Cooking and Cook-X

Original author: lolwut

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The Cooking skill was quite different before Jagex released Cook-X on 12 September 2005. Before Cook-X, we had to use each individual raw food item with the fire or range in order to cook it, rather than doing this only once, having the Cook-X menu appear, and then, with a few clicks, having your character automatically cook the rest of that type of raw food in your inventory. If, for example, you had 28 raw lobsters in your inventory, before the release of Cook-X you would have to click twice to cook each one (one click on the lobster to select it, and another click on the fire or range to cook it), for a total of 56 clicks to cook all 28; after Cook-X, this was reduced to only four clicks of the mouse (two to use the lobster with the fire or range, then a right-click to open the Cook-X menu, then a left-click to select Cook-X) and two keystrokes (entering 28 into the prompt), after which you could sit back for a little while and let your character take care of the rest.

It should be obvious that this update made the Cooking skill significantly easier, because it was now much less demanding of the player's attention while still giving the same experience rates. What it really did, though, was turn Cooking into a joke: whereas before the skill already gave experience quickly and was relatively cheap to train, now the demand on the player's attention was also seriously reduced.