The buffs are permanent, and that is the whole point
Almost everything else that raises a stat in this game is conditional — a weapon passive lasts five seconds, a Charm occupies a slot on Koo, a skill point can be respecced away. A meal cooked by Kagura raises HP, Attack, Defense, Skill Power or Critical Rate and does not expire. IGN is explicit about it: these buffs are not for a limited time. That makes cooking the only permanent, slot-free progression in the game outside the skill trees, and it is the reason a system that looks like a survival chore is worth building around.
There are two cooking systems and they do different jobs
Sitting at a campfire cooks raw ingredients automatically, and you eat them out of your battle pack. That is field healing and nothing more. The second system is Kagura, a cook you meet early in the main story, who works at the Cleanse Walker: rest until morning and she makes a specific dish, which heals you, refills hunger and applies the permanent growth. Confusing the two is the easy mistake — grilling meat at a campfire all game will keep you alive and will never raise a stat.
Hunger gates your health regeneration
Emma and Koo each have a hunger meter that falls as you travel and fight. While it has anything in it they regenerate health passively; when it empties they stop. Feeding them is the D-pad down menu and your battle pack, which refills with field rations, hard candy and Koo treats every time you leave the Cleanse Walker. Fish pulled out of rivers cover you when it runs dry. Hunger is therefore not a damage timer — it is a switch on your regeneration, which is why letting it empty during a long exploration run is worse than it looks.
The grow chamber is what turns cooking into a routine
Seedlings found in the world go into the Cleanse Walker's grow chamber and harvest themselves, so ingredients stop depending on what you happen to walk past. IGN's early advice is potatoes and rice. You can also hand the decision to Kagura by setting food production to a recipe, after which she grows what it needs. More crop slots need the Cleanse Walker's power stat, raised by finding generator devices and facility modules in the field. There is an incubator for chickens too, which is where eggs come from — and eggs feed four dishes including the only one anyone has published a number for.
| Where a stat comes from | What it costs | Does it last? |
|---|---|---|
| A cooked meal | Ingredients you farm, plus a cook book | Permanent |
| A weapon passive | A weapon slot, and Amber to enhance | Five seconds at a time |
| A Charm on Koo | A slot on Koo | While equipped |
| A skill node | Skill points, respeccable | While allocated |
A cooked meal
- What it costs
- Ingredients you farm, plus a cook book
- Does it last?
- Permanent
A weapon passive
- What it costs
- A weapon slot, and Amber to enhance
- Does it last?
- Five seconds at a time
A Charm on Koo
- What it costs
- A slot on Koo
- Does it last?
- While equipped
A skill node
- What it costs
- Skill points, respeccable
- Does it last?
- While allocated
Recipes are found, bought or earned — and researched before you can cook them
Cook books are scattered in the world, sold by merchants, and the last two are given by Kagura as her rapport with Emma rises. Finding one is not enough: she has to research it, one at a time, before it can be cooked. Research is either a recipe or a crop — crop research raises how much a seedling yields — and switching mid-way does not lose your progress. Bringing her books and talking to her also raises rapport, which pays out in more rations and hard candy for the field. Every dish then has Normal, Superior and Ultimate ranks, and the higher two need the previous tier researched plus the Cleanse Walker's calculations stat, raised by collecting electronic brains.
What nobody has published, and why this guide stops here
The numbers. Not one source anywhere gives the stat values for these dishes, with a single exception: IGN reads Fried Egg off the screen as +5 HP and +1 Attack and calls it essential early. Fextralife lists all twenty-five dishes as "Increases HP and Attack" and its equivalents, with no figures at all. So the recipe database names which of the five stats each dish raises and never how much, and a table of magnitudes on this page would be the easiest thing on this site to invent and the hardest for a reader to check. There is also a first-time bonus — IGN says the first time you cook and eat a given meal you get a larger buff than afterwards, which is an argument for variety and another number nobody has published.