CookingPerks

CookingPerks (Valheim / BepInEx)

Cooking becomes a real progression skill, and food runs on calories: every food holds a calorie supply that your body burns at a steady resting rate, plus extra for every bit of activity you do.

Features

Cooking amounts and ingredients stay vanilla. There are no free or bonus crafts.

Tiers

Perks only increase at cooking levels 25, 50, 75 and 100 (tiers 1–4). Nothing changes between those levels.

| Tier | Cooking level | Food calories | Health / stamina / eitr | |---|---|---|---| | 0 | 0–24 | vanilla | vanilla | | 1 | 25 | +5% | +3% | | 2 | 50 | +10% | +6% | | 3 | 75 | +15% | +9% | | 4 | 100 | +20% | +12% |

(Defaults. You can change them with CalorieBonusPerTier, QualityBonusPerTier and LevelsPerTier.)

Eitr foods get an extra +10% calories at every tier, added on top (a tier 4 eitr food has +30%). See Eitr food balance below for why.

Features

| Feature | How it works | |---|---| | Food remembers its cook | Food you make at a cauldron or prep table, or take off a spit, grill or oven, gets your current tier. The tier shows in the item tooltip. Food of different tiers stays in separate stacks. | | Recooking | Hold older cooked food on your hotbar, look at the station that makes it, and press the hotbar key. The whole stack is upgraded to your current tier, with its new calories and quality. Cooked meat goes back on the spit or grill, bread in the oven, stews in the cauldron. The station must be usable (fire lit). It's free and instant, and it never lowers a tier. | | Calories | Each food holds calories equal to its vanilla duration in seconds (a 30-minute food = 1800 calories), plus its tier bonus. Every food burns 1 calorie per second just from you being alive (BaseMetabolism), so an idle player matches vanilla. Activity burns extra calories: regenerating health (from food), stamina or eitr costs calories from the foods that provide that stat. Stamina only refills what you spent, so sprinting, fighting and swimming cost the most. Instant restores from meads are free. As a food's calories drop below its base amount, its health/stamina/eitr fade exactly like vanilla food fading over time. | | Comfort lowers calorie usage | The Rested buff cuts calorie usage by 5%, Resting by 10% and Sheltered by 5%. With all three at once, you get an extra 10% on top: 30% less in total. This applies to both the resting burn and activity costs. A proper rest spot (fire, shelter, seat, comfort) is where food stretches the furthest. | | Calorie counter on the HUD | Under each food icon you see calories left (for example 1.8k, then 950), instead of a time. Nothing is estimated: the number only goes down as you burn it, slowly at rest and faster when you work. The food's tooltip shows its calories instead of a duration. | | Tier popups | Reaching a new tier shows your new perk values. |

Perks use the vanilla Cooking skill, which you level the vanilla way.

Balance

Goal: a beginner cook's food runs a little short when adventuring, and a master cook (level 100) is back to about vanilla. Cooking is worth leveling, but it never becomes "food lasts forever."

Simulated with the default settings: how long a food's calories last compared with vanilla's fixed duration. Activity rates are estimates of typical play:

| Activity | Calorie burn (× resting) | Tier 0 | Tier 4 (level 100) | |---|---|---|---| | Resting, sailing or riding (bars full) | 1.00× | 100% | 120% | | Base chores and building | 1.04× | 96% | 115% | | Exploring (jog and sprint) | 1.21× | 83% | 99% | | Swimming | 1.22× | 82% | 99% | | Mage combat | 1.57× | 64% | 76% | | Heavy melee combat | 1.60× | 62% | 75% | | Typical session (45% explore, 15% fight, 25% base, 10% rest, 5% swim) | 1.20× | 83% | 100% |

These numbers are without comfort buffs. With them (Rested for most of an outing, and all three while resting at base), a typical session improves to about 88% at tier 0 and 105% at tier 4.

Tiers 1–3 fall in between: about 88%, 92% and 96% for a typical session.

Why it's fair: stamina regen only refills stamina you've spent, so the stamina cost is really a cost for exertion. Sprinting, swinging and dodging use stamina, the refill costs calories, and standing around costs only your resting burn. The game already tracks this exactly, so there is no guessing about what you are doing.

Safeguards that keep the game from breaking:

• Burn cap. A food can never burn more than 2 calories per second (MaxCaloriesPerSecond), resting burn included. Activity cost above the cap is deferred and paid once your bars are full again, never counted twice. Deferred cost is capped at 60 calories per food, so a long boss fight can't erase your food.
• Resting matches vanilla. With nothing regenerating, food burns 1 calorie per second, exactly vanilla's speed. Only the tier calorie bonus makes food last longer.
• The vanilla food curve is kept. The quality bonus multiplies the values the game itself computes, so food fades exactly like vanilla, just from a slightly higher peak.
• Quality stays modest. +12% at level 100 is about 25–30 extra health on a late-game loadout. That's noticeable, but it's less than a single extra food.
• Recooking can't be farmed. It gives no Cooking XP, only upgrades to your own tier, and never downgrades.
• The death penalty matters. Vanilla skill loss on death can drop you below a tier, and food you cook from then on uses the lower tier until you level back up. Food you already cooked keeps its tier.
• Setting limits. The config's allowed ranges are capped (calories ≤ +25%/tier, quality ≤ +15%/tier, resting burn 0.5–1.5 per second), so a server owner can't accidentally set extreme values.

Eitr food balance