Cooking and eating meals are an integral part of making hunts significantly more manageable in Monster Hunter Wilds. Meals offer a variety of buffs to your hunter, ranging from Attack Boosts to buffing your overall defense.
So if you are struggling during a certain encounter, having the right meal might provide you the required edge to finally take the monster down.
Hence, if you are looking to know everything there is about the cooking and the meal system in the RPG, the guide below will help you out.
How to cook meals in Monster Hunter Wilds
There are two ways that you will be able to cook meals in Monster Hunter Wilds:
1) Cooking in a Camp
When you enter your tent in either the Base Camp or a Pop-up Camp, you will get the option to “Grill a Meal”. Once you select it, there will be a brief animation where your hunter roasts fresh meat and consumes it to gain a specific buff. The buff will depend on the ingredients that you used during the cooking method.
2) Cooking in a Portable BBQ Grill
Another way of cooking is to use the Portable BBQ Grill which is a staple in your inventory. When you are out exploring the open world of Monster Hunter Wilds, you can pick a safe spot where you know that the monster won’t attack, scroll through your item list (by holding L1 and tapping Square/Circle,) and then select the grill. When you use it, you will get the option to prepare a meal.
Meal cooking types in Monster Hunter Wilds
Here are the different meal-cooking types in Monster Hunter Wilds:
1) Recommended Meals
When you go to prepare a meal, the Recommended Meal option is what you will be getting first. It’s the ideal pick to go for if you are new to the game. The option will show a variety of meal types that the game feels will benefit your current loadout.
Once you are satisfied with the meal, you will then need to select “Add Ingredients and Cool” to prepare your food.
Alternatively, you will also get the choice to “Choose Only with Rations”. This option will give you increased HP and Stamina along with other smaller buffs.
2) Custom Meals
Custom Meals is where you pick all the ingredients for the meal. This will provide you with a fair bit of flexibility. When making a Custom Meal, you will first need to select a Ration, which will determine the buff you receive including boosts to both Health and Stamina.
After you pick the Ration, you will need to select Additional Ingredient. This will increase your food buff’s duration by 20 minutes. Along with this, it will also provide you with additional Food Skills.
Once you pick the Additional Ingredient, you will need to add the Finishing Touches, which will produce further defensive options like Elemental Resistance along with more Food Skills.
3) Favorite Meals
If you have made a Custom Meal that works perfectly with your loadouts, then you can add it to the Favorite Meal option. This will allow you to skip having to select all the ingredients every time you want to have that Custom Meal and just directly select it from the Favorite Meals menu.
You can save up to 40 Custom Meals in your Favorite Meals menu.
Types of food and ingredients in Monster Hunter Wilds
The most basic meal type in Monster Hunter Wilds will only need Rations. This is an item that you receive readily from the Support Desk NPC at your base camp.
You will eventually start to unlock more ingredients as you complete more of the narrative, and these ingredients offer different buff types. This is where your Custom Meal plans come in handy, and you can tailor particular meals to specific hunts.
Here are the three base Ration types that you will find in Monster Hunter Wilds:
| Ration | Base Effect |
|---|---|
| Meat | +50 health +150 stamina +2 attack |
| Fish | +50 health +150 stamina +4 defense |
| Veggies | +50 health +150 stamina +2 defense +3 elemental resistance |
Additional Ingredients include:
| Additional Ingredient | Effect |
|---|---|
| Kunafa Cheese | Defender: Sometimes decreases damage taken. |
| Droolshroom | Black Belt Meal: Reduces stamina depletion when performing stamina-draining moves, such as dodging. |
| Fluffy Egg | Caprice Meal: Repeatedly activates a temporary attack boost at random intervals. |
| Sild Garlic | Moxie Meal: Prevents fainting once when damage taken exceeds your remaining health. |
Note: When you start adding additional ingredients to a basic meal plan you will receive an additional 20-mins duration to the meal buff.
After additional Ingredients, you have the finishing touches that add another layer of effect to your meal:
| Finishing Touches | Effect |
|---|---|
| Wild Herb | Immunizer Meal: Lessens the effects of various ailments. |
| Eastern Honey | Medic Meal: Increases the amount of health recovered when healing |
How to get more cooking ingredients in Monster Hunter Wilds
Here are some of the best ways of gathering more cooking ingredients in Monster Hunter Wilds:
1) Trade ingredients through Tribe Trading
Each region has a tribe and when you progress further into the narrative you will find the option to trade items for cooking ingredients with specific NPCs via Tribe Trading.
2) Using skills that improve your ingredient-gathering ability
Some armor sets come with the Geologist and Botanist skills in Wilds. These will help you increase the total number of items that you can pick up per gather helping you have a much easier time gathering the resources that you need for your meals.
3) Look for question-mark icons to get special ingredients
Every region has a specific cooking ingredient that is exclusive to them. These are marked on the map with a question mark, so make sure you are gathering them.
4) Request goods at the Support Ship
You can request Misc. items at the Support Ship once you have unlocked it. This will let you get your hands on a lot of cooking ingredients over time.
5) Bonfire Cooking
You can try trading with Wudwud at the bonfire to hand over some items and they will make you new types of meal on the spot.
How to make a custom meal that fits your build the best in Monster Hunter Wilds
Making the best Custom meal for you in Monster Hunter Wilds will depend on the monster you are going up against and the weapon and build that you are using. If you are a Bow main then the meal you should go for should have the Black Belt effect along with the Tumbler Meal skill.
Black Belt will help reduce Stamina consumption while the Tumbler Meal will increase your i-frames after doing a dodger. So make sure you have a firm understanding of how each ingredient works in Wilds and the ones you should be looking to include in your meal.
Why should you cook meals before every hunt in Monster Hunter Wilds?
Cooking will provide you with very convenient buffs in Monster Hunter Wilds which include Attack Boost, Health Boost, and buffs to both HP and Stamina. You will also get other powerful Food Skills with your meal along with Elemental Resistances.
Meals will make a lot of your difficult encounters significantly easier in Monster Hunter Wilds. Moreover, as you reach the later stages of the game you will unlock more powerful food skills and other buffs.
