Cooking and XP Food in WoW Forever: Cost to Cook vs Price

The short answer

In WoW Forever, food is levelling gear. The beta client adds a line to the Well Fed buff of most cooked food: "Experience gained from kills increased by" a percentage, and the value in the client is 5%. Of the 130 Cooking recipes in our extract, 103 make food that carries that line, including 35 of the 42 new recipes. Cooking also makes the campfire every camp starts from. For gold, that means two markets: cheap XP food for levellers, sold by the stack, and the campfires themselves. On the latest player scans Lean Venison sold for 4 silver31 copper and Gooey Spider Cake for 2 silver, each about three times its cost to cook.

Live Auction House prices

Peace Tea20 silver1 house listing

Venomous Smoothie…no price recorded

Skywall Souffle1 silver2 houses listing

Kaldorei Spider Kabob2 silver95 copper1 house listing

Goretusk Liver Pie57 copper1 house listing

Loch Frenzy Delight20 copper1 house listing

Crocolisk Steak2 silver18 copper1 house listing

Gooey Spider Cake2 silver1 house listing

Lean Venison4 silver31 copper1 house listing

Heavy Crocolisk Stew7 silver47 copper2 houses listing

Root Tea25 silver2 houses listing

Calcified Smoothie21 silver2 houses listing

Mild Spices2 copper2 houses listing

Hot Spices77 copper2 houses listing

Soothing Spices2 silver2 houses listing

Basic Campfire Kit95 copper2 houses listing

Lowest buyout from player scans of the WoW Forever beta Auction House, as of beta build 70291. Beta prices are a testing economy and will not carry over to launch. Last verified7 hr ago

How the XP bonus works in the client

We traced it through the spell tables. Most cooked foods in the beta client now use a "Nutritious Food" spell. Its text says that if you spend at least ten seconds eating, you become Well Fed and gain a stat (Stamina, Strength, Agility, Intellect, Attack Power, Spell Damage or Fishing Skill, depending on the food). Then it adds the description of a separate spell called Well Fed XP Boost. That spell has one value, 5, and its text reads: "Additionally, experience gained from kills is increased by 5%." The Well Fed buff itself repeats the line while the boost is active.

There is one honest caveat. The client only shows the XP line when the player meets a condition, and we cannot read that condition from the tables we have. It could be a level range, a ruleset or something else. So read this page as "these foods can carry a 5% kill XP bonus in Forever", not "every character always gets it".

Which foods carry it, and which do not

The pattern is clear once you see it. Almost every food that gave a stat in Classic now also gives the XP line. The ones without it are mostly foods that only restore health, the holiday recipes, the joke foods with odd effects (in Classic, Savory Deviate Delight turned you into a pirate or a ninja) and the camp objects.

Cost to cook against price: the levelling foods

Here are the XP foods that had a price on both the product and every ingredient, sorted by skill, with what they cost to cook and what they sold for on 2026-10-08:

Every one of these sold above its ingredients, most by three to ten times. The absolute numbers are small, which is normal for food at the beta cap. The reason to care is volume: XP food is eaten, not kept, and every levelling character in launch week is a buyer.

And the ones to avoid. Redridge Goulash cost 19 silver55 copper to cook and sold for 1 silver50 copper. Coyote Steak and Beer Basted Boar Ribs also sold well under their ingredients. Raw fish foods like Longjaw Mud Snapper and Brilliant Smallfish sold for a copper or two, with thousands listed; fine for skill-ups, useless for gold.

The new tea and smoothie lines

Forever adds two families of drinks that need no meat at all:

The teas put cooks in the herb market. Root Tea takes two Liferoot, which made it the most expensive food to cook in our table, and Sage's Tea takes two Mountain Silversage, a late herb nobody had listed on the beta. Every tea in the client carries the XP line. If you herb as well as cook, the teas are a way to sell herbs at a markup; if you buy herbs, check the strip first, because a tea is only worth cooking when two herbs cost less than the tea.

Campfires: the object every camp needs

Camping is new in Forever. Blizzard's launch notes say a Basic Campfire holds up to three crafted objects, one per player, on a one-hour cooldown. In the client, the Basic Campfire spell reads "allows cooking and the placement of up to 3 additional camp features", and every other profession's camp object says "Requires a Campfire nearby". The campfire comes from Cooking:

On the beta a Basic Campfire was listed at 49 copper with 173 on the market, a little under its one Simple Wood at 70 copper. Journeyman Campfires sold for 33 silver against a Star Wood bill of 39 silver. So campfires were a slight loss to craft for sale on the beta. That may change at launch, when every new player wants a camp and few have Cooking.

How to make gold from Cooking

1. Train Cooking and buy spices, water and milk from vendors.
2. Level on the cheap XP foods from the table above: Spider Kabobs, Liver Pies, Crocolisk Steak. Keep the extras.
3. Sell XP food in stacks of 5 or 10 in the zones' level band. A level 15 player wants Lean Venison or Gooey Spider Cake, not Brilliant Smallfish.
4. Cook teas only when two herbs cost less than the tea.
5. Keep a stack of Simple Wood for Basic Campfires; sell them in launch week if the price moves above the wood.
6. Pair Cooking with Fishing: most fish foods carry the XP line, and the raw fish is free.

Stacking the levelling bonuses in a camp

The XP line on food is one of several levelling boosts the beta client hangs on the new Camping system, and they stack in the same place. A Leatherworker's Camp Tent "allows you and others sitting nearby to increase Rested experience to 5% of a level", according to its spell text. A Fishing camp's Fish Bowl grants a percentage increase to all stats for players sitting nearby. The campfire itself, from Cooking, is what every one of those objects requires.

Put that together and you get a selling point. A cook who sells a Basic Campfire and a stack of the right food to a levelling group is selling the base of their camp and the bonus they eat while sitting in it. If you also have Leatherworking on an alt, the Tent makes the bundle complete. Nothing in the client says these bonuses interact beyond sitting near the fire, so we do not promise a combined number. We have not measured one.

Which food to stock for which level band

The required level on each food decides who can eat it, so stock by band, not by recipe:

1. Levels 1 to 5: Kaldorei Spider Kabob, Herb Baked Egg, Roasted Boar Meat, Peace Tea. All cost a few copper to cook.
2. Levels 5 to 15: Goretusk Liver Pie, Loch Frenzy Delight, Crocolisk Steak, Smoked Sagefish. These were the best value XP foods on the beta by ratio.
3. Levels 15 to 25: Gooey Spider Cake, Lean Venison, Seasoned Wolf Kabob, Root Tea. Spider Cake had 194 listed and still sold well above cost.
4. Level 25 and up: Heavy Crocolisk Stew, Bear Brisket, Plain Ol' Paletusk, Roast Raptor. The beta cap is around here, so these markets were still forming.

During the beta the cap sat at 20 and then 30, so most real buyers were in the first three bands. At launch the bands above 30 open, and the new late recipes (Soaring Pamplona, Flank au Poivre, Prehistoric Pulled Raptor, all carrying the XP line) will start from no price at all.

Risks to plan around

• The condition. If the XP line only applies in some cases (a ruleset, a level range), demand for XP food will be narrower than 103 recipes suggest.
• Too many cooks. Cooking is a secondary profession, so every character can learn it. Expect cheap food to be crowded and margins on the simplest recipes to fall quickly.
• Meat supply. The best ratios came from foods whose meat drops from common beasts. A popular zone can strip those beasts bare in launch week.

What to watch on the Auction House

1. Gooey Spider Cake and Lean Venison, the deepest profitable XP food markets on the beta.
2. Liferoot and Mountain Silversage, for the new teas.
3. Basic Campfire against Simple Wood.
4. Whether the XP condition turns out to be level-gated. If the bonus stops at a level, food for that band becomes the whole market.

Requirements

Level

1

Profession

Cooking (secondary; any character can learn it)

Tools

a campfire or cooking fire

Group

Solo

Related guides in this lane

Fish are free cooking ingredients: Fishing for gold in WoW Forever. Healing potions are now a First Aid craft and use the same spices: First Aid in WoW Forever. For the wider picture, see the best WoW Forever profession for gold and Every New Recipe in WoW Forever. The full library is on the WoW Forever guides hub and the cooking shelf.

Changelog

• 2026-10-08: First version. Recipes from our beta profession extract (build 70124); food spells, Well Fed text, the XP Boost value and campfire spells from the beta client datamine (build 70291); prices from player scans of the beta Auction House.