Why do you have to cook?

Your character has a hunger meter that gradually goes down as you gather materials or while simply playing the game. Keeping your character full is necessary to get the “Invigorated” bonus. While invigorated, your character will have the following bonus effects:

* +5% Damage

* +5% Movement Speed

* +5% Collection Speed

* -20% energy consumed when running

Keeping your character full is not that hard, especially when you have access to the very basic cooking recipes. Besides, there are foods that give bonus effects like increased damage to certain enemies, increased chance to land a Crit (when gathering), HP regeneration, and many more. Cooking food will also help in managing your inventory since some ingredients just take up space when they can be transformed into a usable item that takes up only one space.