Chef Wars Game Guide: Tips On Maps, Chefs, Judges And Winning Battles

Chef Wars, the mobile food discovery game, released worldwide last week and we can’t get enough of the recipe-crafting RPG adventure. With over 40 countries to explore featuring 900 unlockable recipes, dish discovery alone can be a daunting task. Throw in the sprawling map, resource management, and various cooking challenges and before long you may feel your head spinning with indecision. If you are new to Chef Wars and are having trouble winning battles or deciding what to buy or where to go on the map, we’ve put together a beginner’s guide of tips and tricks to get you on the right path towards being one of the world’s top chefs. In addition, if you need help discovering a particular recipe, you can check out our complete listing of Chef Wars recipes here.

Chef Wars Beginner’s Game Guide: Tips And Tricks To Help You Charm The Judges, Win More Challenges And Unlock More Chefs

Tip #1 - Upgrade Your Chef’s Skills Early

At the beginning of the game, you are introduced to Sylvie, the heroine of the game and your first chef. Each chef you acquire will come with a set of upgradable characteristics that impact his or her performance. While chefs have some specific characteristics, there are three major characteristics every chef can train that will impact his or her success in the game: Skill, Creativity and Tenacity. Upgrading Skill will give your chef’s recipes greater power during challenges. Creativity makes your dish discovery more successful. Tenacity increases your chance of finding rare items at the marketplace.

You begin the game with $3,000. To make it further in challenges it is best to spend about $2,000 of your funds on training your chef's skills. This way, Sylvie’s recipes will have greater success during the challenges. With a more skilled chef, you can win a lot of challenges using the three recipes you receive at the start of the game. With only 10 recipe slots, it’s important to reuse recipes as often as you can.

With my first chef, I focused on training all skills equally, since each one impacts my performance. As I added my second chef though, I focused more attention on training her Skill and Creativity alone, and let the first chef be the one to visit the market every time. This saves more money and makes the one chef you focus your Tenacity training on more effective.

Tip #2 - Go For Boss Battles First

While you might be intimidated by participating in Boss Battles, I actually found that the best strategy for moving forward is participating in Boss Battles. Boss Battles pay the biggest rewards and don’t cost anything. If you go into a Boss Battle and lose, you’ve lost nothing.

Participating in these battles and losing, does give you several valuable pieces of info: 1) Who is judging the competition 2) What the theme is 3) Power for your recipes. By learning who your judges are you can make better decisions about the dishes to present them (more on that below). The same goes for knowing the themes. Though themes sometimes change slightly in the Boss Battles, they will mostly stay the same. As to your recipe, even if it fails, you always gain a little bit of power just because you used it. If, during the judging, you discover new tags (ex: meaty, summer) that go with your recipe, you’ll gain a lot of power for that recipe. You may even be able to try the same challenge again using the same recipe and win. Once I’ve completed a Boss Battle in particular city, I usually compete at least once in all the smaller challenges in the city. In most cases, if you were able to beat the Boss Battle, you’ll likely be able to beat the smaller challenges too.

Tip #3 - Don’t Make Too Many Recipes Too Soon

You may be tempted to make as many recipes as you can hold to get a variety of them in your arsenal. This is a bad plan. Making new recipes takes resources, and if the recipe is for a different region or doesn’t fit the challenges you are encountering, then it’s somewhat useless. In the beginning, try to beat as many Boss battles as you can, just using the three starter recipes. If you hit a wall, think about what the battle calls for and begin experimenting. You’ll waste fewer valuable resources this way and really amp up the power of the recipes you already have through reuse.

Tip #4 - Work One Region At A Time

The map in Chef Wars is of staggering proportions and at this time, there is no easy way to scroll around the whole thing to see where you are and where you’ve been. Unless you take down the coordinates of every town and city you visit, it can be really difficult to figure out where you are going.

As mentioned earlier, the best thing to do is follow your boss battles until you’ve covered all of the French cities. Your first chef, Sylvie, has extra talent in working with French dishes and the three starter dishes are French, so exploring that entire region first is advisable. Once you’ve beat all the battles in cities, look to the smaller town challenges. These can be a way to earn a lot of extra income for upgrading your chefs and buying more recipe ingredients. Since your second chef specializes in Mediterranean dishes, you will probably want to visit that region next.

Tip #4 - Know When To Drop A Recipe

It doesn’t take long for your chef's recipe slots to fill up, and it may become necessary to cut one loose. Sometimes a recipe that’s not from the region where you are working may be useful in winning challenges. Other times you see it fail repeatedly. If your recipe slots are full and you see a recipe that never gets used or performs poorly, it may be time to cut it loose. The good thing about recipe discovery is that once you’ve found it, you can relearn it later by using gems.

Tip #5 - Choose The Best Recipe For The Theme And Judges

There are times when you’ll go into a Chef Wars cooking challenge and feel you have nothing to offer. Sometimes it means you need new recipes. Other times it means you need to think differently.

For example, say you walk into a challenge where the Theme is Sweet, Creamy, Pastry and your judges are Anna, Chairman Meow and The Dutchess. Though you might panic at first because you don’t have any sweets in your recipe list, the battle isn’t automatically lost. If fact, if you choose the Cheese Quiche from your starter recipes, you are likely to win. There are several reasons. First, you’ve filled two of the theme requirements: Creamy, Pastry. Second, you’ve tapped into several of the judges’ preferences (Anna loves Cheesy and French, Chairman Meow loves Milk). Judges preferences go a long way for adding value to your recipe because they give extra bonus points. Plus, an older recipe that’s been used a lot will pack more punch anyway.

If you find yourself failing a challenge, before you look for a new recipe, make sure you’ve considered all your options and tried different dishes first. Also, for more info about what Judges prefer, these are the things we’ve noticed so far:

• Nigel Toppemhat - gives extra points for MEAT and MEDITERRANEAN

• The Dutchess - gives extra points for TEA TIME and BACON

• Anna Wintourmelon - gives extra points for CHEEZY and FRENCH

• Wool-Eyed Joe - gives extra points for OFFAL and one other

• Chairman Meow - gives extra points for FISH and MILK

• Gorda Raske - gives extra points for WINTER and STEW

• Lola - gives extra points for LATIN and CHOCOLATE

• Pastor Paunch - gives extra points for BUTTER and GREASY