Team17's new game called Epic Chef is a humorous take on the cooking simulation game. While this game might seem like a simple one on the surface, players will need to be ready to bring their A-game to survive culinary battles, haunted houses, and the Orc Mob. Here are some tips and tricks to help any new player get started in the town of Ambrosia.
Leveling and Eating
The leveling system in the quirky sim game Epic Chef is based around Zest's daily meal. Players should make use of their kitchen at least once a day, not only familiarizing themselves with ingredients, synergies, and food types, but also to make themselves and their noble steed, Birch, excellent meals. Players need to perform physical activities like chopping down trees to raise their vigor scores, thoughtful activities like studying to raise their spirit, and relaxing to raise their sophistication. Once a player has filled up the bar relating to those activities in the upper left-hand part of the screen, then they should eat a meal that matches the balance of those points. For example, if the bar has reached x2 for spirit, but is 0 for the other two stats, eat a dish that is high in spirit. This will add those saved-up points to a player's overall cooking level.
The Cooking level opens up new synergies between foods for Zest to test out, so players should take every opportunity to raise this level. Getting chores done around the farm as part of Epic Chef's Farming Simulation portion, chatting with NPCs, running errands for others, cooking, winning chef battles, and other activities will help to raise the different levels of spirit, sophistication, and vigor and get players to those higher chef levels.
Cooking Battles
Cooking battles are covered when players meet Slothy on the beach for the first time, but the tutorial is a little front-loaded and may be difficult to understand at first. However, players will need to master the art of cooking battles in order to get through the comedic storyline of Epic Chef. Battles pit two chefs against one another with a third person (or donkey as the case may be) as a judge. Players should pay special attention to the desires and tastes of the judges. Some judges will like or dislike certain ingredients and their tastes can be altered with sauces.
- Cooking battles can take place in one round or in several rounds. Each dish needs to have three ingredients plus sauce, so players should make sure to have enough ingredients to last through all the rounds.
- Make sure to ask NPCs for their advice before the battle; players will usually get a hint of what is coming if they ask around.
- Make sure the sauce compliments the dish. If players are building a dish with high spirit, add a sauce that helps dishes with spirit.
- Players can decide who goes first by lowering or raising their aroma score. The highest aroma score is always tasted first; this means players can add boosting or negative effects to the opponent's dish if their aroma is higher. Boost aroma scores by shaking the pan several times before stirring it. A tied aroma score usually goes to the player.
Farming and Planting
When farming in Team17's Epic Chef, players should make sure that they not only harvest every vegetable and fruit every day but also chop down all their trees too to save up the various types of wood. Trees regrow so quickly that players will still be able to harvest fruits from the trees as well as the wood. This will ensure that players have no issues building all the possible structures in the game. Also, things that grow out in the wild will regularly respawn as well, so don't forget to grab up some mushrooms out of the woods by Zest's house and crabs and seaweed off of the beach.
Also, when planting in this part-farming simulation title, players need to keep an eye on their seeds. Each seed has a limited number of times it will bear fruit, so make sure to keep plenty of each vegetable around to make more seeds. Three fruits make a single seed. If players run out of a particular fruit or vegetable, they can buy new ones in the market, but these can be pricey. In order to save money, make sure to have Zest make the seeds himself. Also, players should plant about 2 or 3 tomato plants for every potato, rice, and carrot; tomatoes are needed for several more sauces than the others as well as cow feed.
Other Helpful Hints for Epic Chef
- Talk to everyone - NPCs will often have little errands for players to run. Talk to every NPC possible every single time a major event happens in the story; even if they don't have something for Zest to do, the NPCs may do something funny which makes them worth talking to.
- Save Money - Players should hold onto as much money as possible, not wasting anything on decorations or upgrades for their homes until renovations are made in the restaurant and all player's equipment for the farm is ready.
- How to fish - Early in the game, players might see a tip screen that prompts them to fish. However, the fishing mini-game is not available to the player until after they defeat Torpedo. After this major boss battle, Zest will find an NPC down by the dock who will sell him a fishing rod. There will be another nearby that will teach him to fish; bring along plenty of crabs to use as bait.
- Use Birch for quick travel - Zest can summon Birch from anywhere on the map. Riding on this giant bird will at least double Zest's running speed, so make sure to use Birch as often as possible while keeping him fed with the best meals that Zest's kitchen can offer. The better the meal, the more boosts that the bird will receive like faster walking and additional points to their highest hunger score.
- Look around for idle activities to level Zest's spirit, vigor, and sophistication. There are several little idle spots that players can take advantage of once a day.
Epic Chef is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.