Recipe (Final Fantasy XV)



Recipes in Final Fantasy XV allow Ignis Scientia to cook various foods at camp for the player party.

Mechanics
When resting at a haven, the player can choose which food Ignis should cook from the recipes he knows, depending on which ingredients are in the inventory. Different foods yield different buffs. Buffs last until the next sundown, but can be extended via abilities learned from the Ascension grid.

Ignis learns new recipes by eating new food at restaurants, seeing NPCs eating certain foods, from reading signs and posters in the world that feature food, by acquiring the ingredients of a dish for the first time, for buying cook books from shops, and for raising his cooking level by camping. Cooking level carries over when using chapter select. His cooking level rises by accumulating Skill Points (SP in the table below) from the meals he makes.

Some dishes are the party members' favorites. If a recipe is a favorite, it has a character sprite in the corner of its picture. If the party eats one of Noctis's favorite foods, the tech bar will fill twice as fast until the buffs expire. If the party eats the others' favorites, the party members will perform more critical hits when using Techniques, and have a chance of performing a stronger version of their Technique; this is signified by a yellow background rather than the normal green when they execute the skill.

Quick Recipeh
After beating Final Fantasy XV: Episode Ignis once, Ignis gains access to Quick Recipeh in the main game when he is in the lead (when using character swap), and after acquiring the necessary items from shops during subsequent playthroughs of the DLC episode itself. Quick Recipeh allows Ignis to cook a meal mid-battle and give himself buffs, such as boosting the rate "Total Clarity" replenishes. Quick Recipeh has a chance to fail, giving debuffs such as poison. In the original version Ignis was simply invulnerable to enemy attacks during the animation of him cooking, but after patch 1.21 action freezes around him while he cooks, similar to Wait Mode.

Tips
Eating recipes can be strategically done to allow the party to maintain boosts and beneficial statuses in tandem with those granted by accessories and outfits. For example, gaining Resilient from eating a recipe allows the team an extra accessory slot if one needs status protection. Consuming higher level parameter-specific stat raising recipes, such as Blazing Braised Gizzard or Elegant Orange Cake, stacks with boosts from equipment.

Legendary Grilled Whopper, Memory Lane Pastry, Packed Mushroom Stew and Plump 'n' Pungent Tofu can be eaten for a double-edged high risk high reward boost, or for a challenge in difficulty.

It is advised to buy Kenny's Salmon and Kenny's Special Recipe early so Ignis can recreate them. They provide an especially strong status boost, enabling the player to take on advanced hunts as well as level efficiently by allowing them to take on higher level creatures that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to defeat normally. The salmon for these recipes can be found at Rashcia Bridge fishing spot (east from Rock of Ravatogh, north from an imperial base), and only need a cheap garlic to recreate. Fishing for the salmon for Kenny's Special recipe and cooking it, allows the player to simultaneously develop Noctis's fishing skills and Ignis's cooking skills efficiently and cheaply.

List of ingredients
Ingredients can be procured from shops, monster drops, fishing and procurement points.

Development
Camping was planned to be an integral part of the gameplay loop on the open world since the beginning of development, and collecting recipes was one element in it. The camp team was able to create high quality graphics for the food in the pre-production phase. Creating the in-game dishes sometimes involved working from photos, but frequently involved cooking the recipes.

Creating a recipe started in the art department, where the ingredients and desired appearance were planned out. Another team then cooked it on a camp stove outdoors. The completed dishes were photographed from various angles and scanned to create 3D data for the digital artists to work with. The digital art team also handled and tasted the physical dishes prepared by the food team and their ingredients, and the 3D data was tweaked as necessary. Food was intended to be a part of the expression of each city's culture, and the team wanted to give the impression of traveling long distances by showing how culinary cultures change by region.

Trivia

 * When Gladiolus is not in the party in Chapter 7 and Ignis creates a new recipe, his situational dialog with Gladiolus can still trigger, but only Ignis's lines will be heard.
 * Ignis's "That's it! I've come up with a new recipe!" exclamation, and his tendency to say it even during tense situations, has become something of a meme, which Square Enix has gladly fueled. During the Moogle Chocobo Carnival and the Assassin's Festival, when purchasing food from the Square Enix Café, Noctis will imitate Ignis's lines "I've come up with a new recipe!". His "god speed cooking" technique from the Japanese version, is localized as "Quick Recipeh", in allusion to the exaggerated way Ignis speaks in English.
 * The party's favorites more or less are modest and simple to obtain, using purchasable or accessible ingredients. This is juxtaposed with recipes requiring rare ingredients, including those from high level monsters and dangerous or difficult areas.
 * The Plump 'n' Pungent Tofu dish added in a patch has a unique camp scene, where the party, aside from Ignis, appears disgusted by the dish.
 * Camping in Episode Prompto has him eat canned food while longing after Ignis's cooking.