Fallout 4 Guide: Cooking and Chem Crafting Tips

Fallout 4 lets you craft many things, and food and Chems are among them. These offer many benefits, but you have to watch out for addiction when using a lot of chems. Chemist, Science, and Demolition Expert are the main perks you want to focus on when crafting chems or cooking food.

I’ll let you know the types of things you can craft in each category and the benefits they give. Check out my Weapon or Armor guides for more crafting tips.

This guide will go over cooking and chem crafting in Fallout 4 including:

• Cooking and Chem Crafting Basics – How to craft in these categories, and some helpful perks.
• Advanced Cooking Info – A list of all the cooking recipes and the materials needed.
• Advanced Chemistry Info – Each category and types of things you can craft in each.

Cooking and Chem Crafting Basics

Cooking is the easiest of the craft because it does not require any perks. All you need to cook is compatible food. These can be crops, meats, drinks, or parts from creatures. 

Chems take more effort and resources to craft, and some require certain perks. Most random things you find throughout the world can be broken down into materials and components to use for Chem crafting.

You must go to a Cooking Station to cook anything and a Chemistry Station to craft Chems. You can find these throughout the world, or at settlements. You also get experience for everything you craft.

Perks

Some perks are required to make certain Chems, while others are helpful when using chems.

• Demolition Expert  (PER 5) – Explosives do 25% more damage, and you can craft explosives at any Chemistry Station.
• Rank 2 (Level 10) – 50% more damage and grenades gain a throwing arc.
• Rank 3 (Level 22) – 75% more damage and affect a larger area.
• Rank 4 (Level 34) – Double damage. Mines and grenades shot in V.A.T.S. explode for double damage, too.
• Science (INT 6) – Gives access to high-tech mods.
• Rank 2 – Level 17
• Rank 3 – Level 28
• Rank 4 – Level 41
• Chemist (INT 7) – Any Chems you take last 50% longer.
• Rank 2 (Level 16) – Chems last twice as long.
• Rank 3 (Level 32) – Chems last 150% longer.
• Rank 4 (Level 45) – Chems last 200% longer.
• Chem Resistant (END 4) – You’re 50% less likely to get addicted when consuming Chems. 
• Rank 2 (Level 22) – You gain complete immunity to Chem addiction.

There is a recipe in Cooking and one in Chemistry that makes items that can be scrapped for materials.

• Vegetable Starch – Scraps into 5 adhesive.
• Requires: 3 corn, 3 Mutfruit, 1 Purified Water, 3 Tato.
• Cutting Fluid (Chemistry) – Scraps into 3 oil and 1 Steel.
• Requires: 2 acid, 8 Bone, 2 Purified Water, and 3 Steel.

Advanced Cooking Info

Beverage

This category includes only 2 items:

• Dirty Wastelander – Lowers INT by 1, increases STR by 3, and increases CHR by 1 for a short time.
• Purified Water – Recovers 40 HP.

Roast

This category includes parts you get from creatures. All of them recover HP and some give extra benefits. These include effects that increase certain stats or damage for usually an hour.

Soup

This category includes crops. They recover health and some can give resistances or increase experience gain.

Advanced Chem Info

Drug

This category includes most of what you would call “Chems.” They give temporary boosts to:

• Certain stats
• Slow down time
• Increase damage and damage resistance
• Increase health

Grenade

This category include all throwing weapons.

• Molotov Cocktails explode and cause fire damage over time.
• Baseball and Frag grenade explode for physical damage.
• Cyrogenic grenades do physical damage and freeze enemies.
• Pulse Grenades do energy damage.
• Plasma Grenades do both energy and physical damage.

Healing

This category includes items like Stimpaks and RadAway. They can heal you, take away radiation, grant temporary radiation resist, and temporary increase to max health.

Mines

This category includes explosives that you place on the ground. There is a bottlecap mine that explodes in a downpour of bottlecaps to cause extreme physical damage. The other mines work just like grenades. except you place them.

Syringer Ammo

This category includes different syringes you can use to damage enemies. These do many different status effects like: paralysis, frenzy, make enemies non-violent, or cause targets to run away.

This wraps up my guide on Cooking and Chem crafting. Let me know if you have any questions! Please visit the Fallout 4 Guide List for more tips and info on Fallout 4.