Kitchen Advanced Guide
Updated 2026-05-21.
This page is for players who've run the Quickstart loop a few times and want to understand how the mid-to-late-game systems actually work under the hood. Everything here is plain-English; the underlying spec lives in workers/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-20-kitchen-stats-point-system.md for the math-curious.
The three stat axes
Every cook is decided by three numbers your kitchen accumulates. Each is measured in points (not percentages):
| Axis | Plain-English name | What it controls |
|---|---|---|
| Skill | "Will this cook succeed?" | The success-rate curve. Higher = more likely to succeed. |
| Speed | "How fast does it cook?" | Linearly shortens cook time. 1 Speed point = 0.1% time reduction. Floor at 10% of base cook time. |
| Elegance | "How rare is the output?" | Drives the rarity-upgrade roll. Half as effective per point as Skill — Elegance is the rarest meaningful stat to stack. |
Where the points come from
Tune-In level contributes a flat base to every axis:
tune_pts(TL) = 5 + 2 × TL (per axis)
Kitchen Level contributes on top (Skill and Elegance only — Speed is gear-only):
kitchen_pts(kL) = 4 × kL (per axis, 2× the Tune-In coefficient)
| Level | Tune-In contribution | Kitchen Level contribution | Combined per axis |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 | 4 | 11 |
| 10 | 25 | 40 | 65 |
| 17 | 39 | 68 | 107 |
| 35 | 75 | 140 | 215 |
| 69 | 143 | 276 | 419 |
| 100 | 205 | 400 | 605 |
Kitchen Level is the primary progression lever; Tune-In is a secondary stacking axis. A high-Kitchen-Level / low-Tune-In player is still well-positioned for most cooks; the inverse (high TL / no kL) is the punishing combination.
Equipment stacks additively on top. Each equipped piece has 1–3 stat lines (rolled at mint within its tier band — see Equipment for the 2026-05-20 ranges). Those numbers are flat points, not percentages — a Singularity Skillet showing "+18 Speed / +17 Skill / +14 Elegance" literally adds those points to your kitchen total. A fully maxed Mythical 6/6 rack totals around ~120 points across the three axes.
Variant Elegance bonus (same-family ingredient substitution) adds a flat +20% rarity-upgrade chance for that cook — combined with your Elegance gear through the same curve. See Variant Elegance below.
How recipe success is computed
Every recipe has a points threshold equal to 5 + 6 × recipe.Level — the recipe expects both your Tune-In and Kitchen Level to be at the recipe's level for a 50% par cook. So a Level 17 recipe has a threshold of 107 points; matching that with TL=17 + kL=17 (no gear) sits exactly at par.
The success-rate curve is generous in the early band, steep in the late band:
| Your Skill vs. threshold | Success rate |
|---|---|
| 0× threshold (no points) | 5% (floor) |
| 0.5× | ~28% (linear interp from floor to par) |
| 1.0× (par) | 50% |
| 1.5× (gear = ½ threshold above par) | ~75% |
| 2.0× (gear = 1× threshold above par) | 95% |
| Beyond 2× | asymptote toward 99.99% (never 100%) |
The 50% → 95% band is closed when your gear contribution equals the full threshold. An L17 player at par (Skill = 107) needs about 53 gear points to hit 75% and a full 107 gear points to hit 95% — first gear points carry the most weight, then diminishing returns into the asymptote band.
Early-recipe floor lift (2026-05-27)
To soften the under-threshold band for new players, recipes at Level < 20 receive an additive bonus on the under-threshold curve. The bonus:
- vanishes at the par anchor (Skill = threshold) so 50% par stays exact
- vanishes at zero Skill so the 5% absolute floor holds
- decays to zero by recipe Level 20 so the high-level curve is unchanged
- is concentrated in the mid-ratio region where most newcomers actually sit
Sample lift (kL = recipe Level, TL = 0, no gear):
| Recipe Level | Old rate | New rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25.5% | ~47% |
| 5 | 37.1% | ~52% |
| 10 | 36.2% | ~49% |
| 15 | 35.8% | ~45% |
| 20+ | unchanged | unchanged |
The over-threshold band (50% → 75% → 95% → asymptote) is not touched. All operator-locked anchors at L17/kL=17 — 50% par, +53.5 gear → 75%, +107 gear → 95% — remain exact.
Cooks always carry a structural 0.01% random failure floor. Even a fully maxed kitchen with no Tune-In and pure gear stacking can approach 99.99% but cannot guarantee a cook. This keeps Mythical-tier recipes meaningful and prevents perfect farming.
How rarity-upgrade rolls (Elegance) are computed
Same curve as Skill — but at half effectiveness per point. Concretely, your effective Elegance for the curve is user_elegance / 2. To hit a 90% upgrade roll, you need roughly double the Elegance points compared to the Skill threshold.
Elegance acts on the output — a successful Elegance roll bumps the output one rarity tier up (Standard → Rare → Mythical → Legendary). On ceiling-tier recipes (where there's no higher tier), Elegance instead yields a 2× bonus piece of the same target tier. More on that in Recipe Chaining.
Variant Elegance substitution
A quiet-but-powerful mid-game lever: when a recipe asks for an ingredient, you can sometimes substitute a higher-tier same-family ingredient. The substitution adds a flat +20% to the rarity-upgrade chance on the cook output (this is a true probability axis, distinct from the flat-point gear stats).
| Substitution | Rarity-upgrade chance bonus |
|---|---|
| Rare instead of Standard (same family) | +10% |
| Mythic instead of Standard (same family) | +20% |
| Mythic instead of Rare (same family) | +10% |
Stack across multiple ingredients in the same cook — bonuses cap at a meaningful ceiling so 3 × Mythic substitutions doesn't trivially guarantee an upgrade.
Example: a Permanent Pulse Bread recipe normally takes 2 Pulse Egg + 3 Harmonic Herbs (both Standard). Sub in 2 Mythic Photon Fish (same Protein family as Pulse Egg) + 1 Mythic Harmonic Herbs and you've added a sizeable bump to the rarity-upgrade chance for the cook — meaningful even at L20+.
Recipe chaining
Once you hit Tune-In L20, recipes themselves become inputs to higher-tier recipes. This is "chaining" — using your own outputs to climb the kitchen ladder. The full design lives at workers/docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-18-recipe-chaining.md.
L20 — Refine (Standard → Rare ingredients)
Five recipes, one per family. Each consumes 8× Standard ingredients of that family → 1× Rare ingredient.
- 85% base success, 1h cook time
- No RSNC cost; the cost is the 8:1 burn ratio + the 15% failure risk
- Eligible for the rarity-upgrade roll — a high-Elegance kitchen can occasionally roll a Mythic instead of the target Rare
Refine is the supply backbone for everything above. Your producers will out-produce your Refine throughput at high Tune-In levels — that's by design.
L40 — Crystallise + Tier-Up Crafting
Two branches:
Branch A: Crystallise (Rare → Mythic ingredient)
- 6× Rare ingredients → 1× Mythic of the same family
- 70% base success, 4h cook
- Mythic is the ingredient ceiling — a successful Elegance roll yields 2× Mythic (a "bonus piece") instead of upgrading further
Branch B: Equipment Tier-Up (Rare → Mythic equipment)
- 3× Rare slot piece + 1× any-family Mythic ingredient (catalyst) → 1× Mythic slot piece
- 55% base success, 6h cook
- Same ceiling-bonus mechanic: an Elegance proc yields 2× Mythic slot piece with independent stat-line rolls
L60+ — Apotheosis (Legendary equipment)
The endgame craft. Six recipes (one per equipment slot). Each consumes 3× Mythic slot pieces + 5× Mythic ingredient + 1× cooked Mythic food → 1× Legendary slot piece.
- 40% base success, 24h cook time
- Soft stat-gate: you need ≥+30 Skill points and ≥+20 Elegance points from your equipped gear to attempt. Standard gear with the right rolls can clear the gate; all-Mythic with the wrong axes cannot.
- Ceiling-bonus on Elegance proc: 2× Legendary pieces with independent stat-line rolls (each piece runs its own RNG — both could roll god-tier, neither, or one each)
- +25% Activity Score bonus when the Elegance mechanic fires (tier-up OR ceiling-bonus)
There's also an Apotheosis Gacha Pack for whales: 50K RSNC / $50 USDSC, yields one random Legendary piece. Skips the chain time + variance, doesn't replace the chain.
Why chain at all?
- Scarcity engine. L20 turns ingredient glut into Rare supply. L40 turns Rare supply into the Mythic bottleneck. L60+ turns the Mythic bottleneck into Legendary terminal items.
- Crafting Activity Score. Successful chain cooks emit AS into a separate 5,000-per-week bucket (independent of the 10K chat bucket). Failed cooks emit zero — burn is the cost.
- Active Effects (see below). Chain successes grant timed buffs.
Active effects
Some chain successes grant perk-like effects that show up in your Alchemy → Effects panel:
| Source | Effect | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| L40 Crystallise success | Refinery — +15% Standard ingredient drop rate from all producers | 7 days |
| L60+ Apotheosis success | Ascendance — +25% Result Rarity on all cooks | 14 days |
| Forge full-set bonus (stretch) | Forged Will — +10% Cook Success | 7 days |
Effects stack with your equipped equipment and your Tune-In contribution. They're the reason a successful Apotheosis pays back into the next two weeks of cooking, not just the one Legendary it minted.
Sub-slot system (producer optimization)
Each producer has 2–7 sub-slots depending on tier and ascension. Sub-slots accept ingredient seeds; the producer drops that ingredient per its stats.
| Tier / Ascension | Sub-slots |
|---|---|
| Standard | 2 |
| Rare | 3 |
| Mythical A0 | 4 |
| Mythical A1 | 5 |
| Mythical A2 | 6 |
| Mythical A3 | 7 |
Same-family rule. All sub-slots within one producer must hold the same family. A Photon Aquarium can mix Pulse Eggs and Photon Fish freely, but it cannot hold Stellar Honey.
Swapping is free. Move seeds around between sub-slots without cost — experiment with which mixes match your active recipes.
The three sub-slot stat picks. On Rare+ producers, each sub-slot can be biased toward one of:
- Quality — favor higher-rarity drops
- Frequency — slightly faster cadence
- Rarity — distinct from Quality; raises the upper end of the rarity band
Mix sub-slot picks per producer to balance steady throughput against high-rarity hunting.
Harvest accumulation and the per-harvest RSNC drip
Producers fire on a continuous timer (Standard: 7–12h, Rare: 5–9h, Mythical: 4–7h, multiplied down by Ascension). When you don't claim immediately, harvests accumulate into a pending bucket on the producer card.
- 24-hour accumulation ceiling. Older drops fall off the back as new drops arrive, so a producer that hasn't been claimed in a week still tops out at roughly one day's worth.
- RSNC drip: 5 RSNC per ingredient minted (2026-05-25 operator retune; was 13 from 2026-05-21, 5 from 2026-05-20, 10 prior).
- Per-harvest RSNC cap: 15,000 RSNC. Raised 2026-05-21 from 2K so the cap binds only at the maxed Mythical L10 + L15 sub-slot supply-runaway tail. A typical Mythical L10 build sits well under the cap; only the very top combo cases get clipped, by design.
- Quality stat-picks are Bernoulli, not deterministic. Each Q level you've bought on a sub-slot rolls a 33% chance to add +1 to that tick's harvest — three Q levels averages +1 per tick, not always +3.
If you log in daily, neither cap will bind. If you take a week off, you'll lose some accumulation — that's intentional supply discipline.
Seeds and the FIFO queue
A sub-slot holds two things: leveled picks (the Q/F/R points you've spent RSNC to buy, which are permanent investments) and a queue of seeds (which are consumable inventory).
- Standard seeds last 1 harvest before they burn up.
- Rare seeds last 2 harvests.
- Mythical seeds last 3 harvests.
When you plant a seed in a sub-slot, it joins the queue. The head seed is what's actively producing on each harvest tick. When the head seed's remaining-harvest counter hits 0, it burns and the queue's next entry promotes to head. When the queue is empty, the sub-slot stops yielding (the producer card displays the leveled picks + a Plant seed CTA).
You can multi-select plant multiple same-family seeds into a sub-slot at once. The seeds stack into the queue in the order added. A stack indicator on the producer card shows "head seed + N queued" so you can see at a glance how many harvests of headroom you've got.
You can also swap the head seed without losing levels — same-family swaps are one-click side-by-side compare; cross-family swaps route through a "Switch family?" confirm because they affect what the whole producer can hold. The leveled picks (Q/F/R) never reset.
Tier-up recipes (Equipment crafting beyond mint)
Most players' first Mythic equipment comes from the marketplace, the Limited recipe Quasar Quiche, or the Apotheosis Gacha Pack. There's a fourth path: the L40 Tier-Up chain branch (see above), which lets you assemble a Mythic slot piece from 3 Rare slot pieces of the same slot + a Mythic ingredient catalyst.
This is the only path that lets you choose which slot your Mythic piece is for. Recipe drops and gacha rolls are random across the 6 slots.
Strategy notes
- Chase Skill first, then Speed, then Elegance. Skill closes the success-rate gap from 50% to 95% fastest. Speed compounds across every cook. Elegance is the rarest stat to stack — save it for once your success rate is already comfortable.
- A full Apprentice set (Standard 6/6) is cheap insurance. The 3-piece and 6-piece set bonuses stack with individual stat lines, and a complete cheap kit puts a meaningful Skill floor under every cook.
- Don't over-equip Skill. Once you're past the 95% mark on the recipes you actually run, additional Skill points enter the asymptotic upper band. Rotate those slot rolls into Speed or Elegance.
- Stack Elegance for Limited / Apotheosis recipes. The rarity-roll matters most where the output ceiling is highest — Mythic food, Mythic equipment, Legendary equipment.
- Watch the AS-from-crafting bucket. Above 5,000 AS/week from crafting, recipes still produce outputs — they just stop adding to the bounty leaderboard for the rest of the week.
See also
- Quickstart — the new-user walkthrough
- Producers — slot unlocks + producer tiers
- Equipment — the 6 slots, stat lines, set bonuses
- Recipes and Cooking — the full recipe roster
- Reference — every number on one page
- Tune-In — the level that contributes the base stat points
- Activity Score — the 5K crafting bucket + 10K chat bucket