Free Realms Chef Guide: Why be a chef, and how to harvest

Free Realms Chef Guide: Why be a chef, and how to harvest
Page content

What is a chef?

In Free Realms, a chef is a gatherer and a crafter. Unlike blacksmiths (a member only class), who must obtain their materials from miners, chefs obtain most of their own materials from gathering ingredients. Chefs then turn those ingredients into special food by cooking them. No matter what level chef you are, you specialize in making delicious, useful food for the citizens of Free Realms.

Why be a chef?

Yummy food gives you stat bonuses.

Quite simply, the main reason to be a chef in Free Realms is to make great food for you and your friends. The food that you can make can do a variety of things: increase your stats, attack, range, speed, power, health, and energy. There are also foods that can make you larger or smaller. When you first start out in your combat jobs, you may not find these food buffs necessary - but food quickly becomes as essential as potions in your questing and exploring Free Realms.

On top of that, the Chef job is perhaps one of the funnest free to play jobs in Free Realms: alternating between matching mini games and cooking mini-games (similar to the Cooking Mama series) makes you really feel like a chef! If you love cooking games, you’ll love being a chef.

How to harvest

The harvesting mini game.

Chefs gather their ingredients by harvesting, a matching minigame. The goal in harvesting is to match 3 or more adjacent fruits or vegetables by creating a chain. Chains can be created by clicking on the first part of the chain, and tracing a line to the last part of the chain, then clicking again. Each chain you clear from the playing board will go towards a basket of the fruit - fill a basket up, and you’ll have earned one ingredient for your recipes.

There is a time limit on the harvesting mini-game. You will gain time as you make matches on the board, and gain more time for longer chains than shorter ones. Although you may be tempted to only gather what you need and then leave or let the time run out, keep in mind that your score in the mini game contributes directly to your experience as a chef!

There are a few special tiles in the minigame you need to keep an eye out for:

Block: This tile can’t be matched with anything, and it can’t be destroyed unless you get it all the way to the bottom of the game board.

Blast: This tile, when clicked on, will destroy several random tiles across the board. Good to save for when you get stuck.

Locked: When a lock appears on a regular tile, it cannot be destroyed or shuffled. It can be matched with other matchable tiles, however. Matching a locked tile will unlock it, causing the lock to disappear and the tile to become a normal tile.

Star: This special tile acts as a wildcard. You can use this star as part of a combination with any other matchable tile.

Tornado: Clicking on this tile will shuffle around some tiles on the board randomly. These are good to save for times when you get stuck and can’t find a match.

How to cook

When chefs have all their ingredients, they take them to a cooking table, select a recipe, and get to cooking! There are many different stages for cooking, and each recipe has its own unique mini game selected of various components. Here are the types of actions you’ll be expected to do while cooking.

Cooking

Add: Used to put together prepared ingredients into a bowl, etc. Aim your tongs over the ingredient listed on the left, and click and hold the left mouse button. Drag the ingredient over to where it belongs, and let go with the mouse button. Pick up something wrong? Just release the mouse button (but not over the pot!)

Carve/Slice: Used to carve meat or slice vegetables. Click and hold the left mouse button, and drag your mouse up and down vertically to slice the meat.

Chop: Used to chop up herbs and vegetables. Click the left mouse button repeatedly to chop the ingredient into small pieces for the recipe.

Cook: Used to cook up all ingredients to the perfect temperature. Several ingredients will appear in a pan in front of you. Click the left mouse button on each individual ingredient as it reaches the perfect temperature (usually an orange or red color.) If you turn it too early, or too late, you’ll lose points!

Crack: Used to open eggs. Like smashing fruit, you’ll want to hit the eggs after aiming above them with a hammer; but this time, wait until your power meter is as low as possible. If you smash an egg when the power meter is high, you’ll break it and it won’t be useable.

Measure: Used to pour ingredients into a pot. Just click and hold the left mouse button, and drag the mouse downward to begin pouring. Hitting in the “green” is good; hitting the “yellow” is perfect.

Smash: Used for smashing fruits, click the left mouse button while aiming over a fruit to bring the hammer down to smash. For best results, wait until the power meter reaches the top (in green) to get perfect hits.

Stir: Used to stir ingredients together as they cook. Click and hold the mouse button and move the cursor in the way the center arrows indicate. Be careful, sometimes the direction changes.

Tenderize: Used to tenderize meat. Click the left mouse button to smash the meat - but be warned, meat has a mind of its own and will run from you!

Getting Started: Your first quests

You can become a chef by speaking with any of the chef trainers. To start your role as a chef, however, it’s best to meet with one of three trainers: Simone in Crossroads, Auguste Frydaze in Highroad Junction, and Helena in Stillwater Crossing. Better yet, meet with all three - each has a small quest chain that will provide you valuable experience, as detailed below.

simone

Simone in Crossroads will begin your time as a chef with the quest Chef: Crossroads Cafe, having you cook two Spiralmint Steak for her. Next, Simone will send you off to find Jonelle near Queensfields, located just north on the road. Jonelle has lost her packages, and sends you to recover them - a minigame in which you need to find and click on all the missing packages before time runs out. After returning the packages to Jonelle, she’ll send you a little farther north to Honey. Honey will ask you to harvest 3 Bumbleberry and 3 Gummyfruit at the fields nearby.

When you’ve harvested what you need, Honey will send you to Bordon Cloo in Sanctuary. You can do the other two starter lines as well, which will get you up to level 4 as a chef – just keep in mind that you may not be able to complete all of the third line before having to go talk to Bordon Cloo. When you’ve completed their quest lines (very identical to Simone’s), head on in to see the famous chef of Free Realms.

Chef: Getting from level 5 to 10

Bordon Cloo

Note: Membership is required to continue past level 5.

Having completed the beginning chef quests, you’re off to meet Bordon Cloo in Sanctuary. He’ll have you cook up some Savory Spiralmint Soup. Finding your soup sub-par, Bordon Cloo will send you off to harvest gummyfruit and stainberry, and take the ingredients to Chef Jarvie in Merry Vale.

Upon your delivery, Chef Jarvie will ask you to cook up 3 Mystery Pot Roasts. You should hopefully have all the ingredients from your previous harvesting, but if not, go out and harvest them, then come back. After cooking up your pot roasts, Chef Jarvie will insist you reach level 10 as a chef. If you’re not level 10 yet, the best way to build up your level is to start cooking any of the recipes you’ve learned so far, as you will not get experience from harvesting. Once you’re level 10, Jarvie will send you to Wugachug to Chef Yumtumalot.

Chef: From level 10 to 15

Chef Yumtumalot

Chef Yumtumalot in Wugachug, like many other chefs in Free Realms, doubts your abilities as a chef. You’ll be challenged to cook three Rainleaf Wrapped Dumplings, and score at least 20,000 while cooking one. With the practice you’ve already had cooking previous items, getting the high score shouldn’t be too difficult.

Impressed with your accomplishment, Chef Yumtumalot will send you off to Snowhill to meet Lucca De’Flor, another snob nosed chef who wants to test your potential. You’ll need to cook up three fried starnut sticks, and three spicy vegetable stirfries. You’ll also need to perfectly smash the fruit for the starnut sticks, so take your time to cook them right. Be aware, you’ll probably have to go harvest some ingredients for these recipes, so be prepared to take jaunts down to the farm again.

After once again proving your worth to a chef, Lucca De’Flor will require you to get your skill to level 15 - again, the best thing to do is cook what you have available to you - and will then send you to Glerga.

Chef: Level 15 and beyond

Chef Glerga

Glerga is found at the Robgoblin Camp, which is north of Lakeshore on the Free Realms map. Admittedly, she doesn’t look like much of a chef. Nonetheless, determined to teach you “proper cooking,” Glerga will require you to create three De’Flor Family Fried Dumplings and three Glerga’s Gourmet Goulash, for which you’ll again likely have to go to farms to harvest for first.

Having learned from the second to last master chef, Glerga will have you reach level 20, the maximum level, before sending you on to Chef Bordon Cloo to reprove your worth as a culinary expert. Once again, you’ll need to return to cooking to reach that final level.

Once you have, Glerga will give you a recipe for Briarmelon surprise, and have you cook one up to take to Bordon Cloo. You’ll quickly find, however, that Bordon Cloo isn’t impressed just yet! He wants you to cook up one of each of the following recipes:

  • A top chef!

    Gummyfruit Topped Sundae

  • Starnut Sundae

  • Royal Stew Du Jour

  • Seared Stainberry

  • Moonbean Sundae Sweettreat

  • Moonbean Mousse

Once you’ve completed all the harvesting and cooking, Bordon Cloo will be so impressed, he’ll reward you with your final reward of a skillet and a shirt - and membership into his esteemed academy. Congratulations - you’re now officially an expert chef!