11. Overcooked DLC: Festive Seasoning

The Festive Seasoning DLC, unlike the previous one, is free to download and comes with eight Christmas-y levels. Again, there aren't any Star requirements to unlock levels, so you don't have to have a certain amount to continue the DLC. You can find 3 Star ranking tips and other information below, as well as videos in the playlist link below. One thing to know before you attempt to get all of the best rankings is that each level here is five minutes instead of four as per usual. What this means is that you'll have more time to get to the score you need, but the score will be higher to compensate for having more time.

Overcooked | Festive Seasoning (3 Stars)

Base Camp

The Onion King has brought you to this snowy land as part of a cultural outreach program to research the festive stuff going on. According to Kevin, it might be the best food festival ever, so go out there and learn more about it!

Level 1-1

1P: 40-70-100
2P: 60-140-200
3P: 70-180-240
4P: 80-220-320

This kitchen nearby the base camp is a good starting level for learning the "new" recipes for winter stew. Winter stew consists of a lot of different combinations of ingredients, with the three in the kitchen being the focus here, of course. You'll catch on that the different stew orders are definitely more complicated than normal soup orders have been. The counters in vertical lines also move left to right every once in a while too, which will push the cooks out of what they were doing before. The basic concepts of this kitchen are covered throughout the main story, so you should already know that one cook should pass ingredients and man the stoves while the other cuts and turns things in. When someone has the time, they can do the dishes when they're dirty; for the best placement, put the clean dishes in their default position in the picture above.

Level 1-2

1P: 60-90-120
2P: 80-120-180
3P: 100-160-220
4P: 140-200-240

If you take a look at the kitchen, you'll see that only one person can get to the stoves and another the cutting boards. This won't be the case for long; the two bits of countertop in front of these for each person will move up or down to block the original piece, so if you first have the cutting boards as a left cook, you'll soon have to deal with the stoves, and vice versa. This happens about every 30 seconds like stage changes usually do. You'll also notice that whoever has access to the cutting boards won't have access to carrots or onions due to the other shifting countertops. To get around this, put two carrots and two onions on the shifting countertops on the right side when you can get to them; that way, when you have the cutting boards, you can get to those ingredients yourself instead of relying solely on your fellow cook. Both sides will also have a plate of their own, and both sides also have sinks. Wash these when you have time or when you need them.

Level 1-3

1P: 60-90-120
2P: 80-140-220
3P: 120-160-240
4P: 160-200-260

And now for something completely different. All of the food you'll ever have is already placed around the kitchen, and this leads to a few things. First of all, you won't have any specific locations to get food, so if a potato you need isn't nearby, you'll have to run over to one. Secondly, you won't have nearly as much counter space until you start using up ingredients. Food on conveyors also won't move until you remove something ahead of it. Due to how much food there is, you won't ever actually run out during your five minutes in this kitchen, so don't stress too much about that. What you should be thinking of is food placement and how far away certain ingredients are.

The strategy my friend and I used was that we had one cook immediately go to the south-eastern corner of the kitchen and cut up all the food on the conveyor, and then this cook went on cutting duty for the rest of the game. They also took dirty plates placed around where the default position is for the cooks in the picture above, cleaned them, and returned them back to around that area for easy access for the other cook. That other cook manned the cutting board and pot up on the northern wall and turned in orders, as well as brought the dirty dishes to that area mentioned earlier.

Level 1-4

1P: 40-60-80
2P: 80-140-200
3P: 100-160-250
4P: 120-240-280

The gimmick to this level is that the + shaped countertops in the middle will rotate every half minute. With two of the sides being longer than the other, the kitchen will alternate between being separated horizontally and vertically. This means that whenever this happens, you'll be assigned a different cutting board or stove every time it switches. To avoid having both cooks end up on the same side, stay in opposite corners every 30 seconds. Keep track of how much time is left frequently to prep for the switch. It's a lot harder than it seems to work with moving around at the right time, and if you both get stuck on the same side, you may as well restart if you're aiming for 3 Stars.

With two cooks, it's very obvious what you'll be able to do at any given time. Communicate with your partner to pass things off to each other in a timely fashion and you should be fine. If you have four cooks, then each cook can keep a corner to themselves, which will really make things a lot easier.

Level 1-5

1P: 100-160-200
2P: 100-220-260
3P: 140-250-320
4P: 180-270-360

Time for a well-deserved break from making winter stew. Now you'll be cooking turkey and vegetables with a flamethrower. The cook to the right should quickly put one of the two flamethrowers on their side onto the conveyor for the cook on the left to use. Since the cook on the right can't cut any vegetables, all they can do is pass them on and cook turkeys. A ready-to-cook ingredient will have a progress bar on the bottom that fills up when you use the flamethrower on it. The dirty dishes show up by the cook on the right, so they'll have to clean the dishes and put them on the belt so the left cook can get them.

The left cook seems to have most of the responsibilities. They have to pick up ingredients from the right cook as well as cut the vegetables, and then cook the vegetables too. They also have to plate the food correctly and then turn everything in. Despite the weird level design, it won't take too long to earn 3 Stars here. If you ever get any orders for just a turkey, get those out of the way first, since you might need the extra points later.

Level 1-6

1P: 180-200-240
2P: 200-260-300
3P: 240-310-360
4P: 300-350-380

Now you'll be using flamethrowers in a much larger environment, where all the cooks can stand together. Don't worry, flamethrowers can't damage cooks, so don't worry about any respawn times or anything like that. You'll notice that there are a bunch of conveyors in the center of the stage; start placing around equal amounts of each of the ingredients on the conveyors and you'll be a lot less stressed for passing ingredients for quite some time. Try to split the work in half by having an upper and lower cook. Since the lower cook has 2/3 of the ingredients on their end, they can complete the solo-turkey and carrot-turkey orders all by themselves, and since they have more of the ingredients, they should prepare the carrots and turkey for any meal that requires all three and pass them over to the upper cook unless the upper cook decides to put more potatoes on the conveyor for easy access. This level is about as difficult or easier than the last in terms of earning a high enough score for those three yellow stars; if you found Level 1-5 to be alright, you probably won't have any issues here for long.

Level 1-7

1P: 140-170-200
2P: 240-290-340
3P: 280-340-400
4P: 320-380-480

This level is a bit nicer than some of the others in this DLC thus far because the turkeys periodically pop out of the central conveyor belt, so you won't have to worry about that ingredient at all. The gimmick is that you should use the flamethrower on the turkeys when you can't get to them and then pick them up at the end ready to go. As you can see here, both sides have their own kitchen, one plate, and place to turn in food. Never at any point should one side of the kitchen have both plates, as that's completely unnecessary.

Both cooks should be ready to drop their signature vegetable on the conveyor for the other to pick up whenever they ask for it; this will solve the problem of the carrot-potato dishes as well as the dishes with all three ingredients. You could also assign these orders to a specific side of the kitchen, with the other filling the turkey-only orders. That way, only one vegetable has to go on the conveyor instead of two and the instant orders are fulfilled with the largest tip possible. The 3 Star score is pretty high, but as long as you really get those turkey-only orders going, you should get there.

Level 1-8

1P: 70-100-120
2P: 80-100-120
3P: 90-120-180
4P: 100-180-280

Now for the last level. There are four areas of the kitchen split off by a pool of water, and a wooden plank moves up and down the pool to serve as a means of getting across. To make matters worse, you'll be making more winter stew, so you'll be working with four ingredients and stoves instead of three and a flamethrower. The ingredients are split in pairs, and there are three pots, so my friend and I came up with the idea that a stew that requires ingredients from both sides should be made in the center pot so that both cooks can put their ingredients inside. Any other soup like the three-meat stew order or the carrots-potatoes order can be done in the pots at the top or bottom of the kitchen so the center pot isn't taken up by something that only one cook has to do.

There's not a whole lot of strategy that can help when it comes to this level, unfortunately. Whenever there's downtime for one of the cooks, they can help the other one out by cutting ingredients, turning orders in, or cleaning plates. Plates, whether they're clean or dirty should always be placed on the counters next to the garbage disposal on the left for easy access.

Happy Holidays

With the various kitchens mastered, the Onion King realizes that the festivities aren't about the food, but really about spending time with each other. Thanks to the teamwork between your fellow cooks, you were able to make the season great.