Leveling up Cooking is a bit different in Dragonflight compared to previous expansions.
It is easy, but there are a few tricks to make it even cheaper, easier, and faster. In this guide, we will show you how to level up Cooking fast in Dragonflight, including the ingredients you will need and the most efficient methods.
Keep any of the gold you might have used to max out Cooking and save it for other things, like gear or mounts on the Auction House. There’s no need to break the bank trying to level your professions up, although we will be looking at an additional method where you will need to spend more gold later in the guide.
Cooking Ingredient List
Here are the ingredients you will need at the start. The numbers here can vary somewhat, but we’ll dive into that in more depth later:
- 50 Lava Beetles
- 50 Conveniently Packaged Ingredients
- 50 Salt Deposits
- 50 Artisanal Berry Juice
- 50 Ribbed Mollusk Meat
Apart from these ingredients, you need a ton of the following fish. You can get most of these by leveling up Fishing, and you can find them on the Auction House too:
- Scalebelly Mackerel
- Islefin Dorado
- Temporal Dragonhead
- Thousandbite Piranha
- Aileron Seamoth
- Cerulean Spinefish
Once you’ve got plenty of these fish, you’re good to go.
Leveling Cooking 1-50
Leveling Cooking from 1 to 50 is easy. You have the choice between cooking Assorted Exotic Spices or Pebbled Rock Salt to level Cooking from 1 to 25.
There are no wrong answers here because both reagents are needed for future crafts anyway. It is up to you to choose which ones to craft.
It also doesn’t matter how many you craft. You will need these reagents in the future if you want to craft food buffs for raids or dungeons.
You will need Lava Beetles and Conveniently Packaged Ingredients for Assorted Exotic Spices.
You will need Salt Deposits and Conveniently Packaged Ingredients for Pebbled Rock Salts.
To choose which craft would benefit you more, read the Cooking 51-100 section and come back here. If you don’t mind crafting both since you will be using them anyway, you can craft them randomly as well.
Your goal is just to reach Cooking level 25 for these crafts.
To reach 50 from 25, your next craft will be Delicious Dragon Spittle. You can learn the recipe from any cooking trainer in the Dragon Isles.
You will need Artisanal Berry Juice and Ribbed Mollusk Meat for Delicious Dragon Spittle.
I crafted x41 Delicious Dragon Spittle to get to an exact cooking skill of 50. However, it might be different for everyone because leveling from 40-50 involves some randomness.
You can stop crafting once you reach 50. The next problem is getting past level 50, which is different compared to past expansions.
Leveling Cooking 51-100
To level Cooking from 50 to 100, you need to get some locked recipes. By locked, it just means that you cannot get it from the Cooking trainer.
Without any locked recipes, you will be stuck at level 50. The best way to level Cooking from here is by obtaining the ‘Simple Fish Dishes’ from your Cooking profession tab.
There are four recipes here.
| Simple Recipes | Ingredient | Ingredient 2 | Ingredient 3 |
| Filet of Fangs | Thousandbite Piranha | Assorted Exotic Spices | Ribbed Mollusk Meat |
| Salt-Baked Fishcake | Cerulean Spinefish | Assorted Exotic Spices | Ribbed Mollusk Meat |
| Seamoth Surprise | Aileron Seamoth | Assorted Exotic Spices | Ribbed Mollusk Meat |
| Timely Demise | Temporal Dragonhead | Pebbled Rock Salts | Ribbed Mollusk Meat |
These recipes come from Draconic Recipes in a Bottle. This item is a rare drop from Fishing. Not only is the drop rate low, but also there are a ton of other recipes that can drop from the bottle too.
You can also look at the Cooking profession tab and hover over a recipe to find out where you get it from. It’s possible to get some recipes from farming Renown or various Dragonflight reputations.
If you want to get these recipes from Fishing, you need to max out your Fishing, boost your perception with a better Fishing rod and profession tools, and unlock Greater Fishing Holes to increase the chances of Fishing rare drops.
You can buy the recipes from the Auction House, but it might cost you a lot of gold, depending on your server prices.
You only need one of the recipes above to reach Dragonflight cooking 100.
Once you get one of the recipes above, craft it until you can max out your cooking. When you craft one of the recipes above, you will also learn a ‘Deluxe Fish Dish’ randomly.
If you have the materials for the unlocked recipe, you can switch to crafting that to save some materials or reagents.
| Deluxe Recipes | Ingredients 1 | Ingredients 2 | Ingredients 3 | Ingredient 4 | Unlocked Through |
| Aromatic Seafood Platter | Aileron Seamoth | Temporal Dragonhead | Pebbled Rock Salts | Islefin Dorado | Timely Demise or Seamoth Surprise |
| Feisty Fish Sticks | Temporal Dragonhead | Thousandbite Piranha | Pebbled Rock Salts | Islefin Dorado | Timely Demise or Filet of Fangs |
| Great Cerulean Sea | Aileron Seamoth | Cerulean Spinefish | Pebbled Rock Salts | Islefin Dorado | Seamoth Surprise or Salt-Baked Fishcake |
| Revenge, Served Cold | Aileron Seamoth | Thousandbite Piranha | Assorted Exotic Spices | Islefin Dorado | Filet of Fangs or Seamoth Surprise |
| Sizzling Seafood Medley | Temporal Dragonhead | Cerulean Spinefish | Assorted Exotic Spices | Islefin Dorado | Timely Demise or Salt-Baked Fishcake |
| Thousandbone Tongueslicer | Thousandbite Piranha | Cerulean Spinefish | Pebbled Rock Salts | Islefin Dorado | Filet of Fangs or Salt-Baked Fishcake |
These are the deluxe fish recipes you can unlock while cooking the simple recipes mentioned above. However, you will only unlock these deluxe recipes randomly through crafting.
For example, I crafted x58 Timely Demise, but I only unlocked Aromatic Seafood Platter and Feisty Fish Sticks. I missed the Sizzling Seafood Medley unlock.
It may take a while before unlocking them, but once you do, these recipes will get your cooking to 100 faster.
If you see all the Pebbled Rock Salts and Assorted Exotic Spices ingredients on the recipes, you can go back to the cooking 1-50 section and adjust accordingly.
Since the simple recipes are available on the Auction House, you can actually prepare everything from 1 to 100.
If you are looking to save gold, you might as well level up Fishing and grab all the ingredients before you start Cooking. You can even get the recipe and sell the extras for a profit. They go for quite a lot of gold on the Auction House, but it will vary depending on your server.
What to Do After Maxing Out Cooking
Once you’ve hit level 100 with your Cooking, take stock of what reagents you have and head to the Auction House if you have any left over. Prices will vary from server to server but you can make a good amount of gold with Dragonflight materials.
If you’re interested in the various rare unlocks and achievements you can get from Cooking, keep tabs on the Auction House and keep working on your other professions like Fishing as you go around the Dragon Isles. You’ll be able to pick up a good variety of achievements, rewards (like Battle Pets or even mounts), and other recipes as you go.
