Ultimate Cooking Guide For Beginners In Monster Hunter Wilds

Need an extra boon on your hunts? Well, then our Ultimate Beginners Cooking Guide for Monster Hunter Wilds is sure to help!

Cooking is as important to the MonHun experience as hunting monsters itself, truthfully. It’s a key way to get extra buffs that can really power your hunter up, making even the hardest hunts a tad more manageable. While it works a tad differently in Wilds than usual, it’s still a mechanic you don’t wanna sleep on!

In this guide, we’ll tell you the very basics of how cooking works in Monster Hunter Wilds, as well as how to get ingredients and what they do.

Ultimate Beginners Cooking Guide | Monster Hunter Wilds

Let’s kick off our Ultimate Beginners Guide with the very basics of cooking in Monster Hunter Wilds! You can cook a meal at any time by using either the Portable BBQ Grill or by selecting “Grill a Meal” in the BBQ Menu while at a Base Camp or Pop-up Camp.

Once you select “Grill a Meal”, you’ll get to either pick a Recommended Meal or a Custom Meal.

Picking Recommended Meal will automatically select all of the ingredients for you, based on what you have available. Additionally, you can select to Cook Only With Rations here. This isn’t ideal, as it will only give you a basic Health and Stamina buff for 30 minutes. However, it’s very useful in the early game and much better than nothing!

If you select Custom Meal, on the other hand, you’ll be able to make… well, a custom meal! This lets you pick out all 3 types of Ingredients for your meal, as follows:

• Rations – The most basic and readily available of all ingredients and the foundation for every meal. Gives you a boost to your Health and Stamina, as well as minor buffs to other Stats depending on the type.
• Additional Ingredients – Rare specialty ingredients that provide you with Food Skills based on the type you pick. All of them will also extend the meal’s Effect Duration by 20 minutes.
• Finishing Touches – Very rare ingredients. They provide very strong Food Skills and increase Elemental Resistance by 5.

You’ll get Rations pretty easily by simply hunting and exploring, as well as the Ingredient Center in Windward Plains. Additional Ingredients and Finishing Touches primarily come from Quests and using the Item Trade system with various NPCs, making them very rare.

With the basics laid down, let’s go over every type of ingredient in the game!

Rations

As we’ve mentioned before, Rations are the most basic and common of all the ingredients. You can get every type of Ration by checking the Ingredient Center at the Windward Plains periodically. Here’s a list of all the Rations in the game and their details:

• Meat – Health +50 / Stamina +150 / Attack +2. Obtained by carving smaller creatures and animals.
• Fish – Health +50 / Stamina +150 / Defense +4. Mostly obtained by fishing at large bodies of water in the wild.
• Veggies – Health +50 / Stamina +150 / Element Resistances +3. Gathered in the wild by collecting from plants.

Additional Ingredients

Much rarer than Rations, you’ll primarily obtain Additional Ingredients as rewards from Quests and by trading with NPCs. As we’ve mentioned before, all of these ingredients will increase the meal’s Effect Duration by 20 minutes and add a Food Skill.

The issue is that Item Trade is by far the best source for these ingredients. However, trading can be quite cumbersome until Nata joins you at Base Camps in Chapter 4 of the story. Once he does, you’ll be able to trade with NPCs in a single convenient spot, without having to travel! As such, we recommend ignoring this type of ingredient until then.

Nonetheless, here are all of the Additional Ingredients in the game and their details:

• Airy Egg
  • Effect: Caprice Meal (Hi) – Randomly activates a large Attack boost.
  • Trade Source: Sekka
• Delishroom
  • Effect: Black Belt Meal (Hi) – Greatly reduces stamina consumption.
  • Trade Source: Musharpeye
• Droolshroom
  • Effect: Black Belt Meal (Lo) – Reduces stamina consumption.
  • Trade Source: Musharpeye and Gawdygog
• Fluffy Egg
  • Effect: Caprice Meal (Lo) – Randomly activates an Attack boost.
  • Trade Source: Sekka
• Kunafa Cheese
  • Effect: Defender Meal (Lo) – Decreases damage taken sometimes.
  • Trade Source: Kilama
• Mud Shrimp
  • Effect: Tumbler Meal (Lo) – Slightly increases invulnerability while evading.
  • Trade Source: Dogard, Aida, and Yabran
• Sharp Kunafa Cheese
  • Effect: Defender Meal (Hi) – Often decreases damage taken.
  • Trade Source: Kilama
• Slid Garlic
  • Effect: Moxie Meal (Lo) – Saves you from fainting once.
  • Trade Source: Ren
• Specialty Slid Garlic
  • Effect: Moxie Meal (Hi) – Saves you from fainting once and heals you.
  • Trade Source: Ren
• Turbid Shrimp
  • Effect: Tumbler Meal (Hi) – Increases invulnerability while evading.
  • Trade Source: Dogard, Aida, and Yabran

Finishing Touches

Last but not least, let’s put the finishing touches on our Ultimate Beginners Cooking Guide for Monster Hunter Wilds with… the Finishing Touches! All of the Finishing Touches give you Elemental Resistance +5 and an additional Food Skill.

Everything we said about how to get Additional Ingredients before is also true for Finishing Touches. You’ll mainly get these ingredients as Quest rewards and by trading with NPCs. However, you can also rarely get these ingredients from other sources.

Now, here’s a quick list of all the known Finishing Touches and their details:

• Eastern Honey
  • Effect: Medic Meal – Increases how much Health you recover when healing.
  • Trade Source: Ren
  • Other Source: Extremely rare drop when gathering from beehives.
• Jeweled Mullet Roe
  • Effect: Swimmer Meal – Increases Attack while you’re wet.
  • Trade Source: Musharpeye and Gawdygog
  • Other Source: Extremely rare drop when fishing.
• Monster Chili
  • Effect: Sizzling Meal – Negates the effects of hot and cold climates. Also increases Defense while in those climates.
  • Trade Source: Aida, Dogard, and Yabran
  • Other Source: Extremely rare drop when gathering plants.
• Truffle Du Conga
  • Effect: Gatherer Meal – Randomly increases the number of resources gathered from gathering spots such as bones, ores, and plants.
  • Trade Source: Rove
  • Other Source: Rare drop from Congalala.
• Wild Seed Oil
  • Effect: Specialist Meal – Increases the potency of Attacks that inflict status ailments, such as Poison.
  • Trade Source: Yabran
  • Other Source: Unknown.
• Wild Herb
  • Effect: Immunizer Meal – Lessens the effects of ailments, such as Paralysis.
  • Trade Source: Yabran
  • Other Source: Extremely rare drop when gathering plants.

That’s the end of our Ultimate Beginners Guide to cooking in Monster Hunter Wilds! Make good use of cooking to get the upper hand during tough hunts. Having the right weapon is also important, though. To know more, check out our Beginners Guide on Artian Weapons!