You grab the ingredients, you step inside the lab, you put in the ingredient and BOOM! You're all dead. We all know this scenario, and a lot of us have been the one to blow up the lab. It sucks for everyone; it sucks for the host, it sucks for your friends, it sucks for the one who blew up the lab and it sucks for you. Or maybe the Captain shows up and screws everything up for you. Maybe you just can't find those ingredients anywhere. Maybe the enemies swarm you and you all die. Whatever the case, Cook Off is hard for a lot of people.

With this guide, I intend to minimize failure percentage for anyone who has a hard time in Cook Off. I will be going over basic things about the heist, as well as some interesting little tidbits. I was hesitant to make a guide on this because usually people know how to cook, but with the swarm of new players as well as the introduction of Bain's new lines when cooking meth, I've seen the lab blow up more times than I have ever before since I started this game (and I've seen it blow up since the beta).

Without further ado, let's get right into it.

This may sound silly, but when you're playing Cook Off you need to not only trust your team, but let your team trust you. Obviously, right? But in Cook Off, it's more than absolutely necessary. You are cooking meth and one wrong move could screw over the entire heist. Therefore, a good rule of thumb is always in order:

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO COOK, INFORM YOUR TEAMMATES

A lot of times your teammates will just gloss over the fact that there are inexperienced players in the game. Some don't know how to cook meth. In fact, sometimes it's the first time they're doing the heist in the first place. If you don't know how to cook meth, let your teammates know. You'll be able to come to a compromise easier if you're open with them.

If you don't know how to cook or you don't want to cook, then do not pick up any ingredients. At all. This will ensure that you do not, even accidentally, blow up the lab. If you want to hasten the process of delivering new ingredients, then you can take them but try not to use them if you don't know how to. Also, if you won't cook, then protect. Someone has to deal with crowd control, and if everyone else is cooking then you might as well cover their backs.

If you don't have ammo or doctor bags, then either lower the difficulty or cook three bags and leave. Cook Off is a survival map, and if you're not prepared to survive for a long time, then you shouldn't be playing it in the first place.

My recommendation is that you bring four doctor bags and four ammo bags, both with extra charges. That would total up to 16 charges of healing and 2000% ammo, plus 2 doctor bag charges and 300% ammo from the assets. Of course, this isn't absolutely necessary, if you and your team can keep your health up and avoid getting downed, you can change things up a bit and bring two doctor bags and 6 ammo bags, totaling up to 8 charges of healing and 3000% ammo. Alternatively if you plan on going down a lot then take 6 doctor bags and 2 ammo bags, totaling up to 24 charges and 1000% ammo. Or maybe replace on set of doctor bags with first aid kits. You get the idea: try to bring an equal amount of equipment, but compensate for your needs.

Now that you have these bags with you, try to minimize their use. They are for emergencies only. Try to pick up ammo from the enemies BEFORE you use an ammo bag. Use doctor bags only when you're black and white. (Check out my Doctor Bag Guide on how to use a Doctor Bag properly. Y'know, just in case.)

It's also a good idea to think about the placement of the bags. Try to place them in places where you can't really get hit while interacting with the bags. A few good places include the side room upstairs or the bathroom. Also try placing them somewhere where you can reach them from different spots on the map. For example, you can reach some spots on the top floor side room by standing on the counter downstairs, or you can reach the bathroom floor by standing on a stack of bricks in the basement. See if you find some more, get creative.

To hold off the meth lab from being overrun, it's a good idea to have a general idea of where the enemies can spawn. Here's a reference:


(Please note that the cops are not limited to spawning on the areas I marked with red. It's just to show you which side is which)

The cops will always spawn from these three areas, and Bain will usually say where they're coming from. Just remember that they aren't limited to spawning from just one area at a time, but now you should have a general idea of where you should be looking when they start their assault. In addition to those spawns, a bulldozer can, and most likely will, come in by chopper to the left side of the house (according to the perspective of the map). I'm not entirely sure if it does it several times, but a bulldozer can spawn there regardless. Just keep an eye out for a chopper.

It's a good idea for one or two people to cook, while the rest focus on defense. Main defensive positions should be any entrances as well as the windows, so board up as many of them as you can. Also, try to place boards and defend entrances while also taking into consideration the location of the lab. For example, if it's upstairs, board up a few windows up there (I also recommend boarding up the windows in the side room so they don't completely surround you at any time) and keep an eye out for the balcony and windows. The stairs also make a good bottleneck, but be careful of shields. If the lab is downstairs, block out as many windows as you can and watch the entrances. There might still be cops coming from upstairs, so don't completely neglect it. You could leave someone upstairs to hold off incoming enemies, as well as people who climbed up on the balcony or are climbing in through the windows.

Sometimes the cops will disable the power and the lights will go down. Unless the power switch is in a really good spot, try not to go for it until the assault ends. It's not really necessary to turn on the lights anyway. As long as you can see inside, there shouldn't be a problem.

Finally, getting hostages is a pain in this map. The best place to intimidate cops is inside the house, but even there they can get caught in the crossfire. If you're going for hostage trading, try to intimidate toward the end of the assault, as the fighting will be easier and there are still some cops around. If the assault is not on, usually all the cops will retreat and you won't be able to intimidate anyone. Alternatively you can intimidate someone anytime during an assault, but remember that he can be freed or get shot at any time, so be careful. If you're going for Crew Chief or Hostage Taker bonuses, just intimidate as many as you can and as often as you can.

But this is just sort of a geneal idea as to what you should do. Feel free to experiment and see what fits your playstyle.

Uh oh, looks like Captain Winters decided to show up. Cook Off and Rats Day 1 are usually the worst maps for him to spawn in, since he always positions himself beside the road right in between the dirt roads leading to the house. He's tricky to take care of, especially if cops are spawning from the road. So let's go over a few basic things about taking care of the Captain.

Rule number one: NEVER ENGAGE HIM RIGHT AWAY
Unless you want an extra challenge, never defeat the Captain UNTIL the little shield icon appears on your HUD. The reason for this is something Overkill should look into: if you defeat the Captain before they have time to set themselves up properly, he will retreat but the infinite assault will remain. I don't know if this glitch happens on any other maps, but just to be safe I'm always going to wait until his little army of shields has deployed fully. It's not impossible to do the heist on an infinite assault, but if any of your teammates go into custody, they will never get back. So just a heads up.

Rule number two: STOP THE PRESSES
If the Captain shows up, cooking can wait. It's almost always a good idea to get rid of the Captain as fast as you can (so long as you wait until he's in position in this one). Trust me, that defense buff is going to bite you in the ass some day.

Rule number three: TEAMWORK IS KEY
I'm always the one killing off the Captain, but just because I can spam him with a grenade launcher doesn't mean you shouldn't protect me. If someone is going to go kill the Captain, be polite and actually assist him. The Captain is positioned in a very tricky position. You can flank him, but he's still pretty far away from both flanks. On top of that, he's right next to a place where the cops spawn, so it's going to be tough concentrating on both the cops AND the Captain. Do NOT think for a minute that your help will not be appreciated. If two people work on taking out the Captain and two people hold the other cops off, the Captain can go down easily. It's all about teamwork.

Rule number three: KABOOM
Okay, maybe not a rule, but here's a very helpful tip if you didn't know: the Captain is extremely weak to explosives, so bringing a grenade launcher is practically a death sentence for him. Keep that in mind, but don't force your entire team to take grenade launchers. Usually one is enough to finish the job.

I hate to say it, but the biggest reason I'm writing this guide is because people blow up the lab way too easily. I don't know whether it's because the new players don't know how to cook or if the new cooking lines are confusing, but let's set this thing straight: cooking requires patience and the ability to listen. If you're not good at either of these things, then do not cook anything.

Let's first go over the ingredient locations:

• The pickup truck behind the house, on the lower part of the yard
  
• The shack behind the house
  
• The basement of the house
  
• The shack in front of the house
  
• The bathroom

I've listed these in an order that you should fetch them in. It's based on which are the hardest to reach during an assault. However, these are just my thoughts, so it's not entirely accurate.

When you run out of ingredients in Cook Off, Bain will ask you to light a flare, which has to be placed either in the backyard, front yard or the side of the house near the broken car. Once the ingredients come in, take them to the lab on the indicated spot. With that said, let's talk about cooking.

During the Halloween event of 2015, Overkill changed the meth cooking lines. At first they were just lines where Bain was unsure of the ingredient. Some of these lines were outright lies or didn't give the answer at all, so it was obvious as to why some people blew up the lab. It required knowledge on what lines corresponded with which ingredients. While I pretty much knew which lines were meant for which ingredients, I can still see the flaw in that, which is why Overkill changed them completely.

The cooking method is now much more simple: Bain tells you an ingredient and he will correct it if it's wrong. It's that simple. Let's get an example here:

"Uhm... Ok... Caustic Soda..."
...
"And kiss your lucky charms"

Even if Bain says he is unsure, he didn't mention another ingredient. Therefore, the correct ingredient is Caustic Soda.

Here's an example of when Bain gets the ingredient wrong:

"Let's see here... Hydrogen Chloride..."
...
"Strike that! It's supposed to be Muriatic Acid! I'm 65.5% sure."

Bain can be uncertain of some ingredients, but when he outright tells you that something was wrong, then SOMETHING WAS DEFINITELY WRONG. He will then correct himself and tell you the CORRECT ingredient. This is why it is so very important for players to actually listen to what Bain has to say. A good rule of thumb would be to consider the last ingredient Bain mentions in his dialogue part to be the correct one.

Another thing to point out is that one ingredient should never be used in a batch twice. For example, if you have already added caustic soda, you won't have to add any more caustic soda until the next batch of meth you cook. With this in mind, you can easily determine the next ingredients by picking up all the ingredients at once and not picking up any more until you've finished cooking that bag of meth. Let's get a small example here:

You have Cs, Hcl, Mu. You need to add Cs.
Ingredient added, you now have Hcl and Mu. You now need to add Mu.
Ingredient added, you now have Hcl.

By now you should be able to determine which ingredient is the last in that sequence, even without Bain's instructions. This is why it's generally a good idea to let one person cook a batch at a time. If there are several cooks, have one cook and the others defend the lab. When a batch is done, swap cooks. It's as simple as that.

If you're still having problems, download a mod that tells you which ingredient you should add and follow those instructions. Because if the new updated lines and this guide didn't help you with cooking meth, I don't know what else to tell you.

Once a batch has been cooked, bag it up and take it to a safe place, for example the side room upstairs if the lab is upstairs, or the bathroom downstairs if the lab is downstairs. Just try not to let the cops take the bags. If they do grab them, they'll try to take them to the corner of the map, near the pickup truck.

When escape finally arrives, loot as many bags as you can at a time. He won't stay forever, so the more bags you get to throw in, the less you have to worry about cops stealing them. Just be careful if the car stops on the right side of the road (from the perspective of the house), as cops can spawn there at any time.

I hope this guide has taught you or someone you know some basic knowledge about Cook Off (or Rats Day 1). I also hope this will lessen the amount of times the lab blows up in the future.

It's also important to note that I don't really consider this guide to be completely finished. I rushed a lot of things in it, and it could use a bit of fixing up here and there, as well as some additional info. I'll get to that when I have the time or when I think of them. But until then, thank you for reading, and "keep cooking, people, tempo!"