Part of the Tips & FAQ Series:
- Chief Chef Recipes: Ratios per dish and the fastest clear (You Are Here).
- Events Guide Hub: How scoring events work and why hoarding beats spending.
- Gift Codes and Redemption: Both redemption routes and why codes fail.
- Daily Routine Checklist: Where event work fits into the daily loop.
Quick Answer
Chief Chef (the Candlelight Dinner event) has you combine ingredients and seasoning to produce dishes. Every ingredient or seasoning added costs one Cooking Material. The Chef then rates your dish across five rating tiers, with rewards scaling by rating.
The ratios that produce each dish at the lowest (Catastrophe) rating, which is what you want when a task simply asks for a specific dish:
| Dish | Meat | Seasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Fruit Platter | 1 | 1 |
| Cocktail | 11 | 1 |
| Salmon | 21 | 1 |
| Roast Turkey | 31 | 1 |
| Smoked Ham | 41 | 1 |
The pattern is clean: 1, 11, 21, 31, 41 meat, always 1 seasoning. Memorise that and the event stops being guesswork.
Overview
Chief Chef is a lighter event than the war content, and it's one where a small amount of knowledge saves a genuinely annoying amount of Cooking Material.
The core tension is that rating and cost pull in opposite directions. A higher rating pays better rewards, and it costs more materials to reach. Meanwhile many event tasks just ask you to produce a given dish, and don't care what the Chef thought of it.
What that means practically: for tasks that name a dish, hit it as cheaply as possible using the ratios above. For open-ended "cook something good" scoring, spend up.
Here's the thing the in-game description hints at without spelling out: the simpler the ingredients, the greater the Chef's skill must be. That's why a minimal combination can still land a decent rating on the right dish, and why more ingredients isn't automatically better.
How Cooking Works
- Open the cooking interface during the event.
- Add ingredients and seasoning freely, within the session limit.
- Each ingredient or seasoning added deducts one Cooking Material.
- Finish the dish. The Chef tastes it and assigns one of five ratings.
- Rewards scale with the rating.
You can produce different dishes across different cooking sessions, so there's no need to commit to one approach for the whole event.
[!IMPORTANT] Cooking Materials are the real currency here, not the ingredients. Every single item you add costs one. A 41-meat Smoked Ham costs 42 Cooking Materials. Budget accordingly before you start experimenting.
The Ratios Explained
The table above gives the minimum viable combination for each dish at Catastrophe rating. Reading it correctly matters:
- These get you the dish, at the lowest rating.
- Tasks that ask you to cook a Smoked Ham are satisfied by the cheap version.
- Tasks that ask for a high rating need more investment.
The arithmetic is worth doing before you cook. If a task wants one Roast Turkey, that's 32 Cooking Materials at minimum. If you have three such tasks and 60 materials, you can't clear all of them, and knowing that upfront beats discovering it halfway.
Clearing the Task List Efficiently
The approach that wastes least:
- Read every task before cooking anything. Know which dishes are required and how many.
- Total the Cooking Material cost using the ratios above.
- Do the cheap dishes first. Fruit Platter at 2 materials clears a task for almost nothing.
- Only chase high ratings on tasks that explicitly reward them.
- Bank Cooking Materials ahead of the event, exactly as you would speed-ups. See the events hub.
- Check the exchange shop before the window closes so nothing expires unspent.
[!TIP] Front-load the cheap dishes. Clearing three low-cost tasks on day one leaves your remaining materials free for whatever the event throws at you later, and event tracks often back-load the expensive requirements.
What Ratings Are Worth
Five tiers, with rewards scaling up. Whether to chase them depends on the task:
Chase a high rating when the task specifically rewards rating, or when the milestone you're pushing for is close and rating-scored.
Don't chase it when the task just names a dish. The Chef's opinion doesn't affect completion, and the material saved goes further elsewhere.
That distinction is most of the skill in this event.
F2P vs Spender
F2P accounts should run the cheap-ratio approach almost exclusively. Cooking Materials are the constraint, the ratios above are the efficient frontier, and clearing more tasks cheaply beats clearing fewer tasks impressively.
Spending accounts can afford to chase high ratings on the scored tasks, which is where the better rewards sit. Even then, using the cheap ratios for dish-naming tasks and saving materials for the rating-scored ones is simply better play.
Common Mistakes
Cooking before reading the tasks. Materials spent on dishes nothing asked for. Fix: read the full list first.
Over-ingredienting dish-naming tasks. Every extra item is a wasted Cooking Material. Fix: use the minimum ratios.
Not budgeting materials. Running out with tasks outstanding. Fix: total the cost before you start.
Guessing at ratios. Failed attempts still consume materials. Fix: use the table.
Letting event currency expire. Fix: empty the exchange shop before the window closes.
FAQ
What are the Chief Chef recipes in State of Survival? At minimum ratios: Fruit Platter 1 meat + 1 seasoning, Cocktail 11+1, Salmon 21+1, Roast Turkey 31+1, Smoked Ham 41+1.
What is the Candlelight Dinner event? The cooking event where you combine ingredients and seasoning to produce dishes for the Chief Chef, who rates them across five tiers.
How many ratings are there? Five. Rewards scale with the rating your dish receives.
Do I need a high rating? Only for tasks that specifically reward rating. Tasks that just name a dish are satisfied by the cheapest version.
What does each ingredient cost? One Cooking Material per ingredient or seasoning added. A 41-meat dish costs 42 materials.
Why do minimal recipes still rate well sometimes? The simpler the ingredients, the greater the Chef's skill must be, so minimal combinations aren't automatically penalised.
Can I cook different dishes in one event? Yes. Each cooking session is independent, so you can produce different dishes across the event.
Key Takeaways
- Ratios are 1, 11, 21, 31, 41 meat with 1 seasoning for Fruit Platter, Cocktail, Salmon, Roast Turkey, Smoked Ham.
- Those produce the dish at the lowest rating, which is all that dish-naming tasks require.
- Every ingredient costs one Cooking Material. Budget before you cook.
- Read every task first, total the cost, then clear the cheap dishes early.
- Chase high ratings only where the task rewards rating specifically.
- Bank Cooking Materials ahead of the event, and empty the exchange shop before it closes.