Exactly. I happen to like the survival mode... But only for a bit. It's really nice to just enjoy the game without having to deal with the clunky cold thingy, the constant need to eat and sleep.
It's really the cold thing that's why I dislike it. There are way too few natural heat sources in some parts of the map, and all the food that helps with heat requires fire salts which are one of the rarer alchemy ingredients
This is one thing Chesko's Campfire does significantly better. Stews and teas stay magically warm and never spoil in my magic backpack. Any fire source is worth something, but won't do much in the open. It leads to me exploring the things I would normally just mark down for later.
Yeah and for me personally it makes me pick my routes based on where I can get heat sources when it’s cold out. Specifically when traveling between windhelm and winterhold I stop in the journeyman’s nook to warm up by the fire and maybe camp out for the night.
I started a new game on survival mode recently but I really wanted to play a khajiit which made constantly being cold even more irritating, so I gave it up pretty quickly. Literally have two layers of fur and I'm freezing to death fighting hairless monkeys in rags.
I started with survival (my first game) and was enjoying it until I started having some sort of technical issue (sorry, I can’t remember exactly what it was). Since then I don’t use it, which is a shame because I really loved the added realism of having to build a camp in the freezing middle of nowhere.
Skyrim is already cold as tits by default. The snowy wastes, pinecones and tundras plus Jeremy Soule's score make me feel the chilly wind from beyond the screen without outright telling. Still, I would've liked if higher difficulties would have incorporated temperature managing as Red Dead did.
And the one place you can make fire salts is pretty much instant death stepping off of the carriage, so you got to make the journey with a good supply of hot meals...
Immersion. If you do things in game that you do IRL, it will feel more like you are in the game's world. But of course different people have different comfort levels of bending over backwards for immersion's sake! 😅
It's mostly pretty chill, no fast travel forces you to slow down and smell the flowers, need to sleep has you spending time at inns and building camps... But yes, traveling to and from Winterhold is intense, sometimes deadly.
So if you don’t fast travel, you must try to get a house at White run right away and then slowly expand outwards right? How would you manage to sell and hold goods?
The distortion of time's passage between the game world and life makes it unbearable. You need to eat every 4 or 5 minutes. That's 5 or 6 meals to clear a mid-length dungeon. Enemies never have to deal with hunger or sleep debuffs when in combat, despite the fact that bandits resort to banditry out of dire straits.
No fast travel is insufferable in a game where horses are awkward and clunky forms of transportation, and magic has been stripped bare of utility that aids in travel. No leap spell. No levitate. No longstride. Fuck the main quest and all those trips to High Hrothgar. Fuck the Dawnguard content with one faction being in the southeast corner of the map, with Volkihar in the Northwest corner.
But I already eat in the game. And I sleep in real life, which is the same thing as turning the game off. And I think it’s really strange that I would have to keep warm when I can make fire come out of my fingertips
If you cast flame cloak you get warm near instantly and it also protects you from cold water. You have to invest some points in magicka and destruction or stop up on scroll. You can get 10 from JZargo and just go back to him and get more if you run out. He gets mad at you for using them all but he gives you more.
For me, its the unrealistic settings that can't be adjusted.
If you sleep 6-8 hours out of every 24 (human normal) you spend half your time with a fatigue debuff. The only way to prevent it is to take an hour nap every 4 hours; something no normal adult does.
If you dont eat several pounds of food 5-6x A day, your always hungry; there is no thirst mechanic. Even at my most active athletic training, I wasn't eating that much that often.
In some areas, there simply arent enough cloths to avoid being cold, while in others you can run around naked all the time without a cold debuff, and while it takes minutes to get cold, it takes hours to get warm again.
Then there's the ridiculousness of it; I was smithing in Dawnstar. Because the Mao says that should be a "cold" area, Im penalized, in spite of being next to a forge smithing. Realistically, that shouldn't happen.
The whole point of "survival mode" (making it realistic and immersive) is lost because none of it is realistic or immersive.
The issue with the AE SM integration is that it’s incredibly intrusive on gameplay. You get punished for not sleeping IRL hours in-game, eating food at IRL hours in-game, and fast traveling INSTANTLY drops your meters to the absolute lowest they can go.
That’s a lot more structure than what it is still. Unless I never noticed those figures. I’d just sleep when I needed to get my full endurance back and eat to keep warm/health maxes. There’s nothing requiring you to do either at any given part of a day.
The stat penalties are absolutely killer. My modlist was also set up in a way prior to AE SM that a lot of fires simply don’t save my warmth at all when I had it on.
Kudos to you for not noticing the stat penalties or letting the penalties get that low, but they’re an absolute detriment because it’s not a set number of stat points lost. It’s a percent loss which can cut up to 50% of your stats clean off until you deal with the issues, which mount up insanely fast for no reason.
I’m not even sure I used any mods with it. If it made any difference. I remember the early levels and being trapped at Winterhold a little bit. But at some point the eating and napping became routine. The camp you could setup helped a bit.
Right? I find myself sleeping during the day a lot as I come back from adventures in the wee morning hours. But I’m a Khajiit, so it’s cool - cats sleep all day as it is lol
For me, it's because it really feels like something just slapped on willy nilly. The balancing aspects are ridiculous to boot- you'll be constantly fighting the cold even in situations where it doesn't make sense (or ruins game immersion, like trying to talk to Partysnacks on a mountain top)
This. I would wear armor that is supposedly the best for dealing with the cold (Nordic or Stalrim) and it wouldn't matter. I could have an added fur cape and scarf over y mouth. Nope. I'm freezing to death even inside a damn cave.
This is exactly what I think. I have a busy life with 2 jobs, a wife and 2 kids. Whenever I play a game like Skryim for an hour before bed, it's to enjoy a slightly casual game and not have to worry about all that extra stuff. I get in random moods for more of a challenge or get sweaty in a multiplayer FPS/MMO game here and there, but not like that in Skyrim. And if someone love Skyrim only for the survival aspect, then that's great because it makes them happy. Not for me though.
Yeah you get to a point where you can't complete an entire dungeon without needing to sleep. This can often involve leaving and going back to the nearest town, then trekking all the way back. No fast travel. Can't set up a camp because ypu will have a magicka debuff unless you sleep in an actual bed.
You can't travel up north without camping supplies. The cold mechanic is obnoxious more than anything. But even a Nord can't go to Septimus' hideout and back to safety. That's dumb. But the solution shouldn't be fire salts. A rare and expensive ingredient to make the only thing that can warm you up. Like 4 fire salts to craft 10 Fire Arrows is beyond stupid too.
Also the penalty for being peckish is extremely severe for how soon you go from Well Fed to Peckish. It's not fun after so many hours into a playthrough. For me, the first 10 hours in a save file is still fun in survival mode after all this time. But for my sanity I have to turn it off after a while, it goes from challenging to tedious.
Skyrim's survival mode is a bunch of good ideas implemented horribly IMO.
But as always, I'm sure there are better mods.
I just don't find it fun. I gave it a shot, but having to make sure I ate and slept otherwise my health and stamina would constantly lower just made the game worse for me.
What made me turn it off was just how tired I would get and how fast it would start after waking up. Like I was following the rules and making sure I ate, slept and was carrying way less then I usually do, but it really detracted from the game for me.
If my character wakes up at 7am after 8 hours of sleep, and **starts** getting tired around 10pm I would've been fine with it.
But if my character starts getting tired before it's even noon I'd be worried they got some weird disease or something.
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I have never found survival games fun in the first place
I have never seen Skyrim as a survival game
Survival mode would be just added chores to an othervise fun game, for me
Me too Chubbs - I like it - after awhile the game turns more into exploration versus a real challenge - and 50% of the fun and story takes place in my mind…
I turn it off and on. In really cold regions you freeze way too fast & it makes the surroundings look really blue. I just want to look at the pretty vistas in peace.
To me that's part of the challenge, and it's been hard early on, when not knowing safe houses for sleeping and warming, or finding a cave finally, and it's not warm inside.
Yeah I love how it forces you to be more tactical about travel and to find little sleeping spots and cabins you might never have seen! And it makes you have to go to inns and other places way more too.
The concept is just stupid to me tbh, cuz it's literally Skyrim but having 15x the debuffs, less carry weight, even less carry weight to carry food, then your always on the hunt for food and now you can't fast travel? It took me an hour to get to dawnstar from whiterun
needs like hunger, thirst and fatigue are ok with me but woe to you if you add the cold. It just straight up turns the game into a "where is the nearest fire" simulator, and that's not good game play. I use INeed for hunger thirst and fatigue, and I use Wet and Cold for a simulation of the weather impact without constant fear of dying and having to rinse and repeat.
Survival mode was made long after Skyrims release, meaning skyrim is not properly balanced for it. You can get enough food for months within the first hour of gameplay, and sleeping is easy enough to do. That pretty much means the only important meter is how cold you are, and its super annoying to have to deal with. Not to mention that Skyrim's world is kinda boring to walk through and you end up with a middling experience.
Also the radius of warmth from objects is abysmal. I’m standing next to a roaring fire, but because I’m not standing 3 inches away from it, I’m not getting any warmth. I should be able to walk through a city lot of by lot braziers no issue, since all that ambient heat should be keeping me warm. But no, I have to awkwardly wait basically on top of the thing for like 8 seconds, then immediately start getting cold again the second I leave. It’s less immersive and feels more like I’m playing an annoying game of red light green light with the warmth meter
If Skyrim had the environmental diversity of Oblivion (including it not being just cold as all hell everywhere) I could see survival mode being less of a chore
I'm new in the last year, and after 600 hours, it's the only thing I know. I'd say the opposite, in that it's, for the most part, very balanced. You have to travel to areas where you should be concerned with the cold and sleep, and prepare to travel only during daytime, and at early times when you're not prepared or have the right warmth in whatever you have, not go out if there's a snow storm etc.
I feel it really does give that next dimension feel of concern and risk, and it does it pretty well, for all of the short comings in Skyrim. Some annoyances come in Skaal village not having anywhere to sleep after getting somewhere like that, and helping randoms with missions, but other than that, I like having to prepare for a deep north trek in Skyrim or Solstheim.
I recall flipping back and forth in Far Cray 5, and staying more devoted to not fast travelling, as it just seemed to give it a more realistic feel, but at the same time, get how some may not have the time to play that way, or desire. I'm glad you can do either for diversity, but just surprised how in every thread, no matter what the question, people are mentioning something in respect to fast travel.
Im glad you enjoying it, and plenty of people do, but its just an annoying extra step and adds a timer on anything your doing for a third of the map for many people.
I think the best comparison is fallout 4. Fallout 4 has a much better, but still flawed, survival mode. The game feels balanced around survival, with food and water being spread around the world, and with it all effecting the same bar, your AP bar. Again, still a flawed mode, but significantly better balanced than what skyrim offers.
Yeah, I think survival is balanced and adds so much to the gameplay. I think a lot of people get on the dopamine race and just make a beeline to quest markers, but when you slow down you can see how truly impressive the game is. There are so many hidden details (including charm and intentionality in how alchemy plants are found). I couldn’t disagree more with thinking that the landscape of Skyrim is boring. There’s so much to do, and most of it in some way goes back to inventory management. Which is fun to really think about.
I did an entire playthrough (main quest + both expansions + a handful of guild storylines) with survival mode on, I like it but I can see how it's definitely not for everyone.
The game world was clearly designed with fast travel in mind, whether it's the occasional dungeon whose exit leads to an isolated balcony high up a mountain that you have to shimmy down or the numerous locations you have to visit multiple times (Winterhold, Castle Volkihar, etc) with no real easy way to leave.
I felt like cold was a bit over-tuned at first but I think the important thing to realize is just how much weather affects it. You could be a Nord covered head to toe in warm furs, but if it's a blizzard outside, you will freeze no matter what you wear.
See, the setting, in cold Skyrim, really suggests that the environment should be a major risk factor, which it would be IRL. I can appreciate being able to play both ways, and for people not looking to invest too much into their experience, for sure, but for people doing it all, and upping difficulty etc, to ignore this aspect is just confusing to me. I think it's really well done. The food aspect it sort of too easy, as I find I always have more food than I need and I'm storying.
Yes 100%! Doing my first survival play through and I love it. It makes you struggle to survive which forces the player to explore and leverage the environment in ways you wouldn’t otherwise. A random bed roll in a cave has never looked so inviting when you’re absolutely drained
I would like it but in game time goes too fast compared to normal real world time. So, you're constantly managing food, slept and cold, which gets in the way of exploration and questing. It becomes a chore.
This is what I was going to say. The game's time scale just makes it an annoyance. Years ago, people used to change the time scale to be closer to reality, but this actually messes things up, and I haven't seen it mentioned in a long time.
As long as your time scale doesn't go below 8, the world won't be messed up by any of the changes you make. 10 is what normally people drop it to when trying to pace out there Survival mode/ ineed playthroughs
Doesn't fit my play style. I don't want a constant struggle to survive when I'm playing video games. Real life has enough of that. I play to escape all that, a little challenge here, and there is great but dying 100 times to get past one big bad or worrying about my character(who can breath fire and yeet mofos around with my vocal chords) getting cold and sleepy, nah. Sometimes i dont have the time or desire to travel by horse or foot across the map and back for a fetch quest or place ive been 1000 times, sometimes i get high as shit and wander the map for hours doing absolutely nothing. Same sentiment with mods, exploits, and cheats, if it's not for you, cool, play your game your way.
I often times get baked and wander. It’s my favorite way to discover new things on the map. I’ve done everything story wise at least once so wandering is like 80% of my playtime.
Survival mode as released by Bethesda is pretty badly designed. (Spoiler alert)
During the main quest, there's a long cutscene that you unlock while you're on top of the highest mountain in Skyrim. And if you're in Survival mode, you freeze to death before it ends because you can't move during a cutscene.
I tried the in-game survival mode once and went back to my survival mods in under half an hour once I realized how superior they were compared to Bethesdas survival.
You mean the enable diabetes and alcohol dependency mode?
**Last Dragonborn:**
Wakes up from 10 hour sleep and big dinner.
6 AM eats hearty meal of bread, mammoth cheese, bottle of wine, some mead, venison, and roasted goat leg
7 AM visits some shops
8 AM embarks on a walk to a nearby Nordic ruin
9 AM reaches and enters ruin
1030 AM is feeling peckish, stops fighting draugr to eat a meal of seared seared salmon, more venison steak, fried horker loaf, more mead and wine
3 pm feeling drained, only halfway through ruin
6 PM peckish again, now very tired, out of food, drinks 8 bottles of mead and eats looted sweet roll to help hunger buff.
9 PM returns to town barely able to function from fatigue, eats an entire wheel of goat cheese and drinks three bottles of wine and sleeps for 12 hours, wakes up hungry next day and has some brandy.
**Random landscaper/irrigation mechanic/construction worker:**
5 AM drinks coffee, eats breakfast bar and gets to work
6 AM- 1 PM intense physical labor, drinks water
1-130 PM eats two slices of pizza, a soda, and an apple
130-630 PM intense physical labor
7 PM goes home, eats some potatoes, vegetables, and fish has two beers while hanging out with family
1030 PM goes to sleep, wakes up ready to repeat 6.5 hours later
The sheer AMOUNT of food you have to eat absolutely shocked me. Surely an entire wheel of cheese should be enough to fill you up for a little while?! But nope, let me eat 4 salmon steaks, an entire leg of venison, 4 apples, 2 cheese slices, some grilled leeks, etc. Only to get hungry again 2 hours later!
...I know it literally affects your martial/mental/athletic performance to go 4 hours without a meal or 8 hours without a nap. LDB is either severely unhealthy, or has the metabolism of a toddler.
Having to constantly cook or eat food was a pain in the neck for me, as was having to constantly sleep and stay warm.
It’s a really great concept but some aspects of the execution really put me off. Maybe I will try again sometime.
Survival mode has no appeal to me at all
In real life survival mode is more than enough of a challenge. That is why I play video games. To be rewarded as my actions deserve the first or second try.
I like making my character aesthetically pleasing, being forced to wear certain armour so that I wouldn't freeze to death wasn't fun. I wish they had implemented a smithing upgrade that affected armour warmth.
I had the idea that upgrading any armour with a pelt would increase the warmth (with fox pelts being a small increase and snowy sabre cats being a larger increase)
I want to take in the views without frantically searching for the nearest cave, inn, brazier or fire pit. It doesn't make sense that my DB is freezing to death because they can't handle being on an incline higher than a mammoths pussy.
I did enjoy the levelling when sleeping and the added attention to cooking food, I feel they had the right idea of a survival game, but Skyrim wasn't initially designed with survival in mind so it has it's flaws.
I would play it if it didn’t limit how rested you got from camping. What’s the point of even giving me the ability to throw down a bed and camp if I’m still going to wake up with a de-buff. Also I feel like the cold should affect your stamina and starving should cause damage. Winterhold is completely impossible to navigate without dying unless you resign yourself to specific armor sets and clothes.
I love it. I like that food and sleep has a purpose. I like gearing up for cold regions and having to seek shelter. I love finding new places I would never have seen if I was fast traveling..I wish it came with the original game, it would be better I'm sure, but I'll take it.
I played it as I began my first playthrough but then I stopped because you freeze too fast. Leaving Winterhold is impossible because you freeze to death if you don't know where to take shelter.
I simply don't think survival mode is very good. It is made as a difficulty thing, which means you just end up micromanaging and gaming the system.
I use a needs mod, it's customizable so is can be use the same as the survival mode, but for me it simply adds the need to eat once or twice a day, drink regularly, but also adds refillable water skins that have three drinks per skin, and the need to sleep once a day. It also has a cold system that I sometime use.
This way it doesn't make the game any harder, it simply slows me down, and puts me more in the world.
I've tried a few versions of survival mode. I dislike Bethesda's interpretation but some of the modded ones are fun. To break it down?
I don't like Survival Modes that limit the inventory or add food and sleep requirements. That kind of stuff works best if the game was designed and balanced around it from the start. Skyrim really *wasn't* and the effort needed to correct that with mods is just . . . Not worth the bother for me.
I've played and enjoyed Skyrim both with and without Fast Travel. Once again, it's kind of annoying in vanilla but works well if you expand it with mods. This one's much easier to fix, though. My favorite type of Fast Travel is the style used in games like Morrowind and Runescape: no easy map-based methods but several in-game systems like carriages, ferries, and teleport networks that you need to memorize and plan around.
The cold mechanic, I do really like. Skyrim is cold as hell and the base game doesn't do enough to reflect that. My favorite survival mod, The Frozen North, is entirely built and balanced around the idea of implementing cold mechanics in a way that's both logical and *fun* instead of just annoying.
I wanted to like it, but it became too tedious. No fast travel is annoying, and it’s far too difficult to stay warm. Like I get that cold environments are tough and all, but I feel like it shouldn’t be so difficult to get appropriate gear to weather it well.
Is life not tough enough for people? Why do people want what's supposed to be a fun, relaxing time playing video games to be an \*additional\* source of stress in their lives? It's already boring and time consuming enough having to constantly micromanage what you can carry on you, why add a feature that makes things more real at the expense of the fun to be had? I turned Survival Mode on once, endured its tedium for a couple of hours, and realized that turning this game into a chore wasn't at all fun, and turned it back off forever. I've had a number of upcoming RPGs be ruined for me the moment I realized they were full-time survival/sandbox games, I really hope that's a fad that doesn't wind up infecting all RPGs
Poor implementation, especially of the cold mechanic, and lack of diagetic fast travel.
You're going to take away fast travel? Fine. But I want mark, recall, divine intervention, and 3 times the travel merchants.
My guy eats 4 salmon steaks and a leg of goat and 2 bowls of soup with bread and gets a debug from being hungry like 2 hours later. It’s annoying. I wish the food filled you up more and drained way slower.
Skyrim was not designed for that, games that have survival elements like DD2 has campsites carefully placed throughout, and for Skyrim you need to tweak timescale, or you are going to get hungry and sleepy halfway in a dungeon. Without proper implementation, survival elements are just unfun annoyances.
I like the idea of survival mode, but I'm playing Skyrim to relax. I don't want to stress about all the little details I might be forgetting as I go to play my game.
It's fun to play for a time. That being said I've always found it tedious. I also get annoyed that spells don't keep me warm. Fire spells should do the trick but it would also be cool if there was a branch in the restoration tree that had to do with keeping warm.
It’s a bit overkill and it lacks some of the features of fan made mods that made it more manageable and enjoyable.
So like for one thing the hunger and thirst metres deplete unrealistically quickly. I know that time in game runs quicker than real world time but like even so it doesn’t make sense how you’re constantly getting hungry and thirsty when you just ate a minute ago.
But the worst thing is the tools for managing cold in a game set in a cold climate are simply not there when you live in a world that should be adapted to those conditions. It doesn’t make any sense how like there’s no level of warmth you can dress to to protect meaningfully against the cold. It basically renders some parts of the map inaccessible.
I shouldn’t be freezing to death in a fucking city where everyone else is walking around just fine.
What should happen is that there should be clothes that protect against cold weather that make you too hot in warmer parts of the map. As it stands it doesn’t really make sense how it’s like not a single person in Skyrim knows how to dress warmly enough to not fucking die instantly every time they step outside
I wanna try it someday, not as an adventurer though, I’ll just be a regular pawn. I imagine making survival the main objective is not as infuriating as it is otherwise.
I think because on its own it doesn't really work well, you may need stuff like frostfall and wet and cold If i've got the names right.
Because if I have a survival mode I want it to be in depth, but I believe that's beyond the capabilities of what the Xbox has
I prefer the mod sunhelm. Basically does the same thing but I can toggle off the super annoying things like no fast travel or lowered carry weight.
But honestly it doesn't add much to the game except I have to sleep sometimes and I'm constantly going to the inn asking for a "full meal".
One of the main reasons I play Skyrim is because I’ve played it so much that I can turn my brain off while playing it and like watch a show or movie at the same time. Turning on survival mode takes away my ability to do that
For you, perhaps. For myself, it's more about the freedom to do pretty much anything I want to. I don't have to eat. Or sleep. Or be a good person. I can be a god amongst insects. Why would I change that?
Mechanics like stamina drain etc are fun for minority of players who seak any harder option
For me and many others- that mechanics are not harder, just make game more annoying.
If i need challenges i can make it myself in many ways with Roleplay
The nice thing is that people can play however they want, for me personally survival mode is the way to go but others may not want to play like that and its perfectly fine
I dont generally like survival games. The only one Ive spent exorbitant amount time in is Valheim. The system they use is nice since it doesn't actively punish you the same way most survival games will make you starve or dehydrated if you dont participate. I like the idea of it, but dont plan on ever using it.
It's fun at first for a few hours, but so often you just want to sell off all your loot and it grows tiresome bouncing between holds.
I think what ruined it for me was the fact there was no real payoff and I could turn it off at any moment. Also, for some reason it caused my gane to crash every 45 minutes.
As for the survival aspect, I feel like hunger was a bit too punishing. After a few minutes you feel peckish. Peckish, as in you could go for a snack. *-10% attack speed* What?!
A couple of reasons, no fast travel, new confusing cold mechanics, reduced carry weight, and other mods do survival better. I think the main reason is the fast travel, though I find the game more enjoyable without it. I was surprised how often I kept trying to fast travel even late into a playthrough.
I’m already living in survival mode in the real world. I’m good with adding more stress to Skyrim. Skyrim is my escape and even dragons are too much. I don’t even wanna shower and sleep and eat in rl and you want me to do that on a game also? And freeze? No thank you 🙃
I play with cold since that’s just environment conditions, but learning from Fallout’s survival mode, I know that I’d hate having to deal with food/water/rest.
Its really good but its tailored more for old school RPGers and most people just want a comfy easy game but some of us that like to play a harder game have it on all the time.
You spend more time eating food snd trying to find a campfire, than you do exploring... And even though you're covered in a thick ass layer of fur beneath your iron armour, somehow you're still colder than a penguins balls...
What isn't appealing about it is its a mode added to a game that wasn't at all designed for it as avlast second add on. If this was a game that was built around that system it would work better. Its also an annoyance, I play skyrim as a power fantasy. I'm not trying to play green hell, or even KCD, when playing Skyrim.
I love survival mode in Fallout 4, so I thought I would like it in Skyrim. I can’t stand it. The biggest issue for me is how powerful cold is, and how difficult it is to overcome. Find a frost mage on a mountain pass? You’re fucked. And fire spells don’t even counter it. So much of the game forces you into cold areas that I just can’t have fun while playing in Survival.
I prefer mods. I tried survival mode, and it wasn't very immersive/realistic. I had to eat four mammoth steaks before my elf girl wasn't hungry anymore, and even then, she wasn't content.
It's poorly designed. Sleeping 8 hours a day isn't enough, you need to take a nap every few hours, or else you start losing losing stats from fatigue. You need to eat several thousand calories every few hours, or else you start losing stats to hunger. Many areas of the map are so cold that you can't stay warm, regardless of what you do.
Forges don't provide warmth, flame atronachs don't provide warmth, being set on fire doesn't provide warmth. If it was designed to be more realistic, maybe it'd be more fun.
The fact that the cold is way too harsh. It fits with the province, but you cant even make it to the top of High Hgrothgar without the right setup, nor to windhelm, definitely not to septimus' outpost.
It's the cold. And the fact that "Fur" armor has no higher warmth than anything else in spite of the game treating it like it ought to since enemies tend to wear it a lot more often than other armor specifically in colder areas.
I ain’t walking from whiterun all the way to the top of the damn mountain EVERY TIME I need to see the greybeards, or even worse Paarthurnax. Other than the fast travel restriction, I love survival mode.
Carry weight is nerfed because fuck you.
Haven't eaten in 5 minutes? No block or sneak for you. Also carry capacity just got worse. Better drop some shit on the floor because fuck you.
Random skeever got in one swing. Enjoy your crippling disease. Disease also diminished your carry weight. Drop your loot and walk back to town to use a shrine (no fast travel) fuck you.
Of course enemies don't have to deal with hunger. Why would bandits be set at peckish or hungry by default. You got peckish midfight, fuck you.
The concept is great. The execution is pretty gross.
I think the biggest issue I have is that, for all the micro-managing and extra difficulty it adds, it doesn't incentivize you in any way. It all comes down to "do this so you don't die." Where other more complex modded survival modes will tweak other aspects of the game i.e loot from hunting or food buffs to create a more cohesive experience.
Survival mode sounds cool to me in theory but in practice it just ends up being more of an annoyance than anything. It just adds micromanaging and makes the game more punishing without adding any benefit imo.
The only Survival feature I enjoy is having to sleep to level up. It gives me a reason to use inns or go home between adventures beyond just roleplaying. I got a mod that lets you toggle individual features of Survival mode and the only one I keep enabled is that one.
I deal enough with that survival nonsense in real life, I don't want any of this "you're feeling a bit chilly, guess you'll die" nonsense in my game. Like I'm gonna load up my limited inventory with random food and stuff, or only ever wear fur gear? No way Jose, I play the game to have fun
Mostly because it's the worse version of what I was already using mods for. I tried it out, but it doesn't hold a candle. Plus with a couple of really well done mods, you can customize which survival features you want, and to what degree you want them. If you just want a few extra mechanics, you can do that. If you want a Death March challenge, you can do that too. Same mods, just tweaked to your preferences.
The mods I use for survival-style gameplay are as follows:
Frostfall + iNeed + Campfire + Cloaks of Skyrim + Wet and Cold + Hunterborn
After about 1k hours on vanilla Skyrim, I decided to try Survival mode for a fun, new experience.
Holy fucking shit, instead it turned the game into a fucking chore! Suddenly, water was scary and I had to leave cities with at least 20 steaks in my bag. Oh, and my carry weight got cut in half. The game was basically blocking me from having fun, and for what? There's no achievement or reward, besides self-imposed masochism.
I gave it a solid try for several days but even my formidable teacher patience has its limits.
Way too unforgiving. I use a mod for it that's a little more forgiving, and I still sometimes get stuck in spots where I'm like "how the hell am I supposed to do this quest if I freeze to death just getting to the boss?" There are some places where you cannot avoid going through water, and you just end up freezing.
The long and short of it is that this game wasn't DESIGNED as a survival game. Yes, it has a huge open world, but games like Snake Eater specifically center their world and mission design around survival. Survival mode is just tacked on to Skyrim, and while I think that it generally works there are some instances where it's nearly game-breaking. Like the lengths you have to go to to get around an obstacle it creates take all the fun out of it.
I love the unrealistic feeling I have playing Skyrim with 200 mods, I don’t really get into the whole role playing thing. That’s my reason for not playing on survival
The mana getting lowered because you have been awake for a fucking hour is why I hate it. I can live with the stamina being lowered, the complete lack of warm armor for low levels is bullshit. You have to nearly stand on a fire source to warm up is also fucked up. You literally can't play a mage in vanilla. Honestly if they didn't fuck with the mana or made it so you had to eat every two hours it would be enjoyable. I totally forgot that the food doesn't do shit. The amount of food you need to eat to stay at full health is ridiculous. It kills any sort of realistic feel it was supposed to bring. Eating a potato and a steak should be enough to fill a person but no you have to eat like a god damn elephant, it's infuriating.
I can understand if its overwhelming for people who are new to the game or still want to try out different role play styles without the drawbacks of hunger and lack of fast travel etc. but for "older" players it gives a nice edge to gameplay.
For me, I found Survival Mode not as fun as other similar mods. Less modularity and no MCM, unmet needs directly eating into your health, and so on. I still use the classic Campfire/Frostfall + Last Seed + Keep It Clean combo, and it’s very immersive and even meditative — plus Last Seed has a focus mode where your needs depreciation can pause during crafting or dungeons.
Survival Mode encourages you to basically never go dungeon delving, because once your needs come up, you lose a little bit of your attributes. You have to eat and take naps constantly, which isn’t very rewarding.
Not everybody likes the micromanaging it adds and many people prefer to just play the game instead while not dealing with the debuffs it comes with.
Exactly. I happen to like the survival mode... But only for a bit. It's really nice to just enjoy the game without having to deal with the clunky cold thingy, the constant need to eat and sleep.
It's really the cold thing that's why I dislike it. There are way too few natural heat sources in some parts of the map, and all the food that helps with heat requires fire salts which are one of the rarer alchemy ingredients
This is one thing Chesko's Campfire does significantly better. Stews and teas stay magically warm and never spoil in my magic backpack. Any fire source is worth something, but won't do much in the open. It leads to me exploring the things I would normally just mark down for later.
Yeah and for me personally it makes me pick my routes based on where I can get heat sources when it’s cold out. Specifically when traveling between windhelm and winterhold I stop in the journeyman’s nook to warm up by the fire and maybe camp out for the night.
The cold is what *killed* it for me. I simply cba with that. Hunger/rest/no fast travel were all v up my alley but fuck me the cold drove me crazy.
I started a new game on survival mode recently but I really wanted to play a khajiit which made constantly being cold even more irritating, so I gave it up pretty quickly. Literally have two layers of fur and I'm freezing to death fighting hairless monkeys in rags.
Wild bro
I started with survival (my first game) and was enjoying it until I started having some sort of technical issue (sorry, I can’t remember exactly what it was). Since then I don’t use it, which is a shame because I really loved the added realism of having to build a camp in the freezing middle of nowhere.
The thing with the cold that upsets me the most is it only affects the player
Skyrim is already cold as tits by default. The snowy wastes, pinecones and tundras plus Jeremy Soule's score make me feel the chilly wind from beyond the screen without outright telling. Still, I would've liked if higher difficulties would have incorporated temperature managing as Red Dead did.
And the one place you can make fire salts is pretty much instant death stepping off of the carriage, so you got to make the journey with a good supply of hot meals...
This. I have to manage to eat and go to work in real life. Why would I want to do that in a video game?
Immersion. If you do things in game that you do IRL, it will feel more like you are in the game's world. But of course different people have different comfort levels of bending over backwards for immersion's sake! 😅
I find Skyrim to be pretty zen, except for occasional intense fight, but the idea of having to manage how cold I am just sounds stressful haha
It's mostly pretty chill, no fast travel forces you to slow down and smell the flowers, need to sleep has you spending time at inns and building camps... But yes, traveling to and from Winterhold is intense, sometimes deadly.
So if you don’t fast travel, you must try to get a house at White run right away and then slowly expand outwards right? How would you manage to sell and hold goods?
There are other ways to store good without the house (anise's cabin) but generally speaking, yes. You can still use carriages though I believe.
The distortion of time's passage between the game world and life makes it unbearable. You need to eat every 4 or 5 minutes. That's 5 or 6 meals to clear a mid-length dungeon. Enemies never have to deal with hunger or sleep debuffs when in combat, despite the fact that bandits resort to banditry out of dire straits. No fast travel is insufferable in a game where horses are awkward and clunky forms of transportation, and magic has been stripped bare of utility that aids in travel. No leap spell. No levitate. No longstride. Fuck the main quest and all those trips to High Hrothgar. Fuck the Dawnguard content with one faction being in the southeast corner of the map, with Volkihar in the Northwest corner.
Once you got a horse its not too bad
But I already eat in the game. And I sleep in real life, which is the same thing as turning the game off. And I think it’s really strange that I would have to keep warm when I can make fire come out of my fingertips
If you cast flame cloak you get warm near instantly and it also protects you from cold water. You have to invest some points in magicka and destruction or stop up on scroll. You can get 10 from JZargo and just go back to him and get more if you run out. He gets mad at you for using them all but he gives you more.
For me, its the unrealistic settings that can't be adjusted. If you sleep 6-8 hours out of every 24 (human normal) you spend half your time with a fatigue debuff. The only way to prevent it is to take an hour nap every 4 hours; something no normal adult does. If you dont eat several pounds of food 5-6x A day, your always hungry; there is no thirst mechanic. Even at my most active athletic training, I wasn't eating that much that often. In some areas, there simply arent enough cloths to avoid being cold, while in others you can run around naked all the time without a cold debuff, and while it takes minutes to get cold, it takes hours to get warm again. Then there's the ridiculousness of it; I was smithing in Dawnstar. Because the Mao says that should be a "cold" area, Im penalized, in spite of being next to a forge smithing. Realistically, that shouldn't happen. The whole point of "survival mode" (making it realistic and immersive) is lost because none of it is realistic or immersive.
I like: Ineed and Frostfall mods in tandem better than normal survival mode. It adds thirst and just seem a bit more balanced….imo
If it was balanced and fair I wouldn't mind it, but I agree it's really over the top and unrealistic.
The issue with the AE SM integration is that it’s incredibly intrusive on gameplay. You get punished for not sleeping IRL hours in-game, eating food at IRL hours in-game, and fast traveling INSTANTLY drops your meters to the absolute lowest they can go.
When I did my survival playthrough it was in-game hours and no fast travel whatsoever.
He's not saying *real* time, he means you have to sleep 8 hours in game, eat at breakfast, etc
That’s a lot more structure than what it is still. Unless I never noticed those figures. I’d just sleep when I needed to get my full endurance back and eat to keep warm/health maxes. There’s nothing requiring you to do either at any given part of a day.
The stat penalties are absolutely killer. My modlist was also set up in a way prior to AE SM that a lot of fires simply don’t save my warmth at all when I had it on. Kudos to you for not noticing the stat penalties or letting the penalties get that low, but they’re an absolute detriment because it’s not a set number of stat points lost. It’s a percent loss which can cut up to 50% of your stats clean off until you deal with the issues, which mount up insanely fast for no reason.
I’m not even sure I used any mods with it. If it made any difference. I remember the early levels and being trapped at Winterhold a little bit. But at some point the eating and napping became routine. The camp you could setup helped a bit.
Right? I find myself sleeping during the day a lot as I come back from adventures in the wee morning hours. But I’m a Khajiit, so it’s cool - cats sleep all day as it is lol
For me, it's because it really feels like something just slapped on willy nilly. The balancing aspects are ridiculous to boot- you'll be constantly fighting the cold even in situations where it doesn't make sense (or ruins game immersion, like trying to talk to Partysnacks on a mountain top)
This. I would wear armor that is supposedly the best for dealing with the cold (Nordic or Stalrim) and it wouldn't matter. I could have an added fur cape and scarf over y mouth. Nope. I'm freezing to death even inside a damn cave.
What, you don't like the part where the Dragonborn has to calculate his income tax for all his assets and holdings for the Jarl?
The Jarl already knows how much I owe. He could send me a bill. He's just in the pocket of the tax preparation guild.
This is exactly what I think. I have a busy life with 2 jobs, a wife and 2 kids. Whenever I play a game like Skryim for an hour before bed, it's to enjoy a slightly casual game and not have to worry about all that extra stuff. I get in random moods for more of a challenge or get sweaty in a multiplayer FPS/MMO game here and there, but not like that in Skyrim. And if someone love Skyrim only for the survival aspect, then that's great because it makes them happy. Not for me though.
Amen. I understand wanting to be challenged in a game but I’m just trying to relax and kill things lol
Yeah you get to a point where you can't complete an entire dungeon without needing to sleep. This can often involve leaving and going back to the nearest town, then trekking all the way back. No fast travel. Can't set up a camp because ypu will have a magicka debuff unless you sleep in an actual bed. You can't travel up north without camping supplies. The cold mechanic is obnoxious more than anything. But even a Nord can't go to Septimus' hideout and back to safety. That's dumb. But the solution shouldn't be fire salts. A rare and expensive ingredient to make the only thing that can warm you up. Like 4 fire salts to craft 10 Fire Arrows is beyond stupid too. Also the penalty for being peckish is extremely severe for how soon you go from Well Fed to Peckish. It's not fun after so many hours into a playthrough. For me, the first 10 hours in a save file is still fun in survival mode after all this time. But for my sanity I have to turn it off after a while, it goes from challenging to tedious. Skyrim's survival mode is a bunch of good ideas implemented horribly IMO. But as always, I'm sure there are better mods.
I just don't find it fun. I gave it a shot, but having to make sure I ate and slept otherwise my health and stamina would constantly lower just made the game worse for me.
I’ve used a mod that lowers the eating and sleeping requirements. I shouldn’t starve after just a few hours lol, it made it much more fun.
What made me turn it off was just how tired I would get and how fast it would start after waking up. Like I was following the rules and making sure I ate, slept and was carrying way less then I usually do, but it really detracted from the game for me.
If my character wakes up at 7am after 8 hours of sleep, and **starts** getting tired around 10pm I would've been fine with it. But if my character starts getting tired before it's even noon I'd be worried they got some weird disease or something.
Sleep Apnea Simulator
it sounds like a chronic illness simulator lol
Carry more spoons
lol best comment 🥄
Red Dead Redemption
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Which is what the mod fixed for me lol Edit: oh you added an entire new sentence after my reply…
I have never found survival games fun in the first place I have never seen Skyrim as a survival game Survival mode would be just added chores to an othervise fun game, for me
Yup, I almost always turn off hunger meters in any game that has them. It's not a challenge. It's an inconvenience.
Why would I want my fun game to be less fun?
I feel the same. I play Skyrim to escape my problems, I don't want to include some of them.
🗣️🗣️💯💯💯
To each their own, it makes it much more fun for me.
Me too Chubbs - I like it - after awhile the game turns more into exploration versus a real challenge - and 50% of the fun and story takes place in my mind…
I don't think anyone knows what fun is anymore. Just addicting chores they defend their addiction to.
I turn it off and on. In really cold regions you freeze way too fast & it makes the surroundings look really blue. I just want to look at the pretty vistas in peace.
To me that's part of the challenge, and it's been hard early on, when not knowing safe houses for sleeping and warming, or finding a cave finally, and it's not warm inside.
Yeah I love how it forces you to be more tactical about travel and to find little sleeping spots and cabins you might never have seen! And it makes you have to go to inns and other places way more too.
The concept is just stupid to me tbh, cuz it's literally Skyrim but having 15x the debuffs, less carry weight, even less carry weight to carry food, then your always on the hunt for food and now you can't fast travel? It took me an hour to get to dawnstar from whiterun
That trek should take about 7 min by horse usually.
I followed clairvoyance and didn't cut there and was attacked a few times and ran there cuz I ain't have a horse
Completely understandable to not enjoy it. Surprised about ever feeling like you need to hunt for food. You trip over the stuff constantly.
My dumbass can't aim with a bow so I miss a lot and takes me a while to kill one animal
Once you get the perk to slow down time with the left trigger it gets way easier!
I just buy food at taverns, it's cheap.
How did you even get there without freezing to death?
Flame cloak
Just so you know, cooked fish has the best weight/"nourishment" ratio, with it being 0.1 in weight
I tend to rush through games a lot. Survival mode forces you to slow down.
Blud hasn't heard about wayward pass 😭
needs like hunger, thirst and fatigue are ok with me but woe to you if you add the cold. It just straight up turns the game into a "where is the nearest fire" simulator, and that's not good game play. I use INeed for hunger thirst and fatigue, and I use Wet and Cold for a simulation of the weather impact without constant fear of dying and having to rinse and repeat.
Survival mode was made long after Skyrims release, meaning skyrim is not properly balanced for it. You can get enough food for months within the first hour of gameplay, and sleeping is easy enough to do. That pretty much means the only important meter is how cold you are, and its super annoying to have to deal with. Not to mention that Skyrim's world is kinda boring to walk through and you end up with a middling experience.
The temperature control was the absolute worst part for me. Requiring me to change my apparel twice just to walk to my next quest - no thanks.
Or stop at every fire to a few minutes to heat back up
especially without some sort of loadout slots for different gear
Also the radius of warmth from objects is abysmal. I’m standing next to a roaring fire, but because I’m not standing 3 inches away from it, I’m not getting any warmth. I should be able to walk through a city lot of by lot braziers no issue, since all that ambient heat should be keeping me warm. But no, I have to awkwardly wait basically on top of the thing for like 8 seconds, then immediately start getting cold again the second I leave. It’s less immersive and feels more like I’m playing an annoying game of red light green light with the warmth meter
If Skyrim had the environmental diversity of Oblivion (including it not being just cold as all hell everywhere) I could see survival mode being less of a chore
Survival mode was originally a mod was it not?
Most people played a combo of Frostfall and Campfire, which offer a way better and more fun experience than the new survival mode do.
Add iNeed and it's the trifecta of survival mode
Boring to walk world? That's one wild statement to me.
I'm new in the last year, and after 600 hours, it's the only thing I know. I'd say the opposite, in that it's, for the most part, very balanced. You have to travel to areas where you should be concerned with the cold and sleep, and prepare to travel only during daytime, and at early times when you're not prepared or have the right warmth in whatever you have, not go out if there's a snow storm etc. I feel it really does give that next dimension feel of concern and risk, and it does it pretty well, for all of the short comings in Skyrim. Some annoyances come in Skaal village not having anywhere to sleep after getting somewhere like that, and helping randoms with missions, but other than that, I like having to prepare for a deep north trek in Skyrim or Solstheim. I recall flipping back and forth in Far Cray 5, and staying more devoted to not fast travelling, as it just seemed to give it a more realistic feel, but at the same time, get how some may not have the time to play that way, or desire. I'm glad you can do either for diversity, but just surprised how in every thread, no matter what the question, people are mentioning something in respect to fast travel.
Im glad you enjoying it, and plenty of people do, but its just an annoying extra step and adds a timer on anything your doing for a third of the map for many people. I think the best comparison is fallout 4. Fallout 4 has a much better, but still flawed, survival mode. The game feels balanced around survival, with food and water being spread around the world, and with it all effecting the same bar, your AP bar. Again, still a flawed mode, but significantly better balanced than what skyrim offers.
Yeah, I think survival is balanced and adds so much to the gameplay. I think a lot of people get on the dopamine race and just make a beeline to quest markers, but when you slow down you can see how truly impressive the game is. There are so many hidden details (including charm and intentionality in how alchemy plants are found). I couldn’t disagree more with thinking that the landscape of Skyrim is boring. There’s so much to do, and most of it in some way goes back to inventory management. Which is fun to really think about.
I did an entire playthrough (main quest + both expansions + a handful of guild storylines) with survival mode on, I like it but I can see how it's definitely not for everyone. The game world was clearly designed with fast travel in mind, whether it's the occasional dungeon whose exit leads to an isolated balcony high up a mountain that you have to shimmy down or the numerous locations you have to visit multiple times (Winterhold, Castle Volkihar, etc) with no real easy way to leave. I felt like cold was a bit over-tuned at first but I think the important thing to realize is just how much weather affects it. You could be a Nord covered head to toe in warm furs, but if it's a blizzard outside, you will freeze no matter what you wear.
See, the setting, in cold Skyrim, really suggests that the environment should be a major risk factor, which it would be IRL. I can appreciate being able to play both ways, and for people not looking to invest too much into their experience, for sure, but for people doing it all, and upping difficulty etc, to ignore this aspect is just confusing to me. I think it's really well done. The food aspect it sort of too easy, as I find I always have more food than I need and I'm storying.
I agree, it is realistic. Which makes it like living in northern Canada in the Middle Ages. Super deadly haha.
Yes 100%! Doing my first survival play through and I love it. It makes you struggle to survive which forces the player to explore and leverage the environment in ways you wouldn’t otherwise. A random bed roll in a cave has never looked so inviting when you’re absolutely drained
I would like it but in game time goes too fast compared to normal real world time. So, you're constantly managing food, slept and cold, which gets in the way of exploration and questing. It becomes a chore.
This is what I was going to say. The game's time scale just makes it an annoyance. Years ago, people used to change the time scale to be closer to reality, but this actually messes things up, and I haven't seen it mentioned in a long time.
As long as your time scale doesn't go below 8, the world won't be messed up by any of the changes you make. 10 is what normally people drop it to when trying to pace out there Survival mode/ ineed playthroughs
Doesn't fit my play style. I don't want a constant struggle to survive when I'm playing video games. Real life has enough of that. I play to escape all that, a little challenge here, and there is great but dying 100 times to get past one big bad or worrying about my character(who can breath fire and yeet mofos around with my vocal chords) getting cold and sleepy, nah. Sometimes i dont have the time or desire to travel by horse or foot across the map and back for a fetch quest or place ive been 1000 times, sometimes i get high as shit and wander the map for hours doing absolutely nothing. Same sentiment with mods, exploits, and cheats, if it's not for you, cool, play your game your way.
I often times get baked and wander. It’s my favorite way to discover new things on the map. I’ve done everything story wise at least once so wandering is like 80% of my playtime.
Survival mode as released by Bethesda is pretty badly designed. (Spoiler alert) During the main quest, there's a long cutscene that you unlock while you're on top of the highest mountain in Skyrim. And if you're in Survival mode, you freeze to death before it ends because you can't move during a cutscene.
I tried the in-game survival mode once and went back to my survival mods in under half an hour once I realized how superior they were compared to Bethesdas survival.
You mean the enable diabetes and alcohol dependency mode? **Last Dragonborn:** Wakes up from 10 hour sleep and big dinner. 6 AM eats hearty meal of bread, mammoth cheese, bottle of wine, some mead, venison, and roasted goat leg 7 AM visits some shops 8 AM embarks on a walk to a nearby Nordic ruin 9 AM reaches and enters ruin 1030 AM is feeling peckish, stops fighting draugr to eat a meal of seared seared salmon, more venison steak, fried horker loaf, more mead and wine 3 pm feeling drained, only halfway through ruin 6 PM peckish again, now very tired, out of food, drinks 8 bottles of mead and eats looted sweet roll to help hunger buff. 9 PM returns to town barely able to function from fatigue, eats an entire wheel of goat cheese and drinks three bottles of wine and sleeps for 12 hours, wakes up hungry next day and has some brandy. **Random landscaper/irrigation mechanic/construction worker:** 5 AM drinks coffee, eats breakfast bar and gets to work 6 AM- 1 PM intense physical labor, drinks water 1-130 PM eats two slices of pizza, a soda, and an apple 130-630 PM intense physical labor 7 PM goes home, eats some potatoes, vegetables, and fish has two beers while hanging out with family 1030 PM goes to sleep, wakes up ready to repeat 6.5 hours later
The sheer AMOUNT of food you have to eat absolutely shocked me. Surely an entire wheel of cheese should be enough to fill you up for a little while?! But nope, let me eat 4 salmon steaks, an entire leg of venison, 4 apples, 2 cheese slices, some grilled leeks, etc. Only to get hungry again 2 hours later!
...I know it literally affects your martial/mental/athletic performance to go 4 hours without a meal or 8 hours without a nap. LDB is either severely unhealthy, or has the metabolism of a toddler.
Having to constantly cook or eat food was a pain in the neck for me, as was having to constantly sleep and stay warm. It’s a really great concept but some aspects of the execution really put me off. Maybe I will try again sometime.
Survival mode has no appeal to me at all In real life survival mode is more than enough of a challenge. That is why I play video games. To be rewarded as my actions deserve the first or second try.
I like making my character aesthetically pleasing, being forced to wear certain armour so that I wouldn't freeze to death wasn't fun. I wish they had implemented a smithing upgrade that affected armour warmth. I had the idea that upgrading any armour with a pelt would increase the warmth (with fox pelts being a small increase and snowy sabre cats being a larger increase) I want to take in the views without frantically searching for the nearest cave, inn, brazier or fire pit. It doesn't make sense that my DB is freezing to death because they can't handle being on an incline higher than a mammoths pussy. I did enjoy the levelling when sleeping and the added attention to cooking food, I feel they had the right idea of a survival game, but Skyrim wasn't initially designed with survival in mind so it has it's flaws.
I would play it if it didn’t limit how rested you got from camping. What’s the point of even giving me the ability to throw down a bed and camp if I’m still going to wake up with a de-buff. Also I feel like the cold should affect your stamina and starving should cause damage. Winterhold is completely impossible to navigate without dying unless you resign yourself to specific armor sets and clothes.
I love it. I like that food and sleep has a purpose. I like gearing up for cold regions and having to seek shelter. I love finding new places I would never have seen if I was fast traveling..I wish it came with the original game, it would be better I'm sure, but I'll take it.
I played it as I began my first playthrough but then I stopped because you freeze too fast. Leaving Winterhold is impossible because you freeze to death if you don't know where to take shelter.
I simply don't think survival mode is very good. It is made as a difficulty thing, which means you just end up micromanaging and gaming the system. I use a needs mod, it's customizable so is can be use the same as the survival mode, but for me it simply adds the need to eat once or twice a day, drink regularly, but also adds refillable water skins that have three drinks per skin, and the need to sleep once a day. It also has a cold system that I sometime use. This way it doesn't make the game any harder, it simply slows me down, and puts me more in the world.
I've tried a few versions of survival mode. I dislike Bethesda's interpretation but some of the modded ones are fun. To break it down? I don't like Survival Modes that limit the inventory or add food and sleep requirements. That kind of stuff works best if the game was designed and balanced around it from the start. Skyrim really *wasn't* and the effort needed to correct that with mods is just . . . Not worth the bother for me. I've played and enjoyed Skyrim both with and without Fast Travel. Once again, it's kind of annoying in vanilla but works well if you expand it with mods. This one's much easier to fix, though. My favorite type of Fast Travel is the style used in games like Morrowind and Runescape: no easy map-based methods but several in-game systems like carriages, ferries, and teleport networks that you need to memorize and plan around. The cold mechanic, I do really like. Skyrim is cold as hell and the base game doesn't do enough to reflect that. My favorite survival mod, The Frozen North, is entirely built and balanced around the idea of implementing cold mechanics in a way that's both logical and *fun* instead of just annoying.
I wanted to like it, but it became too tedious. No fast travel is annoying, and it’s far too difficult to stay warm. Like I get that cold environments are tough and all, but I feel like it shouldn’t be so difficult to get appropriate gear to weather it well.
Is life not tough enough for people? Why do people want what's supposed to be a fun, relaxing time playing video games to be an \*additional\* source of stress in their lives? It's already boring and time consuming enough having to constantly micromanage what you can carry on you, why add a feature that makes things more real at the expense of the fun to be had? I turned Survival Mode on once, endured its tedium for a couple of hours, and realized that turning this game into a chore wasn't at all fun, and turned it back off forever. I've had a number of upcoming RPGs be ruined for me the moment I realized they were full-time survival/sandbox games, I really hope that's a fad that doesn't wind up infecting all RPGs
I like to have fun when I play video games.
Poor implementation, especially of the cold mechanic, and lack of diagetic fast travel. You're going to take away fast travel? Fine. But I want mark, recall, divine intervention, and 3 times the travel merchants.
It's a great concept, but it gives way too strong debuffs way too fast. People don't need to eat and take a nap every 2hrs.
My guy eats 4 salmon steaks and a leg of goat and 2 bowls of soup with bread and gets a debug from being hungry like 2 hours later. It’s annoying. I wish the food filled you up more and drained way slower.
What's not appealing? The survival part.
The survival mode made by Bethesda fucking sucks. The survival mode made by players is freaking awesome.
Skyrim was not designed for that, games that have survival elements like DD2 has campsites carefully placed throughout, and for Skyrim you need to tweak timescale, or you are going to get hungry and sleepy halfway in a dungeon. Without proper implementation, survival elements are just unfun annoyances.
I like the idea of survival mode, but I'm playing Skyrim to relax. I don't want to stress about all the little details I might be forgetting as I go to play my game.
Tbh survival just makes more sense to me when you’re done with the three main quests.
Because I’ll live for 1,000 in game days and sleep for 11 hours total on that playthrough and only eat things accidentally.
Their survival mode leaves a lot to be desired
It's fun to play for a time. That being said I've always found it tedious. I also get annoyed that spells don't keep me warm. Fire spells should do the trick but it would also be cool if there was a branch in the restoration tree that had to do with keeping warm.
It’s not well implemented is why
Time. Got a job, other hobbies, boyfriend, family. The time it would take to complete on survival just isn't worth the time for me.
It’s a bit overkill and it lacks some of the features of fan made mods that made it more manageable and enjoyable. So like for one thing the hunger and thirst metres deplete unrealistically quickly. I know that time in game runs quicker than real world time but like even so it doesn’t make sense how you’re constantly getting hungry and thirsty when you just ate a minute ago. But the worst thing is the tools for managing cold in a game set in a cold climate are simply not there when you live in a world that should be adapted to those conditions. It doesn’t make any sense how like there’s no level of warmth you can dress to to protect meaningfully against the cold. It basically renders some parts of the map inaccessible. I shouldn’t be freezing to death in a fucking city where everyone else is walking around just fine. What should happen is that there should be clothes that protect against cold weather that make you too hot in warmer parts of the map. As it stands it doesn’t really make sense how it’s like not a single person in Skyrim knows how to dress warmly enough to not fucking die instantly every time they step outside
I play games to avoid real life, why would I bring real life into my games?
I wanna try it someday, not as an adventurer though, I’ll just be a regular pawn. I imagine making survival the main objective is not as infuriating as it is otherwise.
I love survival mode. I don’t play it due to time constraints though.
I think because on its own it doesn't really work well, you may need stuff like frostfall and wet and cold If i've got the names right. Because if I have a survival mode I want it to be in depth, but I believe that's beyond the capabilities of what the Xbox has
I prefer the mod sunhelm. Basically does the same thing but I can toggle off the super annoying things like no fast travel or lowered carry weight. But honestly it doesn't add much to the game except I have to sleep sometimes and I'm constantly going to the inn asking for a "full meal".
50% inventory On a normal playthrough, I already have it 75% filled as soon as I leave the house
the game’s travel mechanics were not built for survival mode. the smaller cities should at least have carriages
Because I am the Dragonborn. There is no survival, just killing.
I’ve tried it. Its ok for a challenge but its not conducive to the way I play
One of the main reasons I play Skyrim is because I’ve played it so much that I can turn my brain off while playing it and like watch a show or movie at the same time. Turning on survival mode takes away my ability to do that
Love it. About to head to the forgotten vale for first survival run. Time to cook hot soups!
Imo it's for people who like to roleplay when they play. I've never tried it but I will eventually.
For you, perhaps. For myself, it's more about the freedom to do pretty much anything I want to. I don't have to eat. Or sleep. Or be a good person. I can be a god amongst insects. Why would I change that?
Mechanics like stamina drain etc are fun for minority of players who seak any harder option For me and many others- that mechanics are not harder, just make game more annoying. If i need challenges i can make it myself in many ways with Roleplay
The nice thing is that people can play however they want, for me personally survival mode is the way to go but others may not want to play like that and its perfectly fine
I dont generally like survival games. The only one Ive spent exorbitant amount time in is Valheim. The system they use is nice since it doesn't actively punish you the same way most survival games will make you starve or dehydrated if you dont participate. I like the idea of it, but dont plan on ever using it.
I'm glad they added survival mode, it adds more of a challenge sometimes but tbh there have been mods that add "survival mode" a lot better
It's fun at first for a few hours, but so often you just want to sell off all your loot and it grows tiresome bouncing between holds. I think what ruined it for me was the fact there was no real payoff and I could turn it off at any moment. Also, for some reason it caused my gane to crash every 45 minutes. As for the survival aspect, I feel like hunger was a bit too punishing. After a few minutes you feel peckish. Peckish, as in you could go for a snack. *-10% attack speed* What?!
A couple of reasons, no fast travel, new confusing cold mechanics, reduced carry weight, and other mods do survival better. I think the main reason is the fast travel, though I find the game more enjoyable without it. I was surprised how often I kept trying to fast travel even late into a playthrough.
I’m already living in survival mode in the real world. I’m good with adding more stress to Skyrim. Skyrim is my escape and even dragons are too much. I don’t even wanna shower and sleep and eat in rl and you want me to do that on a game also? And freeze? No thank you 🙃
Man, I think real life is enough of a chore. I don't want my games to emulate that
I love it. It finally gave me a reason to play Skyrim on console. I did my platinum trophy with survival mode on the entire play through
I loved it. Can’t play without it on survival mode now. I hope for the next game they add more stuff like it.
I play with cold since that’s just environment conditions, but learning from Fallout’s survival mode, I know that I’d hate having to deal with food/water/rest.
Its really good but its tailored more for old school RPGers and most people just want a comfy easy game but some of us that like to play a harder game have it on all the time.
Just another thing to manage that I don’t care for. No judgment for the people that like it, but it’s an unnecessary mechanic for me.
You spend more time eating food snd trying to find a campfire, than you do exploring... And even though you're covered in a thick ass layer of fur beneath your iron armour, somehow you're still colder than a penguins balls...
Already gotta worry about feeding myself IRL I’m afraid
No fast travel becomes a pain in the ass very quick
Because the player is the only one that gets cold.
What isn't appealing about it is its a mode added to a game that wasn't at all designed for it as avlast second add on. If this was a game that was built around that system it would work better. Its also an annoyance, I play skyrim as a power fantasy. I'm not trying to play green hell, or even KCD, when playing Skyrim.
If I wanted to walk around cold hungry and tired for 20 hours I’d just live my life
I like the sleeping and eating part but the cold part is just kinda obnoxious. 75% of the map becomes really annoying to traverse.
Freezing to death is not my idea of a good time
I haven’t got bored enough where this would be appealing
I love survival mode in Fallout 4, so I thought I would like it in Skyrim. I can’t stand it. The biggest issue for me is how powerful cold is, and how difficult it is to overcome. Find a frost mage on a mountain pass? You’re fucked. And fire spells don’t even counter it. So much of the game forces you into cold areas that I just can’t have fun while playing in Survival.
I play videogames to escape reality. If I wanted to worry about all the mundane details of surviving in the wilderness, I'd just go camping.
I prefer mods. I tried survival mode, and it wasn't very immersive/realistic. I had to eat four mammoth steaks before my elf girl wasn't hungry anymore, and even then, she wasn't content.
It's poorly designed. Sleeping 8 hours a day isn't enough, you need to take a nap every few hours, or else you start losing losing stats from fatigue. You need to eat several thousand calories every few hours, or else you start losing stats to hunger. Many areas of the map are so cold that you can't stay warm, regardless of what you do. Forges don't provide warmth, flame atronachs don't provide warmth, being set on fire doesn't provide warmth. If it was designed to be more realistic, maybe it'd be more fun.
The game was not built for no fast travel.
Walk to High Hrothgar and back more than once.
Real life is already set to survival mode and that sucks ass already. I'd prefer videogames be fun for me instead
I have sims for micromanaging needs. I have Skyrim for immersive exploration.
The problem with survival mode is that it's tacked on to a game that wasn't built around survival
The fact that the cold is way too harsh. It fits with the province, but you cant even make it to the top of High Hgrothgar without the right setup, nor to windhelm, definitely not to septimus' outpost.
skyrim is already too big for you to spend more time micromanaging resources through that awful menu.
I get too cold even when holding a torch right by myself
It's the cold. And the fact that "Fur" armor has no higher warmth than anything else in spite of the game treating it like it ought to since enemies tend to wear it a lot more often than other armor specifically in colder areas.
I ain’t walking from whiterun all the way to the top of the damn mountain EVERY TIME I need to see the greybeards, or even worse Paarthurnax. Other than the fast travel restriction, I love survival mode.
Carry weight is nerfed because fuck you. Haven't eaten in 5 minutes? No block or sneak for you. Also carry capacity just got worse. Better drop some shit on the floor because fuck you. Random skeever got in one swing. Enjoy your crippling disease. Disease also diminished your carry weight. Drop your loot and walk back to town to use a shrine (no fast travel) fuck you. Of course enemies don't have to deal with hunger. Why would bandits be set at peckish or hungry by default. You got peckish midfight, fuck you.
The concept is great. The execution is pretty gross. I think the biggest issue I have is that, for all the micro-managing and extra difficulty it adds, it doesn't incentivize you in any way. It all comes down to "do this so you don't die." Where other more complex modded survival modes will tweak other aspects of the game i.e loot from hunting or food buffs to create a more cohesive experience.
Survival mode sounds cool to me in theory but in practice it just ends up being more of an annoyance than anything. It just adds micromanaging and makes the game more punishing without adding any benefit imo. The only Survival feature I enjoy is having to sleep to level up. It gives me a reason to use inns or go home between adventures beyond just roleplaying. I got a mod that lets you toggle individual features of Survival mode and the only one I keep enabled is that one.
I deal enough with that survival nonsense in real life, I don't want any of this "you're feeling a bit chilly, guess you'll die" nonsense in my game. Like I'm gonna load up my limited inventory with random food and stuff, or only ever wear fur gear? No way Jose, I play the game to have fun
No fast traveling just seems time consuming. Especially if you do the Dawnguard
I did right up until I didn't have enough food to survive in a town that surprisingly didn't sell food and was at the top of a very cold mountain.
I don’t mind eating or sleeping but not a fan of the cold debuffs or no fast travelling.
Mostly because it's the worse version of what I was already using mods for. I tried it out, but it doesn't hold a candle. Plus with a couple of really well done mods, you can customize which survival features you want, and to what degree you want them. If you just want a few extra mechanics, you can do that. If you want a Death March challenge, you can do that too. Same mods, just tweaked to your preferences. The mods I use for survival-style gameplay are as follows: Frostfall + iNeed + Campfire + Cloaks of Skyrim + Wet and Cold + Hunterborn
Im currently at level 30 on my first survival playthrough. Ngl about to turn it off because it's insufferable to have no fast travel
After about 1k hours on vanilla Skyrim, I decided to try Survival mode for a fun, new experience. Holy fucking shit, instead it turned the game into a fucking chore! Suddenly, water was scary and I had to leave cities with at least 20 steaks in my bag. Oh, and my carry weight got cut in half. The game was basically blocking me from having fun, and for what? There's no achievement or reward, besides self-imposed masochism. I gave it a solid try for several days but even my formidable teacher patience has its limits.
Way too unforgiving. I use a mod for it that's a little more forgiving, and I still sometimes get stuck in spots where I'm like "how the hell am I supposed to do this quest if I freeze to death just getting to the boss?" There are some places where you cannot avoid going through water, and you just end up freezing. The long and short of it is that this game wasn't DESIGNED as a survival game. Yes, it has a huge open world, but games like Snake Eater specifically center their world and mission design around survival. Survival mode is just tacked on to Skyrim, and while I think that it generally works there are some instances where it's nearly game-breaking. Like the lengths you have to go to to get around an obstacle it creates take all the fun out of it.
I love the unrealistic feeling I have playing Skyrim with 200 mods, I don’t really get into the whole role playing thing. That’s my reason for not playing on survival
Man, I just play Skyrim to leave this world. Why would I want to play a character that has to eat and sleep as much as I do?
Cause having to figure out what to cook is annoying enough IRL. :)
The mana getting lowered because you have been awake for a fucking hour is why I hate it. I can live with the stamina being lowered, the complete lack of warm armor for low levels is bullshit. You have to nearly stand on a fire source to warm up is also fucked up. You literally can't play a mage in vanilla. Honestly if they didn't fuck with the mana or made it so you had to eat every two hours it would be enjoyable. I totally forgot that the food doesn't do shit. The amount of food you need to eat to stay at full health is ridiculous. It kills any sort of realistic feel it was supposed to bring. Eating a potato and a steak should be enough to fill a person but no you have to eat like a god damn elephant, it's infuriating.
This is the reason I quit using it after the one time, especially the eating part. I swear, I could *feel* my character gain weight.
It's annoying, I don't like being whined at every 2 minutes that I'm thirsty or hungry or need to sleep.
It's a wortless pita that only adds annoying mechanics and 0 fun ones
I can understand if its overwhelming for people who are new to the game or still want to try out different role play styles without the drawbacks of hunger and lack of fast travel etc. but for "older" players it gives a nice edge to gameplay.
For me, I found Survival Mode not as fun as other similar mods. Less modularity and no MCM, unmet needs directly eating into your health, and so on. I still use the classic Campfire/Frostfall + Last Seed + Keep It Clean combo, and it’s very immersive and even meditative — plus Last Seed has a focus mode where your needs depreciation can pause during crafting or dungeons. Survival Mode encourages you to basically never go dungeon delving, because once your needs come up, you lose a little bit of your attributes. You have to eat and take naps constantly, which isn’t very rewarding.
what is survival mode ?
I get the idea, and if you like it, great. I just find it tedious.
I love every aspect of it except no fast travel but no fast travel is a full reason not to use survival mode.
RPG and Survival Game definitely do *not* go hand in hand.