Posted by pixiestixy on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 - 15 Comments
Tags: Achievements, bountiful cookbook, chef, cooking, grind, pilgrim's bounty, thanksgiving, turkey
The WoW cooking grind has always been something I’ve avoided like the plague. Sure, the initial basic cooking of Spice Bread is enough to buy your way to level 50 or so cooking, but beyond that I have not ventured far. All that gathering of bear and raptor meat, clams and crab claws, eggs of all types and countless other ingredients wasn’t exactly appealing to me. So I’ve been putting it off.
Needless to say, I wasn’t too pleased — at all — when I set off to start my Pilgrim’s Bounty achievements and discovered that cooking is a staple aspect of the new holiday ( who would have thought!) I cringed at the realization that my cooking only hovered at about level 70.
But I decided to not be discouraged, and soon found the shiny silver lining for myself and all of my fellow cooking procrastinators. Upon opening up your Bountiful Cookbook, you’ll find five recipes that can be used in succession to bypass the other alternative grind to at least level 300+ cooking.
First up: the Spice Bread Stuffing, which requires the absolute minimum cooking experience to be learned at level 1. Buy enough Simple Flour and Mild Spices to cook up a ton of Spice Bread, and level up that cooking to 100, when you can learn to make Pumpkin Pie. Rinse and repeat to cooking 160 for Cranberry Chutney, 220 for Candied Sweet Potato and 280 for Slow-Roasted Turkey.
All of the ingredients, except for the turkey in that final recipe, can be purchased from the Pilgrim’s Bounty Vendors found outside each capital city, greatly reducing the amount of time you’ll need to hunt for the right kind of meat. Just keep a stack of each of the ingredients on hand, since some of them are unique to certain cities. And if you have my luck, it’ll probably take you a few times to complete that Turkinator achievement, during which you can pick up a few dozen turkeys to cook up the final recipe until it no longer yields levels. It’s as easy as pie.
Now if I can just garner up the motivation to grind those final 100 cooking levels…
Who else has been able to use this fun and festive event as a means to level up your cooking skills? I’ve also seen quite a few guildies obtain other cooking achievements after learning these new recipes, from Lunch Lady all the way up to Chef de Cuisine.
Related Posts: Protip 3.3: Pilgrim’s Bounty Cooking Finale, Pilgrim’s Bounty: Why the Rogue Hate?, Protip 3.2: Moar Pilgrim’s Bounty, The High Inquisitor: On the Longevity of Food and Feasts, Protip 3.1: Pilgrim’s Bounty,
By BlahbahBlah on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
I’ve never seen as many people in the guild getting cooking achievements at one time, yesterday there were probably like 50 different cooking achievements earned by different people in my guild. I personally didn’t know it was this easy, I just went over to the quests, saw they were cooking related, and ran away. I guess I’ll have to try this out.
By Dr. Jones on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
My brother is a level 47 rogue, and he got 350 cooking atm :b
By Rogue4Life on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:33 pm
yeah, i would have to agree, my cooking is sitting at 66 right now and i wasn’t too excited about the holiday having to do with cooking. although after seeing 2 guildies complete them and now hearing how easy it is, maybe i will be on DnD tonight to lvl up the cooking a bit.
now if only they would improve the lvling for fishing, as it took forever to get that lvled and i am only at 300 and am not looking forward to the time kill it will take to get it to 400. let me know if anyone has an tips/tricks to lvl it at a fairly rapid pace. at my current rate I will have it maxed by the expansion following cataclysm.
By Pauldy on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
For finishing off your fishing try the dalaran fountain, catch coins and level fishing up at the same time.
By Alayea on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Before Blizzard had even announced the new holiday, I had already made up my mind that my main was going to be the only one with max cooking because that profession was such a pain (literally, at times) to grind. I was going to avoid doing Pilgrim’s Bounty on my other characters, but then it got pointed out that the holiday made cooking ez-mode.
Thanks to Pilgrim’s Bounty, my level 80 druid that started out with 41 in cooking is currently at 370. That turkey recipe lasts you from 280 to ~355, so then you can just hit up Northrend for cooking mats.
By Urziel on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
All of my toons from level 50 up (warrior, shammy, pally, mage hunter dk ) are all to 350 thanks to pilgrim’s bounty, the druid (27) will get as far as his level allows.
By Trial on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 6:22 pm
im a level 61 and i just got my cooking up to 300 with this :x..anyone knows how many turkeys you can cook untill the recipe turns grey?
my bet is untill level 375?
By Staffan on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Wowhead claims you can get up to 355 with the turkeys, although they are somewhat less convenient than the other recipes that use mats you can just grab off the pilgrim vendors.
By Kyndranigar on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 10:14 pm
My character with cooking skill maxed and tons of recipies nabbed Chef de Cuisine off this holiday.
By denalo on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 10:32 pm
HAHA your all lazy LAZY i tell yea xD…i maxed fishing along with cooking from the start i swear i was the ONLY max cook in my raid guild at one point lol..course that was when i became annoyed farming for enough mats for 25 ppl or more in a night..ugh for me fishing was the bigger pain because i procrastinated at that and desided to level it before the* you can fish anywhere* fix they added. personaly i love cooking self buffs and i look damn sexy in my chef set<cookies tenderizer+butchers cleaver chef’s hat.
By Damnyankee on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 3:51 am
Cooking was the only secondary that I had not even started yet on my Main. I have a couple Alts with the skill but I maxed out cooking on my Main in less than 4 hours, picking up Skills to pay the Bills achievement along with a few others. Thanx to this event cooking was a breeze.
By Jen Chambers on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 10:24 am
My lvl 3 bank toon now has lvl 300 cooking.
By Pollo on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
You can level cooking at 350 with the turkeys. After that you can learn almost all the recipes from Dalaran instructor. Then you can buy the cheapest materials you find in the AH (you’ll have about 30 new recipes so there’ll be sure one of you very cheap, I found very cheap rhino meat stacks), with these you’ll be able to level cooking to 420-430, and then with the daily cooking quest you’ll learn the best foods and you’ll be soon suplying your raid with the loved fish feasts.
By Allenok on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Got 2 of my toons to 350 cooking from zero in one day just using the holiday food. I like Pilgrims Bounty
By Xianghua on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
My hunter and my shaman are the only characters with maxed cooking. I decided with my hunter to get as many recipes as possible, despite the fact that I already have the Chef de Cuisine achievement. I even did a BWL pug just for the cooking recipe quest from the AQ chain (though the BWL achieve was nice too).