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How to cook in NightingaleHere’s how to cook in Nightingale and manage your hunger meter

Here’s how to cook in Nightingale and manage your hunger meter

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

A campfire in Nightingale.

Want to know how to cook in Nightingale?As with mostsurvivalcrafting games, knowing how to cook can quite literally mean life or death inNightingale. Campfires not only provide warmth and refuge within the wilderness but they can also be used to make Healing Salves and cook ingredients from hunting, fishing and gathering.

As such, we’ve detailed below how to get started with Campfires, how to cook, get recipes, manage your hunger meter, and the best ways to survive your first night in the spooky gas-lamp fantasy realms.

In this guide:

Nightingale | Release Date Trailer | gamescom 2023Here’s a look at Nightingale, the survival crafting game set amidst the Fae Realms.Watch on YouTube

Nightingale | Release Date Trailer | gamescom 2023

Cover image for YouTube video

How to cook food in Nightingale

Once you make a Campfire as instructed, you can interact with it to access the list of available recipes you can make. Different recipes will apply different buffs, so remember to check these within the inventory display menu when choosing what to cook first.

How to get cooking ingredients and recipes in Nightingale

A selection of cooking recipes in Nightingale. Look at those yummy roasted plants. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

A selection of cooking recipes in Nightingale.

As well as the various berries you can get from foraging bushes (these are particularly prevalent in the Forest biome), you can also hunt Fae creatures in the realms for meat. As stated above, this meat will go a lot further when cooked at a Campfire first.

There is also fishing in Nightingale, but beware of waterways in Swamp biomes as these are often poisonous and will start building up your disease meter if you stay submerged in them for too long. If you become diseased, you’ll need to cook yourself the appropriate cure.

You will naturally unlock more varied cooking recipes once you start collecting ingredients. We suggest prioritising crafting aHunting KnifeandScythefirst. The Hunting Knife will increase the yield when harvesting materials from animals, and the Scythe will similarly increase the yield of any flora gathered.

How to manage hunger in Nightingale

Keep a close eye on the bars on the lower left corner of the Nightingale menu screen - these represent health, rest, and hunger. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Inflexion Games

A look at the inventory screen in Nightingale.

There are three bars on the bottom of your Nightingale screen, each representing different values. You can hover your cursor on each of them to see more info about what they represent. As seen in the image above, the red bar indicatesHealthand the green bar is yourHungermeter. You’ll need to keep your Hunger topped up in order to energise your character, and if you ever begin to starve, your Health will drop dramatically.

(In case you were wondering, the blue bar representsRest, which is basically a measure of how fast you regain lost Stamina. Rest can be replenished after taking a Short or Long Rest in a bed, and is just as important as Health and Hunger.)

As with all other resources in Nightingale, in order to keep your Realmswalker well-fed and healthy, you should always assign food to a hotkey in order to access it quickly. Raw food such as berries or uncooked meat can be consumed if needed, but cooked food will replenish your Health and Hunger meters much faster, so we recommend having at least one cooked food type assigned at all times so you can eat on the go.

That rounds off our guide to everything you need to know about cooking in Nightingale. For more Nightingale coverage, check out our guide onhow to play multiplayer in Nightingaleor see ourmagic woodadventures where the RPS team had a chance to sample Nightingale during a pre-launch playtest. Expect hijinks and chaos ahead.