We’ve told you before to level cooking alongside of Fishing. You’ve heard us say over and over that cooking can get you some gold and how every class in the game can benefit something from cooking. You’ve also heard us tell you how big of a pain in the @$$ it is. Then THIS IS YOUR CHANCE. We’ll show you how to get cooking to 350 in an hour.  There are complete guides to the actual festival itself out there but this article will focus exclusively on the cooking aspect of it.

It all has to do with Pilgrim Festival. This will require you to run from Undercity(Stormwind) to Orgrimar(IronForge) and ThunderBluff(Darnassus) but will net you a bit of gold and those precious cooking levels that are such a pain to get. Assuming you’ve got no skill in cooking you’ll want to get to Undercity and train up cooking at the Pilgrim Festival Cooking trainer.  Buy the Bountiful cookbook from the vendor and open it up to pick up the 5 Festival recipes and learn the first one right away: Spice Bread Stuffing

Undercity/Stormwind

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The recipe will go gray on you at 40 but you’ll get to use the extra you buy to make the last few points.  Once you’ve got 60x Spice Bread, combine it with 60xAutomnal Herbs (from Pilgrim Vendor) to make 60xSpice Bread Stuffing and get to 100 cooking (or a little more).  Don’t forget to train up cooking before you get to 75 cooking skill or you’ll have to re-cook the bread. Learn Pumpkin pie recipe (at 100)

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Again remember to train up cooking when you get to 125 (but before 150).  Once you hit 160 cooking, learn the Cranberry Chutney recipe and travel to your next destination (Orgrimar/Ironforge).

Orgrimar/Ironforge

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Again remember to train up cooking when your skill reaches 200 and before it hits 225. Learn the Candied Sweet Potato recipe at 220 cooking and move on to your next destination: ThunderBluff/Darnassus

Thunder Bluff/Darnasuss

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Train cooking between 275 and 300 and return to Undercity/ Stormwind for the last part of this adventure.  This part will require you run around like a turkey after … well … Wild Turkeys :)

Go outside Undercity/Darnassus and kill Wild Turkeys and remember to loot them, you’ll need quite a few so don’t be shy they are scattered all over the start area and spawn rather quickly.

Back to Undercity/Stormwind

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Voila! Your cooking skill should be at 350 or a little above (355?) In the process you’ve managed to accomplish all the seasonal cooking quests and have enough for 3 days’ worth of dailies. All of which should buy you more then enough Turkey Shooters to turn all the rogues you need for the achievement (assuming you don’t miss too often)

This is BY FAR the cheapest and most effective way to level cooking you’ll ever get. The recipes don’t go yellow until you’re 10 pts away from the next one (which is whyI make you buy 70 instead of the minimum 60 you really need). To be honest I didn’t do the math on this and it’s so cheap that I’m not even going to bother. 5-10 gold ? … the amount is infinitesimal, ridiculous even.

Regardless whether you do the seasonal events or not this is a DOMINATING way to level cooking and it only comes around once/year so better take advantage of it now or you’ll regret it come Christmas when you need to get your MerryMaker title. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.