Core Keeper has just had its 1.0 full release with the entire game now available to play. With so much content available, you get access to a variety of food items in the game. There are some advanced mechanics with foods, which includes cooking and combining different ingredients.
Having trouble grasping how food works in the game? Not to worry, we have you sorted. In this guide, we’ll go through everything you need to know about foods. This includes tips that will help you make the best food for yourself. Let’s dive in!
Best Foods Guide
Technically speaking, fishing in Core Keeper is also related to food a bit. But since there are so many food items already, we’ll be focusing more on the cooking aspect.
You’ll be able to get a grasp of cooking with fish through this guide too, as foods can be made with any ingredients. If you’re also just starting out with the game, our complete starter guide can help out too.
Feel free to use the Table of Contents if you’re only interested in a specific topic in this foods guide.
Food Overview
Since there are a lot of food items in Core Keeper 1.0, it’s difficult to go through all of them. So, instead we’ll give you a small overview of all the different foods in the game.
Starting off, we have the following types of food in Core Keeper 1.0:
- Plants
- Fungi
- Fish
- Meat
- Eggs.
Each of these food items have an associated rarity with them. The rarer the food item is, the better the stat boosts you’ll get from it. But, at the same time, these food items will also be harder to find.
For the most part, you can find food items by progressing your way through the game. At the start, you’ll find more Common ones with the rarity increasing as you go through different biomes.
You can also get certain food items from bosses, such as the Atlantean Worm optional boss. Additionally, some food items can be grown like plants. You can get meat and eggs from animals on a farm, or even some in the wild.
However, make sure that you never consume a food item raw. We’ll look at why next.
Basic Cooking & Stats
Cooking is a crucial aspect of Core Keeper, especially when it comes to making the most out of food. As a good rule of thumb, never consume food items raw.
This is because cooked items will always give you better stat boots. On the other hand, most raw foods will only help you fill your hunger bar without any other benefit.
Whenever you find a food item like a plant, always cook at least one of it. When you do so, you will be able to see the stat boosts that they provide.
Each food item has its own unique stat boost. For example, cooked mushrooms can provide you with health regeneration. In the beginning, you can use these stat boosts depending on the situation you are in.
However, keep in mind that the stats of these foods don’t always stack. For example, Giant Mushrooms and Heart Berries both give additional health. However, their stats will not stack.
Instead, you will get the highest of these stats, depending on which food item provides you with more food.
As you progress through the game and get more food items, you should try to avoid cooking single items. Instead, it is always best to cook different ingredients together to create different food items.
Cooking Combinations
Cooking is always best when you combine different ingredients together in Core Keeper. This will allow you to combine their properties and get all their stat boosts at the same time.
Generally speaking, you want to avoid cooking items together that provide the same stat boosts. This is because the stat boosts will not stack after cooking either.
Instead, you’ll get the stat boost that is the highest of both of these. For example, consider the combination of the Heart Berry and Rock Jaw. Both these foods provide +2.8 health every sec and +2.5 health every sec respectfully.
The resulting food item that is cooked will have the +2.8 health every sec boost as it is the highest.
There are some really good food combinations you can come up with, by using foods with different properties. Here are some combinations we recommend in Core Keeper 1.0:
- Hearty Pepper Wrap – Bomb Pepper and Heart Berry
- A very filling food item easy to obtain
- Recommended for early game
- Crunchy Pepper Wrap – Bomb Pepper and Carock
- Useful for evading enemies in dangerous situations
- Gooey Pepper Wrap – Bomb Pepper and Larva Meat
- Useful for fast moving dagger builds
- Moldy Gold Steak – Shiny Larva Meat and Mold Shark
- Provides amazing damage and replenishes health with every hit
- Gooey Worm Balls – Devil Worm and Larva Meat
- Excellent for ranged weapons providing additional damage
- Royal Shark Fillet – Mold Shark and Tornis Kingfish
- Provides an excellent offensive buff suitable for melee weapons
- Rare Spicy Oat Cereal – Golden Bloat Oat and Golden Bomb Pepper
- Extremely overpowered food item, providing full health restore within seconds.
As you can see, combining different types of foods will give you some great combinations and stat boosts. In general, try to experiment with food items with stats that synergize well with each other.
Crafting Potions
You can also get additional boosts by crafting potions in Core Keeper 1.0. You can actually use many of the food items to create different types of potions.
At the basic level, you’ll be able to combine basic food items with slimes to get basic potions.
As you progress through the same, you’ll get a more advanced potion table. Here, you’ll be able to make better potions but you’ll need to get rarer food items.
Hunger Tips
We strongly recommend that you try to keep your hunger as high as possible. You want to keep the bar above the 80% point as much as you can.
This is because you get a basic buff of speed, attack and damage reduction.
Try to have an idea of what kind of foods you can have on your hot bar as well. This is because you might end up overeating when you’re panicking and trying to get health in a fight.
Finally, you can also get certain food items from bosses that can give you a permanent health boost. These are higher rarity food items so be on the lookout for them.
If you enjoyed these tips, we also have some additional tips and tricks that can help ease your Core Keeper journey!
Traders
Another good tip in Core Keeper is to always check what the Traders are selling. This is because they can sell some useful foods that may be difficult to get. For example, you can get Shiny Larva Meat from them.
You can also get pre-made food items from vending machines, which you’ll get from a Trade at a certain point in the game. These provide really good but temporary stat boosts that are useful against bosses.
They can be quite expensive but can help out if you are in a pinch or just don’t like cooking in the game!
Golden Crops
Golden crops are probably the most useful food items in the entire Core Keeper game. They are useful because you can combine them with food items to insane stat boosts.
In essence, you can use the Expert gardener talent to get a chance to grow golden variants of normal plants. This chance will vary from 3-15% depending on how much you have upgraded this talent.
We strongly suggest you get it to the highest tier.
The way it works is that by default, when you grow a crop and turn it into food, there is a chance for you to get a rare version of the food. This rare version will give you a 25% boost on certain stats.
Typically, this is a low number but this number can be increased with certain skills.
However, using golden crops, you are basically guaranteed to get these boosts. If you use one golden crop with a food item, you get a guaranteed 25% boost on certain stats and numbers. Similarly, using two of these golden crops will give you a 50% guaranteed boost.
As a result, golden crops can help take you to the next level in Core Keeper.
This is why we suggest that you always grow crops in the game, even if you have a lot of food. You should periodically farm so that you can always have a chance to get golden crops.
That’s everything you need to know for the best food guide for Core Keeper. Hopefully, this should give you an idea of how food works in the game. Now you’ll be able to master cooking and slowly make your way to the golden crops.
