Vanilla Cooking Expanded - Haute Module - Luxury Meals, Fine Dining and Master Chefs for RimWorld

Vanilla Cooking Expanded - Haute Module is a RimWorld mod that introduces haute cuisine, a new tier of luxury meals that surpasses even gourmet cooking. Expanding the systems of Vanilla Cooking Expanded, it adds an electric haute cooking station, elaborate recipes, dish quality, and special mood effects that turn food preparation into a form of culinary art.

Haute meals are designed for wealthy, advanced colonies with access to abundant resources and highly skilled chefs. Preparing them requires considerable time and ingredients, but the results can provide exceptional mood bonuses and memorable dining experiences.

Haute Cuisine - A New Tier of Luxury Meals

Haute Module introduces a new category of dishes inspired by haute cuisine, a style of cooking associated with elaborate preparation, refined ingredients, and exceptional presentation.

Unlike ordinary RimWorld meals, haute dishes are intended to represent the highest level of culinary craftsmanship.

Main features include:

• Luxury meals: A new food tier above gourmet meals.
• Electric haute cooking station: Specialized equipment for preparing advanced dishes.
• Dish quality: Each meal receives a quality level that influences its effects.
• Generated descriptions: Dishes receive unique descriptions based on their ingredients, flavors, and preparation methods.
• Special mood bonuses: Haute meals provide powerful positive thoughts when consumed.
• Shared dining memories: Other colonists present during the dining experience can receive positive memories.

Master Chefs and Complex Cooking

Preparing haute cuisine is considerably more demanding than cooking standard meals.

A single dish can take much of an in-game day to prepare, and the process consumes substantial amounts of resources and nutrition.

Level 20 cooks are best suited to preparing haute meals efficiently, making culinary skill an important consideration when developing a luxury kitchen.

Cooking speed can also be improved by constructing additional haute cooking sections. These sections provide stacking work speed bonuses, allowing players to create larger and more efficient cooking facilities.

Ingredients and Recipe Requirements

Haute dishes have stricter ingredient requirements than ordinary RimWorld recipes.

To prepare these meals, players need:

• Two different sources of vegetarian nutrition.
• Two different condiments.
• Separate ingredients rather than using the same ingredient twice in one recipe.

Having enough total nutrition is not sufficient if the required ingredient variety is missing.

The module also does not include vegetarian haute dishes.

These requirements make ingredient production and supply management an important part of luxury cooking.

Unique Meal Quality and Mood Effects

Haute meals share several characteristics with artwork in RimWorld.

Each dish has its own quality and a generated description detailing its ingredients, flavor combinations, and cooking methods.

The quality of a dish influences its effects, while consuming haute cuisine provides particularly strong mood bonuses.

Each haute dish creates its own individual mood thought. These thoughts can stack when a colonist eats several different haute dishes, allowing multiple positive effects to remain active simultaneously.

Additionally, the dining experience can create positive memories for other colonists who were present.

This makes haute cuisine particularly useful for special occasions rather than everyday colony nutrition.

Compatibility and Known Issues

Vanilla Cooking Expanded - Haute Module builds upon the cooking mechanics introduced by Vanilla Cooking Expanded.

Compatibility information:

• Existing saves: Compatible.
• Combat Extended: Expected to work, but not confirmed.
• RIMMSqol: A known conflict can interfere with ingredient selection and cause meals to be produced as "Manufactured Slop".

Fixing the RIMMSqol Ingredient Conflict

If meals are incorrectly created as "Manufactured Slop", disable the conflicting patch in RIMMSqol:

1. Open the mod settings.
2. Navigate to QoL > General Settings.
3. Find the Forbidden patches section.
4. Click the [+] button.
5. Select the ingredient overflow patch to disable it.

This prevents the conflicting ingredient-handling modification from interfering with haute meal production.

Authors

• Oskar Potocki - Graphics and visual design.
• Sarg Bjornson - Programming.
• Erdelf - Development assistance.