Cooking leveling guide for WoW Forever: every recipe and when it goes grey

WoW Forever's own game files (client build 1.60.1) list 129 Cooking recipes. For each one they give the skill at which it turns yellow, green and grey, which is what decides how fast you level. This page lists all of them, built from those files rather than from Classic guides, because Forever changed many recipes: some are renamed, some are new and some Classic ones are gone.

Cooking is a secondary profession that makes food that gives buffs and restores health. Its materials come from Fishing, plus meat from beasts.

How to read the numbers

• Below the yellow number the recipe is orange: every craft gives a skill point.
• From yellow to green it usually gives a point.
• From green to grey it sometimes gives a point.
• At grey it gives nothing.

The game files don't say at which skill a trainer lets you learn each recipe. Blizzard keeps that on its servers, so we haven't guessed it: check the trainer. The green number is halfway between yellow and grey, the way Classic worked. The cap is 300, and skill 150, 225 and 300 each give a Legacy Point.

The backbone: recipes without a recipe item

These 14 recipes aren't taught by any recipe item, so you get them from the trainer, from a quest, or automatically when you learn Cooking. They're the recipes most players level with. Craft whatever is still below its yellow number, and switch when it turns yellow.

Recipes from recipe items

These 115 recipes are taught by an item, such as a recipe, pattern, plans, schematic or formula. The files don't say where each item comes from: vendors, drops, quests and reputation all hand them out. They're sorted by the skill where they turn yellow.

Yellow between 1 to 75

Yellow between 75 to 150

Yellow between 150 to 225

Yellow between 225 to 300

Tips for leveling

1. Gather first. Collect materials while you quest, then level the craft in one sitting in a city.
2. Craft orange, not yellow. Each orange craft is a guaranteed point. Once a recipe is yellow, check if another one is still orange.
3. Make things you can use or sell. Early on almost everything sells for little, so favour recipes for your own gear.
4. Visit the trainer every 25 to 50 points. New recipes unlock as your skill goes up, and you need the next rank (Journeyman, Expert, Artisan) from a trainer to go past each cap.

Some recipes in the files may belong to content that isn't out yet, such as later raids. If a recipe item never seems to show up, that may be why.

Which classes it suits: see professions by class. Learning, unlearning and ranks: how to learn professions and unlearning and expert trainers. All professions: profession leveling guides.