Newton's Cookbook Coming to Black Ops 3 Zombies in 2017

Treyarch have officially confirmed that "Newton's Cookbook" will be coming to Black Ops 3 very soon, before the end of 2017 in fact. Officially announced by Jason Blundell in his usual crypted dialogue, the new feature was initially shrouded in mystery but we do know that Newton's Cookbook is a zombie specific feature.

Update: Newtons Cookbook is confirmed as a Gobble Gum maker

Without a doubt, Treyarch's livestream came as a surprise and a shock to most fans, who will openly admit to being disappointed in Black Ops 3's final DLC "Revelations". Must of the disappointment was stoked by the belief that a major cross map Easter Egg would conclude the long running zombies storyline. When the cutscene finally played, the disappointment for what had almost been a decade long adventure was clear to see.

With a surprise livestream taking place in December, two months after the launch of Infinite Warfare, many had speculated that Treyarch would announce DLC 5 for Black Ops 3. However, it wasn't to be. Instead we got a rather short, and some might say a disappointing livestream. I would heartedly agree that a three minute livestream for a single announcement was rather pointless but it did raise the hype level a notch , ready for 2017.

Upon announcing Newton's Cookbook, Jason Blundell read a scripted statement that said

"I'm afraid that I can't say anything right now"

So what is Newton's Cookbook

Originally there was only speculation and a few in-game assets to go on, but these assets provided major clues to the new feature.

Isaac Newton painting

The first word "Newton" is of course a reference to Sir Isaac Newton, an English physicist and mathematician, widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time. Newton's laws centered around the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Some speculated that Blundell's feature would play into the hands of physics and possibly manipulation of Newton's laws.

The second word, "Cookbook", is an obvious reference to the ability to create something new with a recipe of ingredients. A cookbook typically contains recipes that are used to create something bigger by mixing or combining the individual items together.

With both of these in mind, it was assumed that Newton's Cookbook would be a custom Gobble Gum maker to "cook up" unique gums.

Newtons Cookbook = Custom Gobble Gums

It has now been confirmed that Newtons Cookbook is a feature to allow players to create unique Gobble Gums by mixing ingredients together. If you take a look at the in-game assets below you'll see that new images have been added to the game files:

Newtons Cookbook assets

Assets

Contained in the image we have references to:

An overall cookbook icon
Crafting steps icon, accepting three ingredients, a transformation and an end product
Distill icons
Page flip icons
Numbered placeholders

How the cookbook works

The cookbook is opened from the main menu.

There are three cookbook recipes on rotation at any time and players can select any one of the recipes for the Gobble Gum they want to create.

Depending on the recipe chosen, one, two or three Gobble Gums will be shown on the left page of the cookbook. The larger number next to each gum shows the number you have in your inventory, whilst the smaller number determines how many of each gum you need for this particular recipe.

As an example, Perkaholic was available when the cookbook first launched. It required 9 x Burned Out gums to create a single Perkaholic gum.

In addition to the input gums you also need a number of Distill (x 10) to make the resulting new gum. Distill is another inventory item, which you can buy with real money (COD Points) or earn in small doses by crafting x 3 new gums.

Upon activating a cookbook recipe, the input gums are deducted from your inventory, the liquid flows into the middle bubble, and after a few seconds the final output gum is yours to keep.