538 monsters slain, 103848 gold, 9395 ore, 8207 aether, 300 souls
I picked up with the Chef Legacy series with a new character after defeating Normal difficulty. I had 300 souls to spend and immediately spent 200 of them on the third rank of Unbreakable Will to unlock another pair of Gold Gain levels. I also spent 5000 ore/aether on the second Strange Transaction which allowed me to take the third rank of Infinite Knowledge. The huge payout of 103k gold from the previous Chef was enough to fund the Folded and Reinforced Runes along with the six rune weight upgrades needed to wield them. This wasn't as busy of a trip over at the Blacksmith but I did grab the Crescent Helmet, Ammonite Chest, and Leather Trinket +1. None of these were especially heavy and I only needed two equipment weight levels to equip all three. That left about 75k gold remaining and 50k of that was needed to take the next two Gold Gain levels, ouch! Those funds run out quickly when making the big investment into additional income. The remainder went into more Vitality, Intelligence, and Armor as usual, with more of a focus on Vitality since that seemed most likely to keep me alive for longer in the NG+1 dungeon.
Defeating the game on Normal difficulty opens up the "Threads of Fate" and the chance to reach New Game Plus difficulty for the first time. I followed the same pattern as I did with my initial Knight Legacy challenge, turning on the burden transforming normal Lamech into the more dangerous Lamech Prime boss refight and then adding two points in Burden of Evolution (monsters have 20% chance to transform into the next tier up) and Burden of Adaptation (monsters have 6% chance to gain a commander buff) along with one point in Burden of Scale to make the dungeon 10% larger. This was significantly more burdens than needed, as the player only needs to pick two of them and I'd selected six, with my goal being to recreate the feeling of increasing the difficulty level from the original Rogue Legacy. From my previous playthrough, I knew that these additional burders made the random monsters across the dungeon significantly tougher opponents.
Chef #5: 50 Vitality, 47 Intelligence, 44 Armor, 7 Focus, 20 Strength
This Chef had no traits but did have the Cosmic Insight relic: you gain 100 mana when taking damage and this can go over the normal MP maximum. It didn't sound too useful for a Chef and I would have preferred the 25 resolve for something better; at least I had an extra 20 resolve from the Leather set unity via my trinket. I was able to find the Gnawed Bone relic early on in the dungeon (eating meat at max health increases your total HP) and it proved to be a fantastic fit for the Chef class. Using the Stew talent doesn't provide Gnawed Bone stacks, however the player can eat some Stew to get back to full HP as soon as there's a meat drop which makes it quite easy to get the full benefit of three stacks. In fact, I was cruising along through the Study when I found myself trapped in a room with a bunch of tier 3 monsters, one of those situations where I had to run deep into the back to deal with a Shield Banner opponent who was making everything else invulnerable. I killed the offending commander only to take several hits from tier 3 skeleton archers in the process and misjudged how much damage they were doing, with the last arrow shot dealing 120 damage to slay my Chef. I was caught completely off guard by this and was *NOT* happy about dying when I could have easily retreated back into the safer Citadel. The real culprit was my low Armor total; I badly needed to find the Ammonite Trinket so that I could get the set unity bonus into effect. This was a wasted character. 
108 monsters slain, 28574 gold, 1455 ore, 491 aether
There was only one significant find during that brief foray into the dungeon: the Obsidian Helm which was worth +7 Vitality. I snapped that up at the cost of four equipment weight upgrades which left only a tiny amount of funds for Viality/Intelligence stats.
Chef #6: 58 Vitality, 49 Intelligence, 44 Armor, 7 Focus, 20 Strength
This Chef had no traits but did have the Zealot's Ring relic: spells cast at max MP deal 25% additional damage. That was decently helpful if not amazing in terms of its effects. I was left with 45 resolve (thanks to having the Leather Trinket +1) which was instantly used up by my old friend the Lotus Stem which I found in the second room of the Citadel. It would be a big help once again in terms of minimizing damage taken throughout the dungeon. The addition of the Lotus Stem relic meant that I had to watch my mana consumption closely throughout this run since the relic would only block damage if it had available charges AND if my Chef had 150 mana available. Furthmore, with the Zealot's Ring to boost its damage the Searing Shot was highly useful against lots of opponents throughout the dungeon. It was hard to avoid the conclusion that the Chef class was simply a better version of the Mage class: the same ability to deal magic damage at range while also having a vastly better melee attack and infinitely stronger defensive protection with the frying pan's missile deflection.
Anyway, I started out in the Study as usual and made it through without too much trouble. There was one room with a bunch of tier 3 monsters that I had to retreat from and come back later when I was back to full health, otherwise not too bad. I had the good luck to find several additional Blessings of Life and could use the Lotus Stem to block the damage taken from them. Or simply heal up with Stew charges and meat/flask drops, that worked perfectly fine as well. After finishing up with the Study, I found the entrance to the Dry Lake quickly and spent the next half hour of real world time down there in an attempt to full clear the place. This was substantially more difficult than the Study since the typical hit from a monster did well over 100 damage; again, I badly needed to find the remaining Ammonite items for more Armor. Nevertheless, I was mostly able to handle the basement thanks to the incredible healing power of the Chef class. I had to retreat a couple times to restore health and used the remainder of the Citadel to restore my character back to the safe zone. Eventually I was able to get everything finished with only about the first third of Axis Mundi completed.
If I could full clear the Dry Lake, it meant that the rest of the dungeon was a formality and my main focus could revolve around the bosses. Once I'd had the chance to pick up a few more Blessings of Life and restock my Stew charges in Axis Mundi, I headed off to the Study to confont estuary Enoch. This was a bit of an odd choice for the first opponent but I hadn't reached any of the other "easy" estuaries given that I would be facing the prime version of Lamech. The battle against the mage form of Enoch proved to be a bit of a disaster as I did a poor job of deflecting hit big fireball attack even though I had the frying pan available. This is a battle that should go well for the Chef class and didn't only due to my own mistakes. I was down to 190 HP at the end of the first form and then took another hit as Enoch's death animation played because it screwed up my dash timing. Fortunately I used the interval between forms to eat all three Stew charges and get back to 370 HP but that still didn't leave much room for error against the mimic chest form. I played extremely carefully against this boss and managed to take only a single hit which was enough to emerge victorious. Definitely too close for comfort - this would have been vastly easier with more Armor and more Intelligence for additional damage!
Afterwards I pushed to the midpoint of Axis Mundi and cleared out the Sun Tower which would provide the most gold out of the remaining biomes. I didn't have any trouble making it through this region and and I'd cleared enough of the dungeon by now to have found some major rewards in terms of equipment. I came across the Ammonite Trinket along with the Ammonite Chest +1 which together would be enough to boost my Chefs up to roughly 100 Armor for the next run. I also found the second Lifesteal Rune (sadly not the second Soulsteal Rune) along with a ton of useless junk equipment which had to be cleaned out at some point so that future treasure chests would drop gold instead of the "Warden Cape +1" or whatever. The one place where I wanted a better upgrade was the Cape slot where I found a modest improvement in the Drowned Cape but was still missing the Leviathan Cape which holds a fat 24 Intelligence yield. I already had the Leviathan Armor so it was definitely something that had the potential to appear.
I finished up with Axis Mundi after clearing the Sun Tower and immediately proceeded onwards to the Void Beasts. They don't pose much of a challenge and the Chef can even reflect all of their bone projectiles aside from the single massive one that has to be dodged. I did learn one thing from this encounter: entering the boss doors will restore Stew charges if they aren't already at full via the Meditation Studies upgrade. That was good to know for the future as I wouldn't have to refill the charges manually by searching for item drops. Then I headed back to the Citadel to face Lamech Prime with his upgraded boss abilities. Once again, the Chef class has ready answers for many of the most annoying things that Lamech Prime can pull out; I was especially pleased to discover that the frying pan would knock back the little orbs that the charging Lamech leaves behind on the floor. Obviously the frying pan also worked wonders on the homing fireballs that the boss shoots out at 50% health. This boss fight went notably better and I won easily with about two-thirds HP remaining.
The only remaining biome was the Kerguelen Plateau and I cleared enough of it to restore health to full and restock my Lotus Stem charges. The next estuary on the list was Irad who I'd been having excellent success against recently. And indeed, the fight went extremely well as I tore though the first half of the battle while only taking a single hit (healed away with a Stew charge during the third eye opening animation) and that pattern continued over into the second half of the encounter. I was dodging and weaving and avoiding nearly all of the incoming projectiles as the burning damage slowly ticked away at Irad's lifebar. However, I had to pause the fight to step away from the computer for a few minutes and when I resumed my rhythm was completely thrown off. I was unable to keep up the careful dance of dodging and started taking a bunch of hits. There was no opportunity to stop and eat a Stew charge to refill health either. The battle turned into a nailbiter and my Chef fell with about 1% of Irad's health remaining - argh! 
I was going to finish up with the Plateau and defeat Naamah, then take a Future Successor's Bargan relic which would have likely boost my gold total up to about 250k. This was still a tremendous run but it was oh so close to being downright amazing, sigh.
533 monsters slain, 167510 gold, 15901 ore, 7817 aether, 300 souls
This trip back to the docks had a new scar challenge that I'd unlocked with the previous Chef. That was the Automatons scar which pits the player against a wave of flying minions followed by all four of the big automatons fought as minibosses in the Dry Lake basement. Right away I discovered that the normalized stats on the Chef for this scar turned out to be very strong indeed: a single hit with the frying pan was enough to kill the dagger automatons! They would burn to death in one swing and the other flying minions only needed two quick hits to burn away as well. This made the first half of the challenge noticeably easier to complete as I was destroying the minions as they spawned before they could swarm my character. For the second half of the battle, the dagger miniboss always appears first and I did my best to burst it down before the rest of the big creatures could appear on the scene. I was trying to reflect back the projectiles that appear after the dagger does its charge attack, even taking a hit or two in order to defeat the thing faster. This worked like a charm and the dagger was dead by the time that the last automaton miniboss appeared. From there, I did my best to take my time by working down the shield first, then the axe and hammer together since they didn't present much of a challenge. Long story short, I completed the scar on the very first attempt with five hits taken, exactly enough for the S+ rating and the Bronze Trophy. Excellent!
Now I had a hefty 850 souls burning through my pocket to spend. I definitely wanted another rank in Unbreakable Will to unlock more Gold Gain upgrades and took that for 250 souls, followed by picking up another rank apiece in Infinite Knowledge and Master Smith. I could have spent ore/aether on another Strange Transaction for one more level in a single category but held off for now. It was a major spending spree at the Blacksmith as I picked up the Ammonite Chest +1 and the Ammonite Trinket, followed by the Drowned Cape for a minor Intelligence upgrade. Then I spotted another nifty swap: I dropped the Ammonite Sword for the Obsidian Sword and the Obsidian Helm for the Leviathan Helm. This exchange lost 7 Armor while breaking even on Vitality and gaining 10 Intelligence which felt very worthwhile, especially since it didn't lose the Ammonite set unity bonus. I think this cost about 10 equipment weight levels but I would have needed to purchase them eventually anyway. Elsewhere, I dropped 70k income into two more Gold Gain upgrades and that left only 32k gold remaining for more stats. The biggest change had been increasing my Armor by a huge amount, literally doubling from the last Chef, but Intelligence increased by almost 50% as well. This would surely come in handy against the upcoming boss gauntlet.
Chef #7: 65 Vitality, 66 Intelligence, 82 Armor, 7 Focus, 24 Strength
This Chef had the IBS Muscle Fibers (hold down the jump button to leap extra high) trait and the Weird Mushrooms relic. The latter relic causes monsters to explode for additional spore damage when they die - I would have preferred having the 35 resolve back. With that said though, the damage from the Weird Mushrooms did scale off the Intelligence stat and there were times where my Chef would kill one enemy to kick off a chain reaction that hit several more in succession. It was one of those "nice to have" attributes which I wouldn't have gone out of my way to acquire but was passable since I had no choice. In any case, I'd been noticing some oddities with this Chef as I started to make my way through the dungeon, things that didn't quite add up the way that I expected. I was particularly thrown for a loop when I completed a red portal and suddenly found myself given the opportunity to take a Blessing of Life in its own interdimensional room, followed by the choice between two new relics, before reaching the ending chest with ore/aether inside as usual. What was going on here?
It turns out that there had been another new content patch for Rogue Legacy 2 that dropped in the two days since I had played the previous Chef. This turned out to be Patch 1.1.0 or the "Fabled Heroes" update which added a number of new weapons, spells, and relics while tinkering around with the gameplay balance in other minor ways. Most noteworthy for my purposes were raising the base HP of all classes from 100 to 150 before applying Vitality scaling, nerfing Lifesteal/Soulsteal Runes from 4% to 3% of their respective stats, adding 20% additional gold in the Dry Lake, adding an additional gold modifier when taking more burdens than required for NG+ difficulties as I had done here, and making red portals more difficult to complete but adding the Blessing of Life / relic options as rewards for succeeding. These changes were hugely beneficial for my characters in general (since I'm always full clearing the dungeon) and a massive buff to the Chef class in particular. Turning every single red portal into a potential Blessing of Life option to increase max HP was a game-changer for the Chef class which could easily heal back up from taking their damage. The designers also slightly increased the drop rate of meat/flask items to compensate for nerfing the value of Lifesteal/Soulsteal runes which was another buff for this class. Add in extra gold generation, with my Chef now taking in 70% additional gold (from my extra burdens) instead of the 50% that I had been expecting, and this patch made things noticeably easier for this venture.
In the immediate context of this particular character, the patch update meant that there were far more opportunities to increase max HP via Blessings of Life than ever before. I found a decent number of the normal Blessings of Life while exploring the dungeon and kept on discovering more red portals, over and over again opting to take the damage to increase total health. In other words, the challenge of this character run wasn't clearing the dungeon, it was managing to keep restoring enough health to take a seemingly endless procession of Blessings of Life. Each Blessing of Life costs 30% of your current max HP which started out around 200 damage and kept going up with time. My Chef probably took something like 3000 damage from these things over the course of the whole run - thank goodness each meat drop was worth 66 * 2 = 132 HP and then another 132 HP from the Stew charge! There were some lengthy periods of time where I was operating on 100-300 HP while clearing out the Dry Lake and the Sun Tower but I was careful to stay out of one-shot territory and eventually found enough recovery items to take every single Blessing of Life that appeared. Having a strong run through the dungeon is more important than ever now since the rewards for doing so have only increased with the new patch.
Anyway, I started out with less than 700 HP but that had more than doubled by the time that I'd full cleared most of the dungeon. I started going after the remaining estuaries when the Kerguelen Plateau was the only biome remaining, leaving an area where I could replenish life as needed afterwards. I was feeling confident that I could deal with Irad after the near-miss on the last character and the actual battle went even better than expected. I avoided taking any damage at all during the first half of the fight and was barely touched after the third eye opened, only two hits in total taken before the estuary burned to death. I basically had double the health, double the Armor, and about 50% more damage than the previous boss attempt which meant that I'd really have to screw up for this to end in failure.
I was able to take two final Blessings of Life by clearing two additional red portals that I'd bypassed earlier in the dungeon, running the total health of this Chef up to almost 1700 HP. This was nearly triple where I started and was further increased by finding and cleansing two Demeter's Trial relics along the way. They provided additional health and +50 mana apiece; having 300 mana to work with was surprisingly helpful to unlock more castings of the Searing Shot. I went after estuary Tubal next and had one of my best fights against him to date, controlling his minion spawns with relative ease and dodging the rest of his attacks. I made sure to keep weaving in Searing Shot spells in between auto attacks with the frying pan for additional damage and the end result wasn't even remotely close. My Chef had more than 1300 HP and several Stew charges remaining when the estuary fell. Then I still had to complete the final remaining rooms in the Plateau and defeat estuary Naamah who I'd been treating as a bit of an afterthought. She simply doesn't present the same threat level as some of the other bosses and I was able to defeat her with only a single hit taken, finishing off the dungeon for good.
Behind the Golden Doors, I had a bit more trouble with Jonah this time for no apparent reason. He was able to hit my Chef a few times with his pizza attack or other random projectiles despite my best efforts. That's not to say that the battle was especially close as I still had about 1200 HP remaining when tagging Jonah with the final Searing Shot. The real challenge had been to avoid taking more than 40% of my max HP in damage so that the final boss doors would restore my Chef to full, and fortunately that was indeed the case. As for Cain, this time around I didn't have Hyperion's Ring relic to fall back upon, but I did have a metric truckload of health for a character on NG+1 difficulty. This Chef had almost as much health as the Knight and Barbarian characters that I'd used to clear this difficulty, more than the Knight in fact when couting the three available Stew charges. I did my best to avoid the various Cain attacks, kept applying the Burn effect with frying pan strikes and Searing Shot spells, and ate Stew charges for health recovery whenever there was a clear moment to do so safely. The boss fight wound up not being especially close as I emerged victorious with nearly a thousand health remaining:
NG+1 difficulty was therefore another huge success for the Chef Legacy variant. After a poor initial outing, I was able to finish the difficulty with essentially two Chef characters who bulldozed their way through all of the various bosses. No class is better at making use of the Blessings of Life that pop up along the way which can serve to offset the only real weakness of this class: poor Vitality scaling for a lower max HP total. But if the player can blow right past that intended limitation, well, this class is a shockingly strong customer due to its amazing sustain. It's not even that bad at the boss combats either! I'm looking forward to exploring more of the new patch changes in further detail as we move towards the completion of this variant in NG+2 difficulty.
