Cooking and Herbalism

Cooking and Herbalism allows players to create foods, alcohols, and alchemical potions which provide significant buffs when consumed. Because this profession creates consumable items such as hot meals, it is always in high demand. This profession pairs well with Forestry and Farming.

Cooking

Cooking is one of the most vital skills in GV because food only stays hot for 4 hours and it's very much a profession that, like a restaurant, has busy hours and "off hours". Cooks find themselves making piles of money during sieges, prime time and State of War.

Herbalism and Alchemy

Alchemy is part of the Cooking and Herbalism craft. Alchemical elixirs, tinctures, brews and potions provide significant buffs when used correctly. When used incorrectly, their effects are very minor. Alchemy's main ingredients are various herbs, plants, and alcohols.

Alchemy is done at the Herbalist's Workshop, located inside of Inns.

Buff Slots and Dosage

Each alchemy item uses 1 of 3 specific buff slots, and each item's effect is minor until it is dosed correctly. All 3 buff slots may be used simultaneously. Using a second, different item that uses the same buff slot will overwrite the currently active buff. There is no "synergy" or relationship between buffs on different slots. They act independently.

The three slots are:
Tincture
Alcohol
Potion

"Dosing" is consuming a specific quantity of alchemy items one after another to achieve a long lasting, powerful buff. Failure to properly dose results in very low and insignificant buffs. Correct dosages can result in strong buffs which last around 6 hours. Discovering the correct dosage and which buff slot an item uses is a matter of trial and error in game.

Linked below is a full list of all current alchemical items, effects, buff slots, and optimal dosages.

Warning: This chart contains significant spoiler information about the system. If you enjoy discovery, do not click this link.
Alchemy Buff Chart

Ultimate Buff

Using this formula

Full Dose + (Full Dose - 1) = Ultimate Buff

boosts the maximum effect of a buff in any slot by a few percentage points for 1 hour. It is not common to do this, but it is possible and usually reserved for State of War because this is highly resource intensive for a relatively minor additional effect.

For example, a normal full dose of the Protection Tincture item results in 10% damage reduction. However, using the above formula, one can achieve an Ultimate Buff:

7 Protection tinctures + 6 protection Tinctures = 16% damage reduction for 1 hour.

Ultimate buffs only last 1 hour, after this, it will go back to the remaining maximum buff timer. In our example above, once the 16% damage reduction buff runs out after an hour, the player will still have 5 hours of the 10% damage reduction buff.

It is possible to use 2 different consumables that use the same buff slot (such as using a full dose of Mineral brew + A full dose minus 1 of Protection tincture). However, usually people stack the same item twice because the overall effect is higher.

For example: 7 Protection tinctures + 6 Protection tinctures = 16% damage reduction.

16% damage reduction tends to be more appealing than, for example:

7 Protection tinctures + 6 Mineral Brew= 10% damage reduction and 6% stamina regen for example.

The Ultimate Buff only applies to Potion and Tincture slots. Alcohol cannot be boosted in this way.

Recipes

Cooking and alchemy recipes may be bought from Food and Herb merchants in each city near Inns or Markets. Different cities have different recipes, so look around. Recipes can also be looted from humanoid enemies, chests, purchased at the Glory Vendor, or purchased on the player Market.

It is not possible to learn recipes by disassembling or consuming food/alchemy items as it is in other professions.

Also see:Crafting | Forestry and Farming