Cooking in Beast of Reincarnation looks like a fairly ordinary survival mechanic at first. Emma and Koo get hungry, you give them something to eat, their Hunger meters fill back up, and you continue exploring.
Then Kagura gets involved, and you realize food is tied to something much more important: permanent character growth.
Meals prepared aboard the Cleanse Walker can permanently increase stats such as HP, Attack, Defense, Skill Power, and Critical Rate. There are crops to grow, chickens to raise, recipes to research, and upgrades that gradually turn the Cleanse Walker into a reliable source of ingredients.
It’s a lot to take in when the game first introduces everything.
So, if you’ve been collecting Seedlings and recipe books without really knowing what you’re supposed to do with them, here’s how the entire cooking system works.
Beast of Reincarnation Cooking Guide – Hunger, Recipes, Farming & Permanent Stat Bonuses
Let’s start with the part you’ll encounter first: Hunger.
Both Emma and Koo have Hunger meters that gradually decrease while you’re travelling and fighting.
Look at the wheat icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen to check your current Hunger status. Its appearance changes depending on how hungry the pair have become.
Hunger matters because it’s connected to passive HP regeneration.
As long as the Hunger meter isn’t empty, Emma and Koo can gradually regenerate HP.
Once they’re too hungry, that passive recovery stops.
You don’t immediately collapse or lose the game because you forgot lunch, but losing passive healing can make long exploration sessions considerably more dangerous.
That’s why I wouldn’t completely ignore the Hunger meter, especially when you’re about to enter an unfamiliar area or expect a difficult fight.
How to Feed Emma and Koo While Exploring
You don’t need to return to the Cleanse Walker every time someone gets hungry.
While you’re out exploring, press Down on the D-pad and select food from your Battle Pack.
Keep feeding Emma and Koo until their Hunger meters are restored.
Whenever you leave the Cleanse Walker, the Battle Pack automatically receives basic supplies such as:
- Field Rations
- Hard Candy
- Koo Treats
Those are essentially your travel snacks.
You can also find additional food while exploring, including Fish and Malefact Meat, which can help extend an expedition after you’ve used your original supplies.
Managing this properly means you can stay in the field much longer without having to interrupt exploration just because your Hunger meter is getting low.
How Campfire Cooking Works
Before unlocking Kagura’s full cooking system, you’ll already have access to a simpler form of food preparation.
During the opening hours, you’ll probably be living on things like Plain Rice and Malefact Meat.
Raw ingredients you’ve collected are automatically cooked when you rest at a Campfire.
The resulting food can then be consumed through your Battle Pack.
Think of this as Beast of Reincarnation’s basic field-cooking system.
It’s useful for:
Restoring Hunger while exploring
and
Giving yourself additional recovery options when you’re running low on Stimpacks.
But this isn’t the cooking system you should be paying the most attention to long term.
The important one is back at the Cleanse Walker.
How to Unlock Cooking
Proper cooking becomes available through Kagura.
You’ll meet and learn more about Kagura during the early portion of the main story, including several flashback sequences.
Once Kagura becomes part of your Cleanse Walker setup, she effectively takes over the more advanced cooking system.
From that point onward, food isn’t merely something you consume because Emma and Koo are hungry.
It becomes another progression system.
Kagura can prepare proper meals when you return to the Cleanse Walker and Rest Until Morning.
And those meals can permanently improve your characters.
How Cooking Works in the Cleanse Walker
Return to the Cleanse Walker and interact with Kagura to start getting involved with cooking.
When you Rest Until Morning, Kagura can prepare the selected meal.
Resting itself restores your health and Hunger, while the prepared meal provides additional stat growth depending on its recipe and quality.
Meals can improve stats including:
| Stat | What You Gain |
|---|---|
| HP | Increases survivability |
| Attack | Improves offensive power |
| Defense | Improves durability |
| Skill Power | Strengthens skill-focused builds |
| Critical Rate | Improves Critical Hit potential |
HP commonly receives some of the larger increases, but you shouldn’t focus exclusively on one meal.
There’s a very good reason to experiment with different recipes.
Cooking Buffs Are Permanent
This is probably the most important thing to understand about cooking:
The stat increases from Cleanse Walker meals are permanent.
These aren’t temporary buffs that disappear after ten minutes or when you fast travel.
You’re permanently developing Emma and Koo through food.
That makes cooking much more valuable than it initially appears.
If you’ve been ignoring Kagura because your Hunger meter seems manageable with Field Rations, you’re missing one of the game’s character-growth systems.
And as enemies become stronger in later zones, those accumulated bonuses start becoming increasingly valuable.
Always Try a New Meal at Least Once
There’s another reason you shouldn’t repeatedly eat the same favorite recipe.
The first time you eat a particular meal, you receive an enhanced first-time stat bonus.
That makes discovering and researching new recipes doubly useful.
You’re not only unlocking potentially stronger meals; you’re also getting another opportunity to claim that first-time growth bonus.
So whenever Kagura finishes researching something new, it’s worth preparing and eating it at least once.
Even if you eventually return to another preferred meal, you’ve already banked the permanent first-time bonus.
How to Get Cooking Ingredients
You’re going to need ingredients if Kagura is going to keep feeding everyone, and thankfully Beast of Reincarnation doesn’t expect you to find everything randomly in the wilderness.
The Cleanse Walker eventually provides its own food-production systems.
The two important ones are the:
Grow Chamber
and
Incubator.
Once you’ve invested in them, your mobile base starts producing a steady supply of cooking ingredients while you concentrate on exploring.
How the Grow Chamber Works
You’ll occasionally discover Seedlings while exploring different zones.
Bring those Seedlings back to the Cleanse Walker and you can plant them inside the Grow Chamber.
Crops will grow and automatically become available for harvesting once they’re ready.
Early on, ingredients such as Potatoes and Rice are particularly useful because they’re accessible and give you a dependable foundation for cooking.
You can manually decide what gets planted if you enjoy managing your resources.
Or you can make things easier.
If you’d rather concentrate on hunting Nushi than pretending Beast of Reincarnation suddenly became a farming simulator, let Kagura handle the planting decisions for you.
She can manage what gets planted and harvested.
Use Food Production Settings
There’s a nice bit of automation hidden in Kagura’s systems that makes cooking considerably easier.
Talk to Kagura and open:
Food Production Settings
From here, choose a recipe you want to maintain ingredients for.
You can then coordinate your crop production around that recipe instead of manually remembering which ingredients you’re running low on.
Combine this with Kagura managing the Grow Chamber and the food system becomes much less demanding.
At that point, your main jobs are basically:
Find Seedlings → unlock Recipes → improve production → occasionally check Kagura.
That’s much easier than micromanaging every crop yourself.
How to Expand the Grow Chamber
The Grow Chamber initially has limited space.
To unlock additional crop slots, you’ll need two things:
Higher Cleanse Walker Power
and
Facility Modules.
Cleanse Walker Power is increased by finding Generator Devices while exploring.
These are the blue skull-shaped resources you’ll occasionally discover in the world.
Facility Modules are another exploration resource used to unlock additional facility slots once you’ve met the required Power level.
You’ll commonly find these resources while thoroughly exploring zones, including around some of the larger mechanical structures.
If you’re planning to use cooking heavily—and you should—expanding the Grow Chamber is worthwhile because additional planting slots mean a more reliable ingredient supply.
How the Incubator Works
Plants aren’t your only renewable source of food.
The Cleanse Walker also contains an Incubator where you can raise chickens.
Once you find Fertilized Eggs while exploring, you can bring them back and begin raising chickens.
Those chickens will eventually produce Eggs, which Kagura can use as cooking ingredients.
Just like the Grow Chamber, Incubator capacity isn’t unlimited.
Additional slots are connected to your Cleanse Walker Power rank and require Facility Modules to unlock.
If you’re already hunting Generator Devices to improve the Grow Chamber, you’ll naturally be progressing toward a larger Incubator as well.
Between crops and chickens, the Cleanse Walker eventually becomes much more self-sufficient than it is during the opening chapters.
How to Unlock More Recipes
Finding ingredients doesn’t automatically teach Kagura every meal in the game.
You’ll need to collect Recipes.
Recipe books can be discovered throughout the overworld, often tucked into optional areas or hidden corners.
You can also purchase certain recipes from the Merchants encountered throughout different zones.
When you find a recipe, bring it back to Kagura.
But there’s one extra step that’s easy to overlook:
Finding a recipe doesn’t mean Kagura can immediately cook it.
She has to research it first.
How Cooking Research Works
Speak with Kagura aboard the Cleanse Walker and open:
Cooking Research
Choose the recipe you want her to study.
Kagura will begin researching it, and once the research is complete, that recipe becomes available for cooking.
Because only one research project can be active at a time, it’s worth checking Kagura whenever you return to the Cleanse Walker.
Otherwise, you can end up carrying several recipes while making no progress toward actually using them.
Fortunately, there’s no punishment for changing your mind.
If you switch to a different research project before the current one is finished, your existing research progress isn’t lost.
You can return to it later.
Normal, Superior and Ultimate Recipes Explained
Recipes are divided into three ranks:
| Recipe Rank | Tier |
|---|---|
| Normal | Basic recipes |
| Superior | Higher-tier recipes |
| Ultimate | Highest-tier recipes |
You can’t immediately jump to the best recipes simply because you’ve found them.
Higher recipe ranks are gated behind progression.
You’ll need to:
Complete research from the previous recipe tier
and
Increase the Cleanse Walker’s Calculations rank.
Calculations therefore becomes an important stat if you want to take cooking seriously.
How to Increase Calculations for Better Recipes
The Cleanse Walker’s Calculations rank is increased using Electronic Brains.
Electronic Brains are the yellow skull-shaped collectibles found throughout the world.
When you return to the Cleanse Walker after collecting them, they’re automatically invested into the appropriate upgrade progression.
Increasing Calculations helps unlock access to the higher recipe ranks, including Superior and eventually Ultimate recipes.
So if Kagura has recipes that you can’t progress toward yet, check your Calculations level.
You may simply need to go hunting for more Electronic Brains.
What Is Grow Research?
Kagura has another research option called:
Grow Research
This is separate from unlocking meals.
Instead of teaching Kagura another recipe, Grow Research improves the number of ingredients harvested from your Seedlings.
That means the same planting space can start producing more food.
This becomes increasingly valuable as your recipe requirements expand.
Early in the game, simply having a couple of crops growing may be enough. Later, improving harvest yields can save you from constantly waiting for ingredients.
There’s a tradeoff, though.
Kagura can only research one recipe or crop at a time.
So you’ll need to decide whether your current priority is:
unlocking another meal
or
improving ingredient production.
Again, switching doesn’t delete your previous research progress, so don’t be afraid to change priorities.
Why You Should Increase Kagura’s Rapport
Cooking also connects to Kagura’s rapport with Emma.
Bringing Kagura additional recipes to research and regularly talking with her helps improve their relationship.
Higher rapport has a practical benefit.
As it increases, Kagura can provide better quantities and varieties of travel supplies, including things such as:
Hard Candy and Field Rations.
Those extra supplies allow Emma and Koo to remain away from the Cleanse Walker for longer before Hunger becomes an issue.
So talking with Kagura isn’t just there for additional dialogue and character development.
It can directly improve your exploration resources.
Cooking vs Field Food – What’s the Difference?
It’s easy to confuse the two systems when you’re starting out, so here’s the simplest distinction:
| Food System | Main Purpose |
|---|---|
| Battle Pack Food | Restores Hunger while exploring |
| Campfire Cooking | Automatically prepares collected field ingredients |
| Kagura’s Meals | Restores Hunger and provides permanent stat growth |
| Grow Chamber | Produces plant ingredients |
| Incubator | Produces Eggs |
| Cooking Research | Unlocks additional meals |
| Grow Research | Improves harvest quantities |
The important part is that Kagura’s meals are progression, while Field Rations, Koo Treats, Fish, Malefact Meat, and similar supplies are primarily there to keep you going while you’re away from home.
Best Way to Use Cooking Early
During the first few hours, don’t worry about trying to optimize every meal.
Your ingredient selection and facilities are still limited.
Instead, concentrate on three things:
Collect every Seedling you see.
Pick up or purchase new Recipes whenever possible.
Start Kagura’s research whenever you return to the Cleanse Walker.
Rice and Potatoes are perfectly fine early ingredients, and the important thing is simply getting the system moving.
As the Grow Chamber expands and you unlock more recipes, you’ll naturally have more room to optimize.