Link to the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yO94WSP_sA7Gw3zmEuxKvsAkvqwMjR3xoZiPqYcoeU0/edit#gid=0
The spreadsheet itself and the idea for the tests are from u/_p5e_ on reddit. The only thing I contributed were roughly half of the in-game tests (listed as “jlfd” on the second page), but the rest of the work was done by them, so all credit for that goes to _p5e_.
Explanation:
When you cook, you might get a random “crit” (critical success) in roughly 5% of all cases, that will make the meal/elixir better than usual, like healing 5 more hearts, offering a couple more minutes of an effect, healing more stamina etc. and there are also ways to guarantee crits, like cooking between 23:30 and 00:15 on a Blood Moon night.
Some ingredients also offer a 100% crit chance, like Star Fragments and Dragon Parts, and especially Dragon Horn Shards are popular ingredients as they force every timed effect to last for 30 minutes flat.
… but those aren’t the only ingredients that affect crits. A lot of regular monster parts, for example Keese Eyeballs or Hinox Guts, also boost your chances of recieving a crit by a certain percentage (in the example cases +30% each), and a bunch of the seemingly “useless” filler ingredients do the same to a lesser extent (Goron Spice, butter and sugar for example add +10% at least).
I’ll be on my deathbed, idly scrolling Future Internet because I have nothing better to do while waiting for the works to give out for the last time, and I’ll still be coming across little BotW tidbits that I never knew before. Or it might just be senility, but at that point it won’t matter. One last “huh, neat” for the road.
