Cairn is a pretty unapologetically hard game. Especially if you go for the intended difficulty, which makes survival a major factor of your overall experience. Climbing is hard enough, but not starving to death is perhaps even harder.
To combat this, cooking meals and special items is ideal to avoid dropping into the danger zone when you’re halfway up a perilous climb. However, the game isn’t super clear on how to do that.
So, here is a breakdown on how cooking and recipes work in Cairn, and how to make some good grub.
How To Cook in Cairn
To begin cooking in Cairn, you’ll need to first find a save point. These are the red and blue painted cutouts in the cliff face. You can save your progress here, but if you action it a second time, you’ll set up your Bivouac.
This is a tent where you can rest, tape up your hands, adjust your bag, and repair your pitons, all in relative comfort.
To cook, you’ll want to select the burner hanging in front of Aava, and you can begin combining ingredients.
How To Cook Specific Recipes
There are two ways to go about this in Cairn. Through mad scientist style experimentation, or through locating recipes around the mountain.
You’ll have the option to combine two ingredients (like Honey, for instance) when cooking and only those available to be combined will be accessible, so there’s no way you can fail when cooking. However, some combinations are more fruitful than others.
For example, from the very first save point, if you make use of the vending machine in the climbing gym, you can combine instant noodles and Yellow Yak energy drink to make Tourist Trap Noodles. No recipe required.
Also Read
You can find bespoke recipes around the mountain, usually at landmarks or old Troglodyte settlements. Just be on the lookout for old paper scraps and read anything you come across, just in case.
