A Guide to Cooking with Aloft Techniques

If you find yourself taking too much damage in Aloft, don’t worry. You will always respawn at home with all your belongings. However, there’s a simple way to give your character extra health and boosts: cook and eat various meals.

You can discover Gourmet Recipe cards while exploring or experiment with ingredients on your Cooking Plate over a fire back on your home island. There are multiple cooking recipes in Aloft that can grant you additional health and temporary stat boosts during your adventures.

Cooking Meals Using a Cooking Plate Over Fire

While eating raw ingredients can provide small benefits, the most effective way to gain significant stat boosts in Aloft is by consuming prepared meals. Meals restore more health compared to standard bandages and provide temporary bonuses that enhance your abilities, like increasing your speed or helping you combat monsters. These stat boosts last for several real-time minutes.

You’re likely to find your first meals in treasure chests during your explorations of new islands. These meals can often be located in chests or baskets within what appears to be ruined towns, but don’t overlook containers elsewhere. Even meals that seem unappealing in real life can offer advantages to your character, so be sure to collect any meals you encounter, even before you gain cooking capabilities.

Before you start cooking your own meals, you’ll need to obtain the recipe for a Cooking Plate. This is a stone platter that you’ll place over an open flame, such as a campfire or fireplace—both of which can also be unlocked as crafting recipes. Once the Cooking Stone is in place, interact with it to access the cooking menu. From there, you can either choose three ingredients to experiment, or use recipes you’ve discovered during your explorations.

Although Gourmet Recipe cards might not be as common as other resources, you can find them in treasure chests, especially on larger planets that require effort to mitigate corruption and restore the environment. Simply interact with the Gourmet Recipe card to learn it while it’s selected in your inventory.

When using your Cooking Stone, you’ll notice a flame icon next to your ingredients when cooking is underway. Make sure to keep the flame meter yellow by pressing the indicated button periodically. If you let it turn red for too long, you’ll end up with a burnt meal, wasting ingredients and providing minimal benefits.

Once your meal is ready, you must remove it from the Cooking Stone before adding new ingredients if you want to continue cooking. If you accidentally added an ingredient, you can also remove it from the menu.

Complete Cooking Recipes in Aloft