfish, or lobsters can generate substantial income, easily funding further training or other game goals. Many players reach level 99 simply by cooking these three fish, combining good experience with solid profit margins.
The second, and arguably fastest, method from this point forward is crafting anchovy pizzas. This option requires a larger initial investment, as you’ll need to purchase raw pizzas and raw anchovies (or use any you saved from earlier levels). However, the return on investment is unparalleled: anchovy pizzas offer the highest experience per hour of almost any cooking method, and crucially, they have a 100% success rate, meaning you will never burn an anchovy pizza. This guarantees maximum experience efficiency. You can balance this high-cost, high-XP method by periodically cooking high-level fish for profit to replenish your gold reserves. By strategically combining profitable fish cooking with the lightning-fast experience of anchovy pizzas, your path to level 99 cooking will be both enjoyable and swift. Choose the method that best suits your playstyle and financial situation, or mix both for a balanced approach to culinary mastery.
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