Cooking Up (Lil') Leftovers

The RNG gods must be generous lately; three pets dropped for me this week. Thank you RNG!

One of the pets that I finally managed to collect is Lil' Leftovers. This little guy was frustrating to get, not because I had to cook a ton of Draenor food before he finally dropped, but because of how random the drop was.


I finally received the pet while cooking Blackrock Barbecue. I had enough mats to craft 28 food, but the pet dropped on the 27th.

To be clear, when I say "28 food" I don't mean 28 stacks or 28 individual pieces of Blackrock Barbecue. As you can see in the image above I have way more than 28. The number I'm talking about is the number that you see in the crafting window when you begin cooking. 28 crafts of the food.

People report various numbers of when they received the pet, which can make the process of trying to get Lil' Leftovers more frustrating for some because their own numbers don't seem to match up. "I cooked 1,000 of X food and it dropped!" Does the person mean they cooked 1k stacks? 1k individual pieces (50 stacks)? Or 1k crafts? Depending on how the reader interprets the statement, cooking could be a huge disappointment or huge surprise for them.

It's difficult to pinpoint the actual number that Lil' Leftovers has a chance to drop because of how cooking works now. Each craft creates more than one piece of Draenor food (the higher your cooking skill, the more you create each time - 6 to 9 pieces being the max). Compound that with the different values that players report, it's hard to give an accurate estimate of when you may see the pet. So really, the best thing anyone can do is to just keep trying.

27 crafts may seem like a small amount (it truly is when you look at the bigger picture), and I feel lucky to have finally proc'ed the pet. But I actually cooked way more than 27 prior to that. I lost track towards the end. I'd say I've cooked well over 500 crafts since the beginning of WoD. Maybe closer to 1000 crafts. That means roughly 300 stacks or 6000 individual pieces of (100 stat) Draenor food. So. Much. Food. And nothing to do with it! Thankfully the AH is there and I was able to make a small profit from my efforts.

At first I was just vendoring the food because I really didn't have the space or desire to keep any of it. With Savage Feasts being so easy to acquire and feeding a large number of raid members, the food from Draenor cooking is kind of useless. Of course there are still people out there that will buy crafted food, so if you don't want to feel like you're cooking just for the pet, I'd recommend using Undermine Journal to check which 100 stat food is selling the best on your server.

That's what I ended up doing. Turns out crit, mastery, and multistrike food sell for the most out of all the 100 stat cooked foods on my server, so I focused on crafting those instead of cooking whatever I had mats for. Whenever I accumulated a hefty amount of garrison resources, I would buy 200 meat (sometimes more, sometimes less depending on how cheap or expensive it is each day) from the Trading Post. My stockpile of fish is almost un-ending since I'm still hunting Lunkers, so I was able to craft 28-30 100 stat food at a time (roughly 8-9 stacks). This method paid off in the end, not only with the pet but I earned a nice chunk of gold too!

I should mention that I have yet to hear a report that the pet dropped for anyone while they were crafting the 75 stat food. That isn't to say that Lil' Leftovers CAN'T come from Meat and Fish Dishes, there's no official word or any solid proof that it can't. But anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that the pet comes from 100 stat food and Feast of the Waters or Feast of Blood. Or perhaps it just has a higher chance to come from the Delicacies and feasts compared to the lesser Draenor recipes.

It's a long, grindy process that can sometimes feel pointless. Cooking isn't exactly useful this expansion, with Savage Feasts being relatively superior and all. You can still gain something from cooking if you take a few extra steps -- check Undermine Journal weekly (or even daily) and prioritize cooking the 100 stat food that sells for the most on your server. Sometimes what you put up on the AH won't sell, but as with cooking for the pet, persistence should pay off in the end.

As a side note, I mentioned this before but completely forgot about it. When I tried to feed my Lil' Leftovers a Magical Pet Biscuit I got a surprise, "Food cannot eat food" haha! XD


It's such a small detail but I love it and makes me so happy for some reason. :)