> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://mystery-souls.gitbook.io/mystery-souls-docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://mystery-souls.gitbook.io/mystery-souls-docs/diner-upgrades/build-your-culinary-empire.md).

# Build Your Culinary Empire

Build a production chain that can keep serving without exhausting your stock.

Start with a few recipes you can reliably supply. Compare ingredient requirements, crop growth time, cooking time and service value. A stronger-looking dish is useful only when your production can support it.

Keep three reserves in mind: seeds for the next planting cycle, ingredients for the next preparation and finished dishes for the diner. Spending everything on one stage can leave the other stages idle.

Reinvest Coins in CPC and CPS power-ups while retaining enough food for the added serving activity. Increasing CPS increases the pressure on your prepared stock.

Use level unlocks and skill points to improve a bottleneck. Greenhouse bonuses help ingredient production; cooking bonuses can shorten preparation; diner bonuses help food produce revenue. Choose the effects that apply to your actual recipes.

Personal deliveries and Community Delivery create useful alternative goals, but they remove the resources you submit. Plan contributions around your next recipes and diner reserve.

The Marketplace lets you compare the effort of producing an item with the TIPS cost of obtaining it from another player. Prices and available orders can change. The Black Market is a separate daily Coins shop.

Progression, achievements and seasonal events give your diner new targets over time. Use the current game panels to decide what fits your play style.

## Power-ups and Offline Progress

Power-ups improve how your diner serves food. Buy them with Coins in the Power-ups window.

CPC upgrades strengthen manual clicks. CPS upgrades add automatic clicks per second. Your food's service value and the bonuses applying to it determine revenue, so CPS alone is not a fixed Coins-per-second payout.

Further copies of a power-up become more expensive. The purchase window shows the current cost and your owned quantity.

### Away from the game

Automatic activity can continue when you are away. The current offline settlement window is capped at 24 hours.

Offline progress still needs food. Active dishes and eligible stocked replacements lose service life as automatic serving proceeds. If usable stock runs out, you should not expect the displayed CPS to keep producing the same income for the whole absence.

The game can also reconcile a cooking job that finishes during your absence. Food completed partway through the offline window is handled from its completion time, rather than being treated as available throughout the entire window.

Before leaving, stock prepared dishes, review your preferred menu and autofill settings, and check your CPS. On return, allow the game to synchronise before relying on the final stock and Coins totals.

## Level, Skills and Prestige

Cooking and eligible game rewards grant XP. Your Profile shows your level, XP and the next progression target. Recipes, ingredients, production options and plot capacity can have level requirements.

### Skills

Skill points are a separate progression resource. Open Skills to choose effects suited to your plan, such as Greenhouse growth, crop bonuses, cooking preparation or diner revenue.

Each skill has its own point cost, level requirement and maximum rank. Some effects target a specific ingredient, crop or dish category. Read the target and effect rather than assuming every skill applies globally.

Skills follow a points budget. A higher player level and prestige rewards can provide more points under the active rules. Spending Stars is not a substitute for the normal skill-point requirement.

A skill reset removes your current allocation so you can choose again. The window shows whether a free reset is available, the next free-reset date and the Stars cost of a paid reset. Paid resets become more expensive between free-reset cycles.

### Prestige

Prestige becomes available at the maximum level. It starts a new progression run and grants the benefit shown in the Prestige window.

This is a broad reset. Prestige returns level, XP and Coins to their starting state and clears ordinary production progress, stock, active food, seeds, skills and several progression systems before granting a starter kit. It preserves Stars and TIPS; reserved Marketplace buy-offer TIPS are returned as the offers are removed.

The exact reset scope should be reviewed in the in-game confirmation before you proceed. Do not prestige while assuming your cooked stock, growing crops or ordinary machine progress will carry over.