Food Quality is a 1–10 rating carried by every meal. While you're Fed, your character holds a buff whose size scales with the average quality of what you've recently eaten — more max HP and stamina, and noticeably faster HP and stamina regeneration. Keeping that average high is one of the cheapest combat edges in the game, which is why good cooks are always in demand. For the profession that makes this food, see Cooking & Herbalism.
Quality is one of food's three characteristics, alongside Nourishment and Digestibility. This guide is about Quality — the trait that sets the size of your Fed buff.
Stomach status
Fed, Hungry & Starving — the buff only applies while you're Fed — watch the stomach icon:
- Fed — buffed. You gain the Food Quality bonus in the table below.
- Hungry — no buff. Eat something to get back to Fed.
- Starving — a −10% Health and Stamina debuff. Don't let it get this far before a fight.
The Fed-status buff
Each quality tier grants the same bonus to max HP and max stamina, but the headline figure is regeneration — at the top tier you recover HP and stamina 25% faster. Qualities 1–2 give only a marginal effect, so they're barely worth eating. The example hot foods are meals that typically land in each quality band:
| Quality | Max HP / Stam | HP / Stam regen | Example hot foods |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | marginal | marginal | — |
| 2 | marginal | marginal | — |
| 3 | +2% | +8% | — |
| 4 | +2% | +10% | Rye Soup, Porridge, some Roasted Meat |
| 5 | +2% | +12% | Scrambled Eggs, Roasted Meat, Spiced Carp |
| 6 | +3% | +15% | Bread, Broth, Stew |
| 7 | +3% | +18% | Mushroom Soup, Lentil Soup, Fasting Dish |
| 8 | +4% | +20% | Fish Soup, Knight's Kettle, Fish Mix |
| 9 | +4% | +22% | Grilled Salmon, Roasted Boar |
| 10 | +5% | +25% | Codfish Filet, Knight's Chuck |
Keeping your average quality high
Your buff isn't set by your last meal — it's the average quality of the most recent things you've eaten. That has one important consequence:
Don't eat filler
If you only have low-quality food on hand, it's often better to eat nothing than to drag your average down. Cramming in Quality 1–2 filler when no high-quality food is available will lower the buff you'd otherwise be keeping from earlier high-quality meals.
Eat it fresh, eat it hot
- Eat fresh, hot food for the best effects — most meals are at full quality only while hot.
- Food stays hot for 4 hours after cooking, then cools.
- Reheated food is higher quality than cold food — if a meal has gone cold, reheat it before eating rather than eating it cold.
For the full hot → cold → reheated quality falloff and exactly how reheating works, see Cooking & Herbalism.
Digestibility & gout
Every food is either Easy or Difficult to digest. Eating too many Difficult-to-digest foods gives you Gout — so vary your diet rather than spamming a single heavy dish.