Our Chef RPG Cooking Guide will tell you how to succeed in the cooking minigames and how to get new recipes for your restaurant!
As you might expect, a big part of Chef RPG is cooking food for your customers. After spending some time traveling around the map and buying ingredients, you'll need to buckle down and get to cooking in your restaurant. This guide will tell you everything you need to know about cooking in Chef RPG!
How Chef RPG Cooking Works
Chef RPG cooking requires you to complete a minigame depending on which cooking station you're using. Each recipe requires at least two ingredients and a specific cooking station installed in your restaurant.
You'll only have the Chef's Counter and the Stove to start, along with a handful of recipes gained from your Specialty and the recipes you received from talking to townsfolk on the first day. You can later expand your capabilities by purchasing more cooking stations from La Galerie on the east side of town.
A recipe must be added to your menu before you open your restaurant. You must have enough of the required ingredients in the refrigerator and the correct cooking station built before you can add a recipe to your menu. If you run out of a particular ingredient while your restaurant is open, any recipes that require that ingredient will be automatically removed from your menu.
Your restaurant has a minimum required number of recipes in each category that is determined by your Operation Mode in the restaurant's computer; this also sets the maximum number of recipes you can have in each category. For example, you cannot use the Teahouse Operation Mode without the recipe and ingredients to cook 1 Appetizer, 2 Desserts, and 2 Beverages at the minimum.
Once the restaurant is open, customers will come in and sit down. A waiter will take their order and it will be added to the queue at the top of the screen. You must then take the ingredients to the correct cooking station, complete a cooking minigame, and place the order on a counter for the waiter to take it to the table. You can also hire Chefs to cook for you.
Cooking food yourself reduces your Energy by a small portion. It's possible to pass out from Energy loss by cooking too much, so make sure that you purchase some Energy-restoring items from vending machines and shopkeepers if you start to get low.
Patrons will continue coming to the restaurant until you hit the "Close Restaurant" button. At that point, the remaining customers will finish their food and they may order additional items before leaving. Make sure to close the restaurant if your energy is around 30% of its maximum — you'll want to make sure you have enough Energy to cook the last few orders!
Occasionally, you may get story quests or quests via the bulletin board to make a take-out order. You can do this by interacting with the refrigerator when the restaurant is closed. You'll then have to complete the usual cooking minigame. When you're done, you'll get the take-out order as an item in your inventory which you can then deliver to the quest giver.
As you grow your restaurant and upgrade the building, you'll probably want to have multiple cooking stations so you and your Chefs don't have to wait for another Chef to finish cooking. The number of cooking stations you need depends on your menu and the size of your restaurant. Pay attention to which cooking stations are always busy and buy more as needed.
How to Get More Recipes
There are five known ways to get more recipes in Chef RPG:
- Purchase a random recipe from a shop vendor. The Eagle-Eyed Shopper skill increases the chance for recipes to appear in shops and unlocks the ability for them to potentially appear in vending machines, too.
- Find a recipe by examining the books in the Library every day after you've unlocked the Bookworm skill.
- Randomly discover new recipes while cooking after you've unlocked the Hands-On Approach skill.
- Get recipes as rewards for bulletin board quests.
- Take the Hands-On Approach skill, which allows you to discover new recipes while you're cooking.
Keep in mind that all shopkeepers can have recipes in stock, not just ingredient vendors. For example, you could potentially find a new cooking recipe in Hasel's stock at the Bubble Shack to the east of your restaurant. Increasing your friendship with shopkeepers may increase the chances of recipes being sold.
You should be careful not to accidentally purchase a recipe that you've already unlocked. New recipes in vendors will have "Random" in their name, such as "Random Desert Recipe." If the recipe in a vendor's stock is named, you probably already own it — double-check your unlocked recipes in the menu before buying it.
If you loot or purchase a recipe you already own, using that recipe will refund you a small amount of Credits.
How to Beat Every Chef RPG Cooking Minigame
Here's how to beat every Chef RPG Cooking Minigame that we've found thus far. Keep in mind that not all cooking minigames are as easy as the others — you may want to carefully craft your menu to avoid some of the more complex culinary machinery if you're not too good with rhythm-based minigames.
Barista Machine Minigame
The Barista Machine minigame is one of the most challenging cooking minigames in Chef RPG. You need to raise the Water Pressure by holding A and the Steam by holding D with the goal of getting each of these dials into the yellow zone. This will cause the temperature gauge at the top to rise; you must then keep the top gauge in the red zone.
This minigame requires a lot of coordination on your part. You should first focus on raising the temperature up to the red zone by holding the Water Pressure and Steam in their ideal zones. Once you have it there, you should let go of A and D to drop it back down, occasionally tapping both A and D to keep the temperature in the ideal zone.
Remember, the temperature will not go up unless you have both Water Pressure and Steam in their ideal zones! These zones change every time you make a beverage at the Barista Machine; sometimes, the gauge's ideal zones may make it more challenging to get 100 on that particular drink.
You must continue this process of balancing these three gauges as the yellow progress bar (below the temperature gauge) fills up. You must have the temperature gauge in the red zone (or as close as possible) when the progress bar completes; this is what determines the drink's final Dish Quality.
Blender Minigame
The Blender minigame is one of the easier Chef RPG cooking minigames. There is a list of ingredients on the left and a random assortment of ingredients will scroll along the bottom of the screen. Hit X or the Space Bar when the correct ingredients pass underneath the yellow arrow.
You must continue clicking on the correct ingredients until the yellow progress bar has filled up. Missing a correct ingredient or clicking on an incorrect ingredient will lower Dish Quality, and clicking on a correct ingredient will increase Dish Quality.
In our experience, it's possible to hit every correct ingredient and still get a low score when using the Blender. It appears that this particular minigame isn't entirely fair as of Early Access version 0.5.
Chef Counter Minigame
The Chef's Counter minigame is essentially a very slow-paced version of Dance Dance Revolution. All you need to do is click the correct directional inputs when they cross over the arrow outlines at the top of the screen. Missing inputs (or hitting inputs too early or too late) will lower your Dish Quality score.
As far as cooking minigames go, the Chef's Counter isn't all that difficult to master. However, you can easily lose track of the timing if you're not paying attention. Take your time and wait for the right moment to input the correct directions!
Frier Minigame
The minigame for the Frier is pretty easy. All you need to do is raise and lower your mouse in order to move the red arrow and avoid the bubbles scrolling across the screen.
The Frier does not really become available until you've progressed the story to Act 2.
Grill Minigame
The Grill minigame is roughly in the middle in terms of difficulty. You need to watch the temperature bars above all of the ingredients on the grill. Your goal is to get the temperature of all ingredients in between the two yellow lines by the time the yellow progress bar reaches the end.
You can pick up an ingredient with the mouse and left-click in order to lower its temperature. Simply put, don't let the temperature of any of your ingredients get too low or too high and you'll probably be fine.
Keep in mind that there is a cooldown between picking up and dropping an item on the Grill. Make sure to practice so that you understand the limitations of the timing!
Ice Cream Machine Minigame
The Ice Cream Machine is the Chef RPG cooking minigame where you get to test your first-person shooter skills. Ingredients will pop up from the bottom of the Ice Cream Machine. You need to click on them in order to freeze them. Letting an ingredient fall to the bottom without being frozen or missing your shot entirely will lower your DIsh Quality.
This minigame is pretty easy once you know the trick to success. You'll want to target the ingredients in order, shooting them right at the apex of their arc before they fall back down. Don't try to haphazardly click on whatever looks like a good shot; you're likely to miss and reduce your Dish Quality!
Oven Minigame
The Oven minigame is pretty easy compared to some of the other challenges you'll face in the kitchen. All you need to do is keep the orange arrow inside of the moving yellow block on the curved bar. This yellow block will slide up and down the curved bar as the dish cooks.
The yellow block is able to move faster than you when it's rising, and it moves slower than you when it's lowering. It's important to notice when the yellow block starts moving and immediately start raising or lowering the temperature by pressing or releasing the Spacebar, respectively.
Steamer Minigame
The Steamer Minigame requires you to mash A and D in order to raise the bars on the left and right sides of the Steamer, respectively. Your goal is to keep the bars within the white box on both sides.
You won't be able to use the Steamer very much until you've progressed the story to Act 2.
Stove Minigame
The Stove minigame is simple at a glance, but it's easy to mess up! A red circle will spin around a larger circle surrounding the stove. You must press the Space Bar (or X) when the red circle crosses over the hollow brown circles that appear ahead of you.
Mistiming your button presses (or missing the hollow brown circle entirely) will lower your Dish Quality, and hitting the hollow brown circles with good timing will increase your Dish Quality.
If you miss one of these circles, you'll have to wait for the red circle to go all the way around the large circle. This can cause a big drop in Dish Quality, especially if it happens toward the end of the yellow progress bar below the pan. Remember, it's better to get a "good" hit than to miss a hit entirely!
Thanks for reading our Chef RPG Cooking Guide. Make sure to check out some of our other guides below!
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