Royal Chef

Royal Chef is a Legendary Tower Troop unlocked in Rascal's Hideout (Arena 13). Tower Troops don't work like ordinary cards: he has no elixir cost and is never placed by hand, because he fills a slot of his own in your Battle Deck and is already standing on both of your Princess Towers the moment the match begins. His job is support rather than damage — roughly every 23 seconds he cooks a pancake and throws it to whichever of your troops on the arena has the most hitpoints, raising that troop's Level by 1 for about 10% more health and damage that lasts the rest of its life. The catch is that cooking and fighting compete for his attention. With both Chefs idle a pancake takes 23 seconds; the busier they are shooting, the longer it takes, stretching to 38 seconds when both are attacking, and a destroyed Crown Tower slows the kitchen the same way — lose both towers and the cooking stops entirely. He also ignores buildings and any troop already below a third of its maximum health, and he favours troops that haven't eaten yet, so pancakes get spread across a push rather than stacked on a single unit. Defensively he is a slightly worse Princess Tower: exactly the same damage per hit at every level, but a 1-second attack period instead of 0.8, which works out to 20% less damage per second, carried on roughly 11% fewer hitpoints.

• Royal Chef has no elixir cost and is never placed by hand. Like every Tower Troop he occupies a slot of his own in your Battle Deck, and he is already standing on both of your Princess Towers when the match begins — your opponent doesn't find out which Tower Troop you brought until the battle actually starts.

• Every pancake goes to whichever friendly troop anywhere on the arena has the most hitpoints, raising its Level by 1. Royal Chef prioritises troops that haven't been fed yet rather than stacking pancakes onto one unit, never feeds buildings, and skips any troop already down below 33% of its maximum health.

• Cooking and fighting compete for the Chef's time. With neither of your two Chefs shooting, a pancake is ready in 23 seconds; the more they're busy attacking, the longer it takes, out to 38 seconds when both are. Losing a Crown Tower slows the kitchen the same way an attacking Chef does, and once both towers are gone the cooking stops altogether — so pressuring both lanes is a real way to starve a Royal Chef deck of pancakes.

• That +1 Level is worth roughly 10% more hitpoints and damage, and it carries further than it first looks: shields and overheal hitpoints scale up with it, and a fed troop that spawns others — a Golem's Golemites, a Witch's Skeletons, a Goblin Giant's Spear Goblins, a Lumberjack's Rage — produces them at the higher Level too. He can even push a troop past the normal Level cap. What he can't do is retroactively boost an effect that already happened, so a fed Electro Wizard or Mega Knight gets no extra spawn damage and a fed Battle Healer no extra spawn healing.

• Because the extra Level is pure hitpoints, a pancake regularly pushes a troop over a spell's kill threshold. A fed Ice Wizard survives a Fireball or a Poison; a fed Musketeer, Electro Wizard, Little Prince or Goblinstein survives a Poison; a fed Mini P.E.K.K.A or Sparky survives a Rocket; a fed Archer Queen, Battle Ram or Phoenix survives a Lightning; a fed Electro Dragon survives a Void; and a fed Dark Prince's shield survives both a Barbarian Barrel and an Earthquake.

• Royal Chef hits for exactly the same damage as a Tower Princess at every Level — 109 at tournament standard — but he swings once per second instead of once per 0.8 seconds, which is precisely 20% less damage per second (109 against her 136.25), and he does it on 2,703 hitpoints to her 3,052, about 11% fewer. He shares her 7.5-tile reach and air-and-ground targeting, and his first shot lands after 0.8 seconds.

• Supercell billed Royal Chef as the first offensive Tower Troop when he arrived on 16 December 2024, and he was reined in fast: a 4 February 2025 update stretched his cooking from 18-30 seconds to 24-40, slowed his attack period from 0.9 to 1 second and raised the health floor for feeding from 20% to 33%. A 4 March 2025 patch gave some of the cooking time back at 21-35 seconds before a 4 August 2025 update pushed it out to today's 23-38. His hitpoints went up 8% in May 2025 and back down 7% that October, and he has not been touched by a single balance change since.

• The Level 16 Update on 24 November 2025 raised every card's ceiling from 15 to 16, taking a maxed Royal Chef to 4,302 hitpoints and 173 damage. Tower Troops have a second cap on top of that, though: they can never be upgraded past your own King Tower's Level, which itself only reaches 16 at King Level 75.

• One genuinely strange interaction: an enemy Monk standing beside the troop your Royal Chef is aiming at can deflect the pancake with his ability, and the stolen pancake ends up raising your opponent's King's Tower Level by 1 instead.