After finishing up with the Barbarian class for Rogue Legacy 2, I wanted to try a completely different sort of character in the form of the Chef. This sounds like a joke class due to the funny cooking hat and the use of a frying pan for a weapon, however it turns out that the Chef is one of the game's best Intelligence-based classes and a solid choice even in a non-variant game. The Chef is a surprisingly good defensive character with the ability to repel incoming projectiles and turn them back against their wielder with a ticking burn effect. If the player can work around the dangerously low HP total on this class, the Chef is a lot of fun to use! Let's start by taking a quick look at the stats:
Health: Vitality * 7 + 100
Mana: 200
Weapon (Frying Pan) Attack: Strength * 1.5
Weapon (Frying Pan) Projectile: Intelligence * 1.5
Weapon (Frying Pan) Burn Effect: Intelligence * 0.55 (Per Tick, Maximum 6)
Class Talent: Stew
Class Passive: Artisan (Weapon Applies Burn)
Mastery Bonus: Focus
The big thing that jumps out from the base stats is the low health of this class. Chefs only get 70% Vitality scaling and that puts them among the lowest in the game, only outscoring the true featherweight classes in the Ronin and Astromancer. This is not a class that can afford to take a lot of hits even with their class talent for recovery. As a counterbalance to this, Chefs get one of the highest mana pools in the game with 200 MP to play around with. This confirms that the Chef is intended to be an Intelligence-based class which will mean an important role for spellcasting alongside the frying pan attacks. I anticipate locking the Searing Shot spell (which I consider to be the best in Rogue Legacy 2) although perhaps I'll wind up favoring something else since it does overlap a bit with the class passive.
The class weapon is the frying pan which actually has pretty respectable physical damage scaling at 1.5 times Strength. I remember occasionally playing a Chef in my original non-variant save file and feeling that they worked reasonably well with their base attack, certainly a lot better than the pathetic Strength scaling on the Mage class. Of course, the real benefit of the Chef's melee attack comes in the form of the class passive: all weapon attacks apply the Burning status effect. This works exactly the same as the Amaterasu's Sun relic and applies a ticking damage-over-time effect which will hit six times at Intelligence * 0.55 damage per instance. The damage is actually slightly better than that because the last two burning ticks will always skill crit and deal slightly more damage. This is likely still too small to make Focus worth investing in as a stat; better to get more Vitality and Intelligence and such even at higher cost. The frying pan will also deflect medium-sized and smaller projectiles away from the Chef which is a powerful defensive ability. Those projectiles turn into fireballs which also apply the Burn status effect for even more fiery goodness.
The class talent for the Chef is the "Stew" which is also occasionally referred to as the "pot" by the in-game characters. The Chef begins with three charges of Stew which can be eaten to restore 100 mana and Intelligence * 2 health. This is exactly how the meat items function in Rogue Legacy 2 and the healing can be enormous when pumping Intelligence as the primary stat. Picking up a meat item will restore a charge of Stew (in addition to healing the Chef) and the mana flasks will also restore charges as soon as the player purchases the Alchemy Lab upgrade - this is a high priority for the Chef class! The biggest downside to eating the Stew is the fact that it locks the Chef in place for about two seconds with its animation which isn't always viable in a boss fight. The best time to use the Stew is when bosses hit 50% HP where most of them have some kind of charging up animation, or in between the first and second half of the Enoch fight, that sort of thing. Note that entering boss doors will restore HP/MP with the proper castle upgrades but that Stew charges won't replenish without finding more meat/flask items which could make dealing with Jonah / Cain a bit difficult. Chefs have Focus as their Mastery stat which is unfortunately not one of the more useful options, oh well. Not everything about the class can be great.
One final note: part of this variant involves never paying to unlock the teleporters or make use of the Architect to lock down the dungeon. Every character starts with a completely fresh map and has to make their own path through it. This isn't as bad as it sounds since clearing the dungeon offers up the chance to find relics and Blessings of Life to increase overall max HP for the rest of that character's journey. I will always be trying to full-clear as much of the dungeon as possible throughout this series. I also won't be using the rooms that switch to alternate class weapons and talents since that would invalidate the purpose of testing out each class one at a time. We want to assess the power of each class, not swap everyone over to the best stuff and get past the bosses using only the strongest options. With that introduction out of the way, let's dive into this variant proper with the Chef class:
(By the way, some of this variant took place during the Halloween event which explains the monster graphics in these pictures.)
Chef #1: 20 Vitality, 18 Intelligence, 0 Armor, 5 Focus, 15 Strength
The Chef is not one of the initial starting classes so I had the default Knight full clear the Citadel and then retired him with about 3000 gold in pocket. I made sure to avoid taking any of the heirlooms and deliberately avoided any of the rune challenges, even the ones that I could have completed with ease. I had just barely enough money on hand to clear the Level 18 requirement and unlock the Chef class after dropping some additional stat points into Vitality and Intelligence. Anyway, the goal with these starting characters is always to make it far enough to grab all of the key heirlooms. Landing all five of them makes for a fantastic opening if you can pull it off. I started out by full clearing the Citadel and didn't have any problems in the initial biome despite lacking the air dash or double jump. One thing that I didn't note above was that the frying pan has a huge hit box for its swing and knocks enemies back a long way when hit. This befits the defensive nature of the Chef class although it's balanced by having a slow swing speed on the default attack. The monsters in the Citadel weren't terribly threatening and I made excellent progress throughout the area. I even found a Quenching Rune by knocking back the enemy fireballs in one of those "take no damage" fairy chest challenges, nice.
Once all of the Citadel was finished, I healed up the chip damage that I'd taken thus far by grabbing the air dash heirloom. I was going to need that to proceed through Axis Mundi and it was also going to be needed against estuary Lamech who I headed off to face immediately thereafter. Lamech's attack patterns are heavily telegraphed and I had the frying pan to knock back his only dangerous move, the heat-seeking fireballs that pop out when he drops under half health. I still ended up getting hit twice in this fight largely because I lacked the double jump but otherwise it was smooth sailing. The damage taken from Lamech was healed up when I was forced to take the Echo's Boots heirloom at the outset of Axis Mundi - the player can't proceed across the bridge without spin kicks resetting the air dash. On to the next area.
Axis Mundi was relatively uneventful even without the ability to calm the Nightmares or make use of the double jump due to lack of heirlooms. I was feeling confident enough to take several Blessings of Life that my Chef found along the way, using some Stew charges to heal up the damage taken. I realized very quickly that the player typically wants to be sitting at 2/3 Stew charges since this effectively turns meat drops into double healing items. The actual meat itself restores 2 * Intelligence HP and then also gives back a Stew charge which can do the exact same thing a second time. This makes a huge difference in terms of sustaining throughout the dungeon, flipping the survival math heavily in the player's direction so long as recovery items drop at a regular rate. I was able to make it to the Kerguelen Plateau (skipping the Void Beast bosses for the moment) and kept pushing eastwards towards the Far Shores and the double jump heirloom. I was able to take another Blessing of Life along the way, then backtrack for yet another one after finding the teleporter to the heirloom location. Securing Aether's Wings and unlocking Naamah's boss room were more than enough to annoint this as a successful first character and I was still going strong.
With the Citadel, Axis Mundi, and the Kerguelen Plateau all full cleared, the next biome on the list was the Study. I found the void dash heirloom immediately in the second room and held off on claiming it until my Chef needed a full health refill. I was still feeling stable enough to take another Blessing of Life and then the guaranteed one that always appears in the Study. This knocked me down to low health and forced the need to take the void dash heirloom but that was perfectly fine since I wanted the improved dash anyway. The ticking Burn effect was very good at taking down monsters which were significantly stronger than my Chef as I could tag them once and then leap away to safety while they roasted to death. It took two such cycles to kill most enemies with three needed against the high HP opponents. With liberal use of the double heals from the Stew pot, I found myself full clearing the whole Study and not coming especially close to death at any point. I was even able to use Murmur's miniboss room for another full health restoration and several additional Stew charges from the breakables inside. Plus I still had the final heirloom in the Citadel that I hadn't claimed yet for a full heal on demand.
Then I hit a reality check: my Chef died in two hits in the Sun Tower before I was fast enough to retreat and take the heirloom. Whoops - still a great opening character though!
311 monsters slain, 18446 gold, 2835 ore, 1346 aether, 100 souls
Back in town, I started out by heading over to the Drift House and using the 100 souls from Lamech to unlock the default Embroidered Investments and Runic Horizons options. There hadn't been any Chefs among the heir options so I couldn't run the Simple Start scar for the moment, I had to spend all of gold first and then retire the Ranger character that I'd taken. This was a big trip to the Enchantress as there were three runes that I wanted: the basic Lifesteal and Magnesis Runes along with the Quenching Rune that I'd found with the last Chef. Fortunately this only required two rune weight upgrades for this early in the game. Over at the Blacksmith, I purchased the Scholar Chest, Ammonite Helm, and Warden Cape; I wanted to get the superior Scholar's Cape but couldn't afford enough equipment weight; I really needed a rank in Master Smith which I lacked the souls to purchase. I also dropped a big 5000 gold into purchasing the Alchemy Lab upgrade so that mana flasks would also count for recharging the Stew pot. They would function just like meats since I also had the early Quenching Rune to restore HP along with MP. A couple more Vitality and Intelligence levels emptied out the rest of my wallet from the previous character run.
I retired the poor Ranger archer and this time managed to roll a Chef on the heir select screen. Now I could belatedly complete the Simple Start scar which was, err, simple to accomplish. I took two hits in clearing out the monsters and didn't care about replaying it further since the initial effort was enough to land the S+ rating and the Bronze Trophy. Back to the dungeon again with the second Chef.
Chef #2: 27 Vitality, 26 Intelligence, 15 Armor, 6 Focus, 15 Strength
This Chef had the Methemoglobinemia trait (they have blue coloring, no gameplay effects) and the not terribly useful Prismatic Spectrum spell. I would have much preferred something that could hit targets at range because the frying pan was already more than serviceable up close. This Chef tore right through the Citadel and proceeded through the Study without encountering anything particularly dangerous along the way. With the upgrades that I added back in the town area, the Chef was now restocking Stew charges on every meat and mana flask drop which provided an incredible amount of sustain. Typically my characters are trying to make due with 1 HP or 2 HP per monster kill of lifesteal at this point in the game. Instead, this Chef was getting 52 HP per meat item and effectively double that since it restored a Stew charge at the same time. Mana flasks only restored 2.5% of max HP (about 7 health at a time) but gave one of those delicious Stew charges whenever they appeared. Furthermore I was able to find the Lotus Stem relic early on, a relic that blocks up to 2 attacks at the cost of 150 mana per block and restores charges from mana potions. Therefore mana flasks were restoring a small amount of health plus adding a Stew charge plus refilling a Lotus Stem charge. Absolutely insane value!
All of these various forms of health regeneration meant that I didn't have to worry too much about careful play to continue progressing through the dungeon. As long as I could avoid egregious mistakes or a lengthy stretch without a single health recovery item appearing, my Chef would be able to remain in the safe zone in terms of her lifebar. While the actual damage output of the Chef remained low, that didn't matter too much so long as I could keep sustaining endlessly along the way. I full cleared the Study (including a flawless victory over the Gonghead Twins) and advanced through Axis Mundi to the Sun Tower, grabbing every Blessing of Life along the way. It's much safer to tank their damage with the Chef able to eat Stews for recovery on demand. I made it to the top of the Sun Tower without much effort and still had the full heal from the Aesop's Tome heirloom waiting to be taken as needed. Once Axis Mundi was finished, I also took the time to defeat the two Void Beasts at the end. My Chef's Intelligence was low enough that it took a while to burn them down but the bosses were easy enough that there wasn't much danger to worry about. The Lotus Stem even took a hit for me that blocked the first damage instance.
I was starting to run out of parts of the dungeon to explore as my Chef headed into the Kerguelen Plateau. She made her way through about the first quarter of the biome when some additional mana flasks dropped and I realized that I had full health, full Stew charges, and also both Lotus Stem charges on hand. That seemed like a good moment to try my hand against another boss and so I teleported back to the Study to face Enoch. The Chef turned out to be extremely well suited to the Mage form of the estuary, able to deflect Enoch's fireballs back at him with big swings of the frying pan. I was also a bit lucky that Enoch kept avoiding his most dangeorus ability, the one that fills the screen with Cursed ghosts. I took a couple of hits which were mostly blocked by the Lotus Stem and ate a charge of Stew in between the two phases. The Mimic form of Enoch was also pretty straightforward, just a matter of tagging the big treasure chest periodically with the Burn effect while staying out of its way. I found that the exploding potions that the estuary throws out can indeed be deflected back at Enoch but it was hard to pull this off without getting hit by their explosions. All in all, this was pretty easy even if it did take some time to chew through the whole enemy lifebar.
Afterwards I returned back to the Plateau to finish clearing out the rest of it. Having already completed the Study and the Sun Tower, this wasn't exactly tough to pull off. I continued to be surprised at the strength of the Chef class which was very good at sustaining through the dungeon and also better than expected for boss fights thanks to the ticking fire damage. Anyway, it didn't take too long to make it through all of the rooms in the Plateau and then I basically had to fight estuary Naamah for lack of other options. Although her flying rose projectiles could not be reflected with the frying pan and had to be broken with spin kicks, everything else that she fired off could be batted back at the estuary. This was another long, slow boss fight where the burning fire effect did most of the damage. For a character with only 26 Intelligence, those Burn ticks were only dealing 14 damage apiece which dragged things out for some time. The danger level was low though and this turned into another straightforward victory.
Now I was really stuck: the whole dungeon was cleared other than the Dry Lake but I would have to defeat estuary Irad for the Sun Lantern to have any realistic chance to get anything done down there. I wasn't confident that I could beat Irad with my setup and therefore made an attempt at seeing how far I could make it in the basement while lacking the Sun Latern. Spoiler alert: that was indeed a bad idea as I couldn't see much of anything. I cleared four or five rooms before this Chef's health was about to run out, forcing me to retreat back to the Aesop's Tome heirloom for a health refill. (Yes, I finally picked up the heirloom now - and note that all of the estuaries to this point were beaten without the 15% damage bonus because I couldn't read memories yet!) I headed up to the top of the Sun Tower to give the next boss my best effort... and I played the living daylights out of the estuary to defeat Irad with ease. I took minimal damage during the first half of the battle, ate a charge of Stew while Irad was opening up the third eye, and then dashed around like a madman afterwards while keeping the burning damage running. I've gotten immensely better at this boss over time and it's probably my favorite scenario in the whole game. When executed correctly, the player can avoid virtually every incoming attack even as the screen turns into a bullet hell. This was an awesome moment and way better than I'd been expecting to achieve with this second Chef. 
Thus it was time to head back into the basement, this time with the Sun Lantern in hand so that I could actually see what the heck was going on. Enemies down there were dealing about 100 damage per hit which didn't give me much leeway for error. However, a combination of careful gameplay and the amazing restorative power of the Chef's Stews was enough to see me through the whole place after another half hour of real world time. The entire dungeon was cleared out with only the second Chef and at a mere Level 35. I pulled off the same accomplishment with my Barbarian Legacy earlier but come on, this was the *CHEF* class for crying out loud! It looked like this class was legitimately strong in its own right, a lot better than where I had them placed on my mental tier list. I went ahead and unlocked the two miniboss portals with the Pearl / Onyx keys and fought the giant axe/shield combo behind one of them. I did emerge victorious from that miniboss fight but took enough damage that I didn't feel confident in trying the second one. I had earlier seen The Future Successor's Bargain relic back in the Citadel and opted to take that for another 20k gold rather than likely throw my life away in an impossible fight. That brought the total haul from this character up to nearly 75k gold, absolutely astonishing for Normal difficulty with no bonus gold generation.
550 monsters slain, 74979 gold, 8977 ore, 6092 aether, 400 souls
I had 500 souls to spend in town with the 100 saved up from the previous Chef. I used these to purchase the initial rank in Unbreakable Will, Infinite Knowledge, and Master Smith and then the last 200 souls for Preferential Treatment to lock a Chef character in the rightmost slot on the heir select screen. There were no runes that I wanted to purchase on this trip so the Blacksmith would be getting the bulk of my attention. A big upgrade was the Ammonite Sword, making use of the otherwise useless Sword slot to get additional Armor (just as the Cape slot fulfils this role for Strength-based characters). That cost five equipment weight upgrades all on its own but was a great pickup. The Crescent Chest was similarly worth +7 Intelligence over the Scholar Chest that I was wearing, good enough to purchase even if I would likely swap over to the Ammonite Chest in time. I held off on getting anything in the Trinket slot since I didn't care for the options I had available; Focus from the Scholar Trinket really wasn't that useful on this class.
On the main "castle" upgrade tree, I purchased my way over to the Gold Gain portion and picked up the first two levels in that category. Then, because I was confident in the ability to full clear the dungeon again, I converted 2500 ore/aether into 150 souls via the first Strange Transaction and purchased a second rank in Unbreakable Will and dropped another 31k gold into another two levels of Gold Gain. That was a hefty price for this stage of the game but better to reach the point of 20% additional income as fast as possible if I was confident that I could clear the whole dungeon again. This didn't leave much left over, just enough to squeeze out two more Vitality upgrades with 5 gold remaining in the bank. Every coin matters in this game.
Chef #3: 30 Vitality, 34 Intelligence, 26 Armor, 6 Focus, 20 Strength
This Chef had Charismatic (15% shop discount) and Nature traits, neither having any gameplay effects within the dungeon. This run started out with a shrine holding Pandora's Trial relic in the first room: any hit taken is fatal, defeating 10 enemies will purify the relic and result in 50% additional resolve. Cleansing the relic in the Citadel on Normal difficulty wasn't too tough as I took my time and bashed some of the basic monsters to death with the frying pan. Now I hoped to be able to find some other useful relics to make use of that extra resolve. Anyway, I definitely noticed the increased stats on this Chef as compared to the previous one. Monsters in the Study were mostly dying in a single hit from the ticking Burn damage with only the truly tanky customers like the enemy knights requiring a second application. The Stew charges were also restoring 68 HP apiece so every flask was worth at least that much health and each meat drop was effectively double that for 136 HP restored. It just wasn't that hard keeping health in a safe spot with that kind of curative power; this might be the only class in Rogue Legacy 2 that doesn't have a desperate need for more lifesteal. I mean, I would still make sure to purchase those runes due to their usefulness (and I found the first Soulsteal Rune early on in this run), but it wasn't a matter of life or death as it is for every other class.
I didn't like the various relic options that I was offered throughout the dungeon and left that 200% resolve unused for a long time. Eventually I grabbed Amaterasu's Sun (weapon attacks apply Burn damage) and then the Lotus Stem once again since the two of them cost exactly 100 resolve. The Chef class innately has a Burn effect on weapon attacks already so Amaterasu's Sun added an additional two seconds of fire damage to the default frying pan attacks. This was hilarious in practice while not being terribly effective since I had to wait almost five full seconds for the whole Burn duration to time out, plus the effect didn't stack with additional hits. I would have preferred some other options but I kept getting mostly physical offerings on the relic choices, oh well.
As for the dungeon itself, it was once again pretty easy for me to make it through the whole thing on another extended full clear. I opened with the Study and the Dry Lake, then cruised through the remaining biomes on virtual autopilot. Highlights included finding all of the scars that had been unlocked via defeating the estuaries with the previous Chef and turning up the Crescent Cape and the first Bounty Rune for use after the run was over. I fought the remaining dagger/hammer minibosses behind the Onyx Portal and found them to be quite easy to defeat, easier than this miniboss fight had been for the Barbarian. I think this is a place where tagging the enemies once and then dodging around while letting them burn to death works quite well. If anything, I was slightly disappointed at how easy the dungeon was to complete since it removed the challenge and excitement from the gameplay.
Once everything was finished, I decided to take my best shot at estuary Tubal as the final remaining opponent outside of the Golden Doors. The Chef has some pretty good tools for this boss fight as the Cursed projectiles that Tubal shoots out can be reflected back at him and the ticking Burn damage will kill his summoned minions the instant that their invulnerability wears off. I engaged with the estuary and fought quite well against him only to run into one issue: it took FOREVER to eat through Tubal's huge healthbar. The fire damage from the frying pan doesn't stack and hitting the boss over and over again only reapplied the beginning of the duration. This was a bit like playing a Poison Dagger Necromancer from back in Diablo 2: you can't really speed up the rate at which your damage gets applied. Tubal had enough health that 21 damage Burn ticks didn't affect him much, and so even though he was debuffed for the entirety of the fight, I simply ran out of HP before he could be defeated (even with eating all three Stews). It was extremely close as pictured above, with less than 10% of Tubal's lifebar remaining, but unfortunately my Chef was defeated. That was a real shame because there was another Future Successor's Bargain relic waiting around that I planned to take if I defeated Tubal which would have boosted this run up to about 80k gold total. Close but no cigar.
562 monsters slain, 57128 gold, 4442 ore, 2732 aether
This was a busy trip back to town with scars to complete and lots of upgrades to buy. I started out at the Drift House where there were two new scar challenges for the Chef class to attempt. I started out with Closed Spaces which pits the player against the Mimic form of estuary Enoch in a tiny cramped room. This is a pretty easy scar to complete given the predictability of Enoch's AI pattern and I made it through 80% of the fight flawlessly before taking a bunch of hits in succession and dying. That was annoying because then I kept screwing up afterwards and had to do the scar almost ten times before I managed to get a mostly clean victory with three hits taken. Again, this is not a difficult scar and I should have gotten it done on the first attempt. Perhaps that thought was sitting in the back of my mind when I went after Bladed Rose next, the scar where the player faces off against both Lamech and Naamah at the same time. The ticking Burn damage and the ability to reflect projectiles with the frying pan were both excellent tools for this challenge and I found the scar going very well right from the outset. I also had the Searing Shot spell with this random Chef and that allowed me to reapply the Burn damage on Lamech at a distance several times throughout the fight. Long story short, I took four hits against the combined pair and then zero hits against Namaah once Lamech was gone which was sufficient for the S+ rating and the Bronze Trophy. Got it on the first attempt, nice! 
Those two scars were worth a combined 700 souls and I immediately spent 300 of them on Existential Appeasement so that I could lock the Searing Shot permanently onto my Chef characters. I continue to think that the Searing Shot is the best spell in the game, with its ability to be fired at any angle and pass through obstacles to hit foes, plus the fact that it also inflicted Burn damage was a nice synergy with the character build that I was already pursuing for these Chef characters. For the remaining souls, I purchased two ranks in Infinite Knowledge and one in Master Smith to drop down to zero again. I also realized that I accidentally purchased an earlier rank in Absolute Strength which was basically useless for the Intelligence-based build that I was doing here - argh! 100 valuable souls wasted.
This trip back to the docks didn't have a whole lot that I wanted in terms of equipment, only the Crescent Cape for +5 Intelligence over what I had been wearing. I still wasn't using the Trinket slot because the Leather/Scholar/Warden options didn't provide much of anything that these Chefs needed. As far as runes, I definitely wanted the Bounty Rune to increase gold generation up to +30%. I also purchased the Soulsteal Rune and in an unusual move for me opted to drop the Lifesteal Rune rather than run both. The Strength-based vampirism option was only giving 1 HP per monster kill and I didn't really need that given the sustain coming from the Chef's Stew talent. This left about 50k gold available for real stat purchases which I dropped into Vitality, Intelligence, and Armor as usual. I also took the second rank of Meditation Studies so that entering boss doors would restore 40% of max HP which would likely be needed if I was going to make a realistic attempt at finishing Normal difficulty with Jonah and Cain.
Chef #4: 39 Vitality, 51 Intelligence, 34 Armor, 7 Focus, 20 Strength
This Chef had the Compulsive Gambler trait: no gold from monsters, only treasure chests, and the value of the gold that pops out swings wildly. I don't like this trait because it usually produces less gold overall than playing the game normally, especially on difficulties higher than Normal. Beyond the more limited income, the gameplay in Rogue Legacy 2 is simply a lot more boring when monsters and the random breakables throughout the dungeon will never drop gold coins. This trait leaves the whole place feeling oddly sterile and lifeless. At least it did provide 28% additional gold generation via the Universal Healthcare upgrade for a grand total of 58% additional income.
Anyway, since the previous two Chefs had full cleared everything with lower stats and weaker gear, there wasn't much drama when it came to this character. I was looking for as many Blessings of Life as possible to increase max HP and any relics that might be helpful for defeating the final bosses. I came across one of the latter right away, finding Hyperion's Ring early on in the Study and snapping it up for the free revive. Blessings of Life were a bit rarer than average which was unfortunate; I had only come across three or four of them before finding two more in the upper reaches of the Sun Tower after clearing out everything else. Most of the equipment that could possibly drop on Normal difficulty had already appeared for one of the previous heirs, however I was able to find the Crescent Helmet, Ammonite Chest, and the Leather Trinket +1 which would likely be worth equipping temporarily for the +20% resolve. New useful runes were the Reinforced and Folded Runes for additional Armor and a higher blocking cap.
Still, it was all going to come down to how well I did against the ending bosses, two hours of mostly uninteresting gameplay traversing the dungeon followed by two minutes of high-stakes combat. I've often found estuary Tubal to be roughly as difficult as the final boss and that was very much the case again for my Chef. I did my best to dodge Tubal's attacks and I was pleased to discover that the swords raining down from the ceiling are another projectile which can be deflected by the frying pan. I wasn't playing especially badly, just taking a few hits here and there, but unfortunately Tubal had so much health that I had to work through with the slow burning effect. By the time that the boss was down to 1/3 health I had eaten all three of my Stew charges and it was clear that the fight was going to come down to the wire. Tubal summoned a new set of flying axe minions when he had less than 5% of his health remaining and I gambled that I could finish off the boss before my own HP expired. I was just barely able to clutch out a victory with 56 HP remaining - whew!
Afterwards I went back and raided all of the breakables at the teleporters to restore health and - more importantly - refill the three Stew charges. Two levels in Meditation Studies meant that entering boss doors would restore 40% of max HP which would be very helpful for dealing with Cain. Thus the challenge against Jonah was taking less than 40% damage and avoiding the use of any of those Stew charges so that every resource could be conserved for use against Cain. The good news is that I absolutely torched Jonah on this occasion, using the frying pan to knock back some of his projectiles and simply dodging everything that couldn't be reflected. I was also trying to get better at mixing in some hits with the Scorching Shot spell for additional damage, handy whenever Jonah was outside of melee range. Long story short, I only took a single hit in the whole fight and easily crushed the Traitor boss.
That left Cain who I knew would be quite a bit harder, both due to his more intense attacks as well as having substantially more health. The frying pan was able to knock back the blue fireballs that Cain shot out and I was practiced at dodging all of his various other attacks. The key problem was that Cain had a crazy HP total that barely trickled down in 28 damage pinpricks while each hit taken from Cain would deal about 100 damage to my poor Chef. Even though I was playing the fight well, it was inevitable that I would take hits here and there which kept dealing terrible damage. I ate all of my Stew charges at safe moments during the battle and had the final boss down to about 20% HP remaining when my own health ran out. Fortunately that's why I had picked up Hyperion's Ring at the start of the dungeon: the free revive kicked in and I had 300 HP remaining to finish the fight. Once again it was a real nailbiter but I was able to win with 127 HP remaining:
Whew, made it with exactly one hit to spare. That was a massive relief as I did not want to have to go all the way through Normal difficulty again with another Chef heir. This was an immensely satisfying victory because I needed to use all of the tools at my disposal to pull it off: it required finding every Blessing of Life available in the dungeon, it required restocking all of the Stew charges and eating all of them during the combat, it required using up Hyperion's Ring and also *NOT* burning through the relic in the earlier boss fight against Tubal. And the reward was a massive payout in terms of gold as both of the last two boss chests rolled huge modifiers from the Compulsive Gambler trait, 308% from Jonah and 283% from Cain, which resulted in my highest gold total ever for Normal difficulty at 103k. For all that I complained about Compulsive Gambler trait earlier, it actually paid off enormously thanks to hitting huge modifiers on the last two bosses. I'll put that money to good use on the next difficulty.
Therefore much to my surprise I wound up completing Normal difficulty in only four total heirs. I mean, I expect that sort of thing from the Barbarian class, but from the Chef class?! 
It appeared as though the Chef is significantly more powerful than I expected, with excellent defensive protection in the frying pan, good damage thanks to the Burn effect, and amazing sustain over time with the Stew talent. Would that continue as I scaled up the difficulty further? I would find out soon enough.
