Cooking with the Pioneer Scouts – Merit Badges Made Easy in Fallout 76

Here’s the first of our Fallout 76 merit badge guides, to help you get your possum rank, as well as your backpack and those sweet sweet upgrades! The Cooking Merit Badge is currently one of ten available badges for the Tadpole rank in Fallout 76. Every merit badge is laid out more or less like a real Boy Scouts merit badge. There’s a basic knowledge test, and there’s an applied knowledge and/or ability tests. Unfortunately, unlike real life, you don’t get merit badge manuals that give you all the answers, but hey, that’s what we’re here for. With that in mind, if you’re looking for the answers to the knowledge exam, you’ll find them in an expandable tab at the bottom of the guide. And if cooking up some of these dishes gives you a real-life hankering, maybe try your hand at cooking outside of the game! But I digress. The full list of requirements is as follows:

Pass “Cook” knowledge exam

Cook food while wearing a Chef’s Hat (0/10)

Cook Blackberry Honey Crisp

Cook Brain Bombs

Cook a Cranberry Meatball Grinder

Cook Seared Venison with Berries

Cook S’mores

Cook a Sweet Roll

Cook Yao Guai Roast

You’ll probably want to take care of a few odds and ends before you officially get started on this merit badge, to make life easier. Here’s the easiest way to start.

1. Get a Chef’s Hat. They spawn in several locations, which I can post here if necessary. Or, if you’re lazy like me, you can consult the Agents of Game clothing rental, and either rent or buy one.
2. Obtain the recipes for Blackberry Honey Crisp, Brain Bombs, Cranberry Meatball Grinder, Seared Venison with Berries, S’mores, Sweet Rolls, and Yao Guai Roast. As a side note, whether you get the recipe for S’mores, or a friend does, once you earn the Possum rank you’ll need to eat three of them as part of the requirements for the Backpacker merit badge.
3. Pass the knowledge test at Camp Lewis. Most of the questions aren’t too difficult, but some of the questions on all of the exams are…pretty random and obscure, and that’s coming from a self-proclaimed trivia buff.

That’s the first “difficult” step. Any time you cook anything (whether it’s on the above list or not), try to remember to put on your chef’s hat. Once you’ve got your hat and the recipes, you’ll want to start gathering ingredients for each of the recipes. As a side note, as you are probably aware, various foods and beverages provide buffs in the game, and the often can stack. If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of buffs from foods & beverages, the lovely folks at Nukes & Dragons created this guide. Here’s where you can find the recipes if you still need them, and the full list of ingredients:

Blackberry Honey Crisp (Whitespring) –

Purified Water – 2

Razorgrain – 2

Royal Jelly – 3

Wild Blackberry – 3

Wood – 1

Brain Bombs (Whitespring) –

Brain Fungus – 3

Mothman Egg – 2

Purified Water – 2

Sugar Bombs – 3

Wood – 1

Cranberry Meatball Grinder (Whitespring) –

Cranberries – 3

Purified Water – 2

Scorchbeast Meat – 3

Spices – 2

Wood – 1

Seared Venison with Berries (locations) –

Pepper – 2

Purified Water – 2

Radstag Meat – 3

Starlight Berries – 3

Wood – 1

S’mores (Campfire Tales Event) –

Bone – 1

Wood – 1

Sugar – 2

Spices – 1

Syrup – 1

Brahmin Milk – 1

Razorgrain Flour – 2

Sweet Roll (Whitespring) –

Purified Water – 2

Spices – 2

Sugar – 3

Sugar Bombs – 3 (Note: these have to be the ones with radiation. Fresh ones you find or make at the food factory don’t work)

Wood – 1

Yao Guai Roast (Whitespring) –

Boiled Water – 2

Mutfruit – 2

Pepper – 2

Wood – 1

Yao Guai Meat – 2