Part of the reason why the dungeon crawling inMetaphor: ReFantaziois so enjoyable is just how much you can customize the experience to your play style. That includes tailoring your party members' buildswith the archetype system, choosing unique pieces of armor to optimize these builds, and even the items and consumables you choose to take with you.
One underrated aspect of this customizability are the dishes you can cook to take with you into dungeons. These can be cooked on the Gauntlet Runner, and if youlevel up your bond with Maria, this won’t take any time at all. You’ll unlock more recipes throughout the story, but which are the best?
7Almighty Golden Stew
In Battle
Buffing your characters is a great way to ensure that battles go smoothly; they’ll deal more damage, take less damage, and are more likely to hit their targets and evade enemy attacks. However, getting your party members to this level can take quite a few turns and can even put you at a disadvantage if you don’t time it properly.
If you want to save some time, then cooking up the Almighty Golden Stew before your battles can save a lot of effort. It will raise all your party members' stats by one stage for three turns. While some late-game abilities can semi-replicate this effect, this is still a useful consumable that you’ll want to keep on hand for tough boss encounters.
6Magical Bread
On Field
While you can technically spend as much time as you want in Metaphor: ReFantazio’s longer dungeons, you are likely going to be limited by your MP, since abilities that use MP are the most useful, and there are limited ways of recovering it without just heading home for the day.
If all of your party members could use a quick MP recovery, and you don’t want to use multiple items, then eating the Magical Bread is the perfect way to get you even further into the dungeon. If eaten out of battle, all of your party will recover MP while walking around the dungeon for 60 seconds, so ensure you find a safe spot to stick to for a minute.
5Coney Stew
In Battle And On Field
While some of the boss battles in Metaphor: ReFantazio are tough because the enemy hits hard, others can be just as challenging by layering up debuffs and status ailments. Status ailments are particularly debilitating since they limit what your party members can do, take a while to heal naturally, and you may’t even switch them out until they’ve recovered.
If all of your party members are suffering from an array of status ailments, you can cook up a Coney Stew. All of your party members will be healed in one turn. This is useful since you can use it on the field or in battle, but it’s better in battle, since abilities like patra or pen patra will be just as efficient out of battle.
4Critical Meatballs
There are three main stats for buffing or debuffing in Metaphor: ReFantazio, being attack, defense, and hit/evasion, and these will have a massive impact on how smoothly your battles progress, but another stat that is more hidden, but just as useful for certain builds is critical chance.
Critical hits will only use half a turn, and of course, deal more damage. So if your characters have a high chance of landing these hits, you’ll want to do all you can to boost this possibility. One of the best ways to do this is to eat Critical Meatballs, which will buff critical chance for all of your allies for three turns.
3Finisher Noodles
While some of the dishes you can cook in Metaphor: ReFantazio will replicate theeffects of archetype abilitiesin a more efficient form, there are others that are completely unique, with one of the stand-outs being Finisher Noodles.
If you eat these while traversing a dungeon, you’ll have 30 seconds where you can defeat all enemies you encounter with just one hit. While its usability is a bit more niche, it’s incredibly useful for getting through a more populated section of a dungeon and racking up plenty of experience while doing it.
2Sweeter Than Poison
The later you get into Metaphor: ReFantazio, the more you’ll realize that certain characters will get through their MP a lot quicker than others, and while you can work on this by building up their MP reserves out of battle, it’s harder to deal with while you’re still in the dungeon.
One of the best foods to cook if these characters are running low on MP during a longer dungeon is Sweeter than Poison. This will recover an impressive 200 MP, but it will also cure poison. If they’re suffering from this annoying status affliction, then it’s extra useful.
1Curative Coney Roast
If you don’t have an active healer in your party, and you’re tired of constantly working through your healing item reserves mid-battle, then you’ll want to make sure that you have access to the Curative Coney Roast.
The 250 HP every party member will heal is an impressive number, especially in the mid-game, and the fact that it heals poison is particularly useful since this is one of the most common status ailments throughout most of the game.
