My Time at Portia Cooking Set Unlocking Quickly
I did a lot of manual labor during My Time at Portia (affiliate link). In particular, throughout the early game, these behaviours cause significant stamina losses. It is expensive to buy food from stores, but wouldn't it be preferable to be able to prepare your own meals? This is when the My Time at Portia (affiliate link) Cooking Set comes in handy. It allows you to prepare recipes that you have unlocked. Along with completing quests, you can receive more recipes from Django. But how can you get the set, and how quickly can you get it?
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The short answer is that you need to provide the Research Center with five data discs to unlock the cooking set. Once they have completed their research, you are awarded one of four diagrams. If it isn't the cooking set, try again, and the chance will increase every time until you've unlocked all four.
Unlocking The Cooking Set
I’m going to assume that you are just starting the game. On Day 3, you unlock the mine and spend time here digging up artifacts (these are yellow spheres when viewing the relic visor). You should receive data discs for your efforts. Spend all your stamina that day getting relics and more data discs. The next day (or the same day if you spent all your energy before 18:00), go to the Research Center and give five data discs to Petra. She will then ask you if you want to speed up the process. If you have the required discs, you can reduce the turnaround to one day.
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The cooking set is one of four diagrams that you can get for supplying five discs to Petra. Two days later, you should receive a diagram in your mailbox. If it isn’t the cooking set, go back to the Research Center and supply Petra with five more data discs. If you are really unlucky, it could take up to three more tries before you are awarded the cooking set.
| Icon | Diagram | Data Discs | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Civil Furnace | 5 | Needed to smelt the required ores for the cooking set. |
 | Cooking Set | 5 | |
 | Blender | 5 | |
 | Fish Display | 5 |
Building a Cooking Set
There are only three components needed for the cooking set: six stone bricks, an iron pan, and three marble planks. Any furnace and eight stones can be used to create stone bricks.
The iron pan requires a level 2 worktable, five iron bars, and five rubber fruits. Iron bars can be smelted using a civil furnace, and three iron ores can be mined from Abandoned Ruins #2. Rubber fruits can be obtained by kicking trees and are quite common.
The marble planks can be made using three marbles and a civil cutter. Marble can be obtained by mining stones in the fields, but it cannot be obtained by picking up rocks.
| Materials | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Stone | 48 |
| Iron Ore | 15 |
| Rubber Fruit | 5 |
| Marble | 9 |
Cooking Set Usage
Unlike other machines, the player must equip the materials first and then drop them into the cooking set. Identical to the most recent Legend of Zelda games. Recipes can be learned by successfully cooking the dish or by purchasing recipes from Django.
My Time at Portia Cooking Set
Now that you have unlocked and built a cooking set, you can create various dishes. Which can be used to buff the player in various ways. Or can be gifted to other characters to improve their relationship with the player. And if you are tight on Gols you can always sell the finished dishes for profit. Unlike most of the other starter machines, it is unfortunate that the cooking set isn't awarded in an early-game quest. Or that it was made clear that using specific amounts of data discs limits you to a group of diagrams.
