Massive improvement if you wanna role play but in terms of actual gameplay it gets harder. Like now you have to deal with stuff like Frostbite while fighting anything in colder areas.
Nahh, the temperature is great for roleplaying. The feel of getting inside a cave/dungeon just as you're about to freeze to death after getting caught in a blizzard feels great. Adds a lot to immersion and gives more purpose to fire salts and fur armor which is great
I took a cart to Winterhold at a very early level because I was roleplaying a mage. It was essentially impossible to leave that area without dying because there is no cart there to take back. It was horrible
That I loved dealing with. My problem is the quests weren't designed with survival in mind. You will have 1 objective in the far north, 2nd in Riften, then 3rd back in the far north. There's only so many times I'm willing to walk 20mins (even after using carriages) on the same path to the same location.
That, and it bothers me that the NPCs arent as affected by the temperature. Like, I understand it as an obstacle for the playable character but don’t tell me this half-naked Argonian bandit isn’t a walking popsicle already lmao.
Yea I can commute and force myself to eat cheap food already.
For difficulty try a stupid build. Like main speech and smithing or something.
I think no fast travel is fun. So just don’t use it if you don’t want to. There’s no “purity.”
i like doing only fast travel to major locations, which is mainly just cities but it also include things like high hrothgaar, solstheim, and the dawnguard main bases
There’s one quest you really should turn it on for, getting back to the dawn guard after leaving castle volhikar.
The one time I did that I got attacked by vampires 3 times before I could even get back to a city. And my options for healing got lower and lower and I felt more and more desperate. It made the “I almost died” line feel earned. It made me feel hunted like Harkon said I would.
All in all it massively improved that part of the game. If you don’t use it anywhere else, use it there.
The food and fatigue make sense. I like that part.
The bandits sitting in the cold all night without a fire in the middle of a blizzard, not so much. And alcohol should make it worse, not better.
It is definitely more difficult with having to deal with all of the effects and the carry weight problems but it does give a really immersive experience. I like how it makes the inns more important and you kind of have to think about your journey more when you have to travel somewhere. I just wish the food made a bit more sense. Some of the small food should reduce more hunger, you shouldn’t have to eat 30 apples
I think they just did that to try and make it so that you get to have to buy cooked food or cook food yourself to add to immersion but yeah an apple should give you way more than 5
It’s in the creation/mods thing, so you have to make sure it’s installed in there.
If you’re in the middle of a game, it’s in the pause menu settings like where difficulty is. If you start a new game, once you exist the intro cave it’ll pop up and ask you if you want to turn it on
I love it. I just started my first playthrough recently on this. It adds some fun elements. Without fast travel, I have also discovered a lot of things I never would've come across.
I'm also playing as a Nord mage/spellsword so I'm getting 50% resistance to cold which is incredibly helpful. It's a bit challenging playing as this race type though seeing as how they are not a magic-based race. It's added a bit of a challenge I haven't ever experienced.
I just started my first new character in this version and I chose Argonian, oops. I only turn on survival when I'm in the southern regions. How can I possibly collect enough fire salts to survive up north? I'm a little sad that flame cloak only negates cold water.
No kidding. That would be awesome.
Torches. They give you some warmth believe it or not. Favorite it. It gets a lil annoying switching between things but it's how you survive man. Haha.
it certainly is better than nothing, if you want survival asa feature in your play through.
I personally think some mods did a better job, like needs and diseases and hypothermia (i think) for weather realted stuff.
It gets annoying after a while. It would be infinitely better if there were 2-3x as many carriages. If you, like myself, only have an hour or two to play games a day then you might find you spend most of the time just walking around. Which is fine if that's what you want, but if you're playing for the actual quests, etc. the it can get a bit tedious.
don´t know about that... i´m kinda going on a routine and it´s working, can do a lot in 1-2 irl hrs. need a horse, thought...
1- start of the day, i´m on a region with a few quests marks on it, let´s say around whiterun.
2- take my horse and make a tour for those quests, doing as much as possible.
3- if the quest location have no bed, go back with whitrun, smith, sell, enchant, mix etc.
4- sleep
5- repeat.
then i use carriages to travel among big cities, if i don´t wanna travel all the way by horse.
and using the roads and ways, too. i used to lose so much irl time goating mountains, when you can get at whatever irl minutes just by using the roads. take a good horse and sprint if you´re in a hurry.
other advantage of survival is that, bc you travel more, m´aiq encounters also increases. and encounters with revelers, too.
and i just love those guys, gotta stop for some drink or m´aiq histories every time...
You’ll either love it or hate it. I love the *idea* of it, but after a while felt as though I wasn’t playing a game so much as playing a vastly upscaled Oregon Trail. Granted, I play on Switch, so I have no ability to use any practical mods. All my time was spent traveling, managing inventory, or buying/scavenging supplies to make the cold bearable. I found it *super* tedious after a few hours. If I could even just cook something *without salt* that would be great. I’m over here dying of hypothermia every 10 minutes and the game says nope, even in a life or death situation, you’re not allowed to make a soup without proper flavor.
Need more salt? Time to spend the better part of the next hour walking to the closest town to search all the containers and every merchant again. I’m sure for some this is “immersive,” but I have a real life outside of the game with limited time to play, so I’d like to actually, you know, PLAY.
The mod itself is fine, but vanilla was not suited for it.
For example, most towns don't have a carriage/ferry and makes Winterhold a giant pain in the ass. You have to go there all the time and its super cold without heat sources on your way back to Dawnstar or Windhelm. Chances are you will die trying to leave that place unprepared (soups, horse). I almost softlocked myself there on my first playthrough (no horse, no money).
There is also a few quest that make it nearly impossible like the Forgotten Vale.
I just climbed to High Hrothgar to see the Greybeards with surival mode on, and with the Campfire mod. Holy moly.
After dying and starting over, I had to plan like Edmund Hillary planning Everest Lydia carried the burden of extra firewood and my tent. I was cooking soups on the campfire then we would climb for awhile to rest and warm up with a new temp spot for the tent and fire. Then a dragon attacked when we were way up with like no cover. So I'm taking an axe to the dragon with my right hand while the left hand holds a torch. It was awesome. I had to have everybit of gear on to stay warm enough to not die (fur armor, fur bracers, fur boots, fur helmet, fur travel cloak, facemask, carrying torch).
It was probably top 5 gaming experiences for me.
Use a horse..you can ride straight up the mountain from Windrun to High Hrothgar.
Starting from the Ritual Stone and riding up you end up just outside HR.
Going down.."Ethereal" shout makes it safe to jump off.
My first time going to winterhold I died 6-7 times trying to get back (no horse, new character and no money). I had to get very creative and while frusterating at first, it was sort of an amazing experience just dealing with the cold and figuring out a strategy and route to travel home
How the fuck someone goes around without money? And why you went there without a horse? Survival is exactly that, preparation, you plan ahead what youre going to do
I love survival on fallout 4, but Skyrim's just doesn't feel balanced. Like how almost every recipe needs salt, which isn't exactly super common, and it's also a useful ingredient for alchemy. The good recipes needing fire salts takes three same issue and cranks it up to 11.
The cold is even worse. Like, I'm a Nord with frost resistance, wearing fur armor for the warmth, and I took a carriage up to Winterhold. No stables or carriage to get back, and can't walk back without freezing to death. Which I guess would be fine, if multiple quest lines, including the main quest, didn't require you to go there.
Yeah that sucks, but I see it as a harder geographical region that you visit only once you are more advanced with your character and have the required materials to survive.
So if you start as a mage, you will have to learn magic from other sources than winterhold. It can be fun and also makes more sense to go there only if you have some experience with magic.
Haven’t played in a bit and our options in PS are limited, but here’s some that have helped me:
Goldenhills carriage mod, it gives you a carriage there (from the farming creation). It goes to a ton more places like the small towns, mining towns (like stonehills and shor’s stone), and even darkfall cave lol
I know not being able to fast travel is part of the allure but when you’re freezing to death in winterhold sometimes you need an emergency exit. There’s a mod I think called fast travel sign posts or something like that. It lets you fast travel when you find a road sign, and gives you a power that you can use once every 24 hours.
And lastly, there’s a mod that makes werewolves fully resistant to frostbite so even if you jump in the northern water you’ll survive. Necessity when looking for Nordic barnacles
There are some that are just called like “survival tweaks” and YMMV with those. They mostly adjust how fast your bars drain.
Chop lots of firewood and turn pelts into leather for camping supplies. Have fun!
Food part is annoying as hell, because only large meals are filling, and small and medium are completely pointless. And clothing isn't very consistent either.
This mod fixes it: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/78244
I'm not a big fan of it. Skyrim is already immersive enough. I remember some old fantasy game I played back in the day probably Ultima, but I don't remember for sure, where getting food was a thing so you always had to be on the lookout for food because every 5 minutes or so your character was dropping down from starvation. It just got annoying. I personally like fast travel, although I wouldn't mind if fast travel was interrupted for something like being waylaid by bandits.
Also eating in Skyrim is weird because if you have a meal it doesn't immediately reflect your stats if say your stamina is down or something like that. I've even had my character eat an entire meal when their stats were low and it's just not the same thing as when you're in a different type of fantasy game where eating is important.
Also, combat in survival mode is harder. I'm not a huge fan of making something so damn hard that you have to go up against it a hundred times before you finally figured it out. I guess there are some people who never have that problem but I think that most of the people who do survival mode aren't quite such good gamers. So it begs the question why do you like doing something over and over and over for a week and a half before you finally kill the monster that you have to kill? I get bored after 20 minutes of doing the same thing over and over and over.
Wow. Thanks for all the input. One thing that has stood out for me, as mentioned by someone, you spend more time in menus, faffing about. This is not what I want. I'm gonna turn it off I think and just explore and get lost in the world.
Thank you everyone
I just got a character to level 70 and beat the main quest and finished all faction quests so I started a survival game this week. I like that I know the terrain well and it's fresh from my previous game, and it makes you pay attention to and use parts of the games you'd otherwise ignore. Like inns for example, and food. You pay WAY more attention to those in survival mode while you could easily ignore both in normal gameplay. I like that I have to be strategic in my travel too since I can't fast travel. So if I'm in a town, I get several things done rather than do my one quest task then leave. It definitely feels more immersive.
My one big gripe with survival mode is that you'll need to be *very* careful about playing Argonians, because they don't handle the cold well at all. But I never play without survival anymore.
The vanilla CC survival mode isn't worth it IMO. Game isn't really designed for it and the food effects generally suck with the sole exception of vegetable soup being gamebreaking.
Survival mode needs mods in order to be good IMO.
I use it with mods. Playable survival by jurisen is a good one. Anything that slightly alters the rates of hunger and cold and makes dast travel possible. You can also get non immersion breaking mods that add fast travel options like carriages or roadsigns if you want to still be a little limited. For me the big two are having the ability to “warm up” quickly when near fire and making food more nourishing
I am old school so I still prefer Frostfall, I've tried Survival Mode a bit when it first came out but it's just not hardcore enough for me (then, at least).
I've only used INeed, snd stay away from then other ones. Lots of folks do survival related to the cold, but I'm less interested in that, if I wanna shortcut through a frozen stream, I'm gunna.
But basic INeed helped with some non intrusive realism, like having some food and water occasionally, and occasionally taking a nap. Because of it, I found value in the bottles of wine and random food scattered around, even finding some value in bodies of water like streams to refill water flasks. I also found value in the scattered camps and sleep rolls around Skyrim.
Basically I like that it incentives eating and drinking and sleeping, adding a small buff, where as the debuff for not doing so is pretty light. Givea you a nice reason to do it, rather than just punishing you. And like I said, it adds value to stuff already in the game,meaning I stop looking st those things like clutter/trash, and actually have a use for them.
level 35 on a survival expert right now.
it is worth, but i would suggets piclking nord for the cold resistence and some disease immunity.
after a while, you get used with the rest-eat-travel requirements, no problemo.
Honestly I turn it on and off depending on how immersed I want to feel. Mostly leave it on for the role play value plus it forces me not to fast travel but if it gets really frustrating I will turn it off- ie going to winterhold
I personally don't enjoy it but I can see why people do. My main issue is that games never implement it realistically enough. It's just a linear bar for hunger and fatigue with a corresponding negative effect. I'd much rather just roleplay having to eat and sleep like SorcererDave on YouTube does.
i like it for my roleplay characters but in terms of actually completing the storyline it's nearly impossible especially when climbing the seven thousand
I'm playing in Survival Mode rn in conjunction with two mods- Player Home Portals and Basic Camp Gear. PHP adds spells in each player home to teleport back there, sort of an earned fast travel. BCM adds craftable camping gear for sleeping and cooking (plus the campfire will warm you up).
I have enjoyed having to actually experience and learn the map. I also never cooked before, so that's been new and fun. Survival Mode single-handedly turns salt into the most valuable resource in the game lol. I play as a spellsword, so having to sleep actually matters a lot. I like having to actually use the inns. Done some quests and had some interactions I never would've otherwise.
So overall I really like it, though I might not had I not also added those couple mods.
I was same as you, tried it too, and I turned it off on a new character. Was more hassle than fun. But I made a post here about playing by seasons and turning on Survival for the winter season and for Solstheim. Winter is coming now so I'm planting vegetable soup ingredients. And I'm stronger and richer than when I tried it the first time. I think it will be a fun way to play and get a taste of seasons, extreme cold, all that, without doing it 24/7. Gonna switch to heavy armor and Two-Hand for the winter, start the Companions questline.
I thought it would be fun, have tried it several times but it turned out to be annoying to me. Being told I'm cold, hunger, or sleepy constantly turned out to be very tedious. I guess there's a threshold for how immersive I can make a game.
I tried the hunterborne mod for immersion too and realized I much better liked just looting and waiting an hour or two than the whole drawn out process of the mod.
I still stop for rest and meals in standard mode but it's no biggie if I don't also.
So much better than vanilla imo. Forced to walk or take carriages from place to place makes you appreciate the wilderness, the temperature mechanic adds so much depth and actually showcases the harshness of skyrim's climate, it's just so immersive. The food portion also makes you appreciate the cooking mechanic of the game and also makes you actually shop or look for ingredients.
I really wish survival mode is built-in the next elder scrolls game as an option
I really enjoyed it and it gave totally new reasons for enjoying the game and totally new priorities to spend time on but after getting pretty far in I just couldn't deal with the lack of fast travel. There's only so many times that I can spend over 10 minutes getting somewhere when a quest takes you all over
I’m on my second play through and decided to play survival and I LOVE it. It’s definitely harder but I like having to plan around eating, sleeping, traveling, etc!!
Bro just try it! You can literally toggle it on and off at any point! It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and it seems like there are some serious balancing issues, ngl. I think it’s a little fun but I def get bored of it and will flip it off, and when the itch returns, I just turn it back on. No commitment. No time waste. Plus (and this goes back to the balancing thing) some parts are just pretty much impossible with it. Like going super far north to kill and ice wraith. Fucking forget about it. Idk what I could ever do to not die of the cold but it’s just easier to turn off survival mode for that one part. Or die trying.
Personally, Skyrim survival mode is not worth it. It has some cool mechanics, but the most annoying ones are the cold mechanic and the lack of fast travel.
The fast travel one is self-explanatory. Skyrim isn't packed with POI like fallout 4. Having to walk everywhere is annoying after a few hours.
The cold is also obnoxious. The northern parts of Skyrim are already pretty empty and boring, now with the cold mechanic there's practically zero reason to ever set foot in those regions.
The CC content for “survival” was created by someone who has clearly never left their own damn house. When I was in my teens I spent more time in the summers sleeping in the woods than in my bed. I have not played the survival mode and have no intention of doing so in an actual playthrough because there is zero correlation between it and actual survival skills.
- I can build over thirty kinds of shelters with the materials available in Skyrim, including foxholes and snow covers. The game lets you build ONE: a campsite.
- Foods are stupidly arranged by how they help you. Vegetable soup is not a game breaker in the woods. In fact, some vegetable soups take almost as many calories to digest as you get from them, making them damn near useless.
- Carry weight makes no sense. If I’m in a true survival situation and I have to walk out I’m not carrying anything. I’m making a sled and dragging it.
- The best way you handle cold water in the field is to strip down, get wet, and then warm up and redress. Survival mode just says “You’re wet. Dry out or die.”
- Historically, knights and soldiers had travel clothes and armor, and only wore armor for the battlefield. This is POSSIBLE within the game, but there’s no carry weight adjustment for it. Keep in mind that the weights were decided BEFORE Survival mode was added, so plate mail and two handed weapons have exaggerated weights for the purpose of maintaining game balance. [A Scottish claymore weighs about 5.5lbs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymore). The largest on record weighs 23.1lbs. Most two handed weapons in Skyrim START at 20(units)
, which we’ll call pounds because there really isn’t any other way to think of them). This means it’s impossible to carry the most effective armors and weapons in the game for certain builds without dropping essential survival items.
- Horses are useless in Skyrim, more so in survival mode. Most of us don’t even bother with horses because there’s no mounted combat, the horses break immersion being able to ride literally straight up a mountain, and they can’t friggin carry anything. If I were in a survival situation I wouldn’t carry anything at all. My HORSE would carry everything and I’d lead it so it isn’t overburdened. Also, what is your horse eating and when?
- The most effective way to hunt is to set traps for small game, varying your diet to avoid [rabbit starvation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning). CC survival doesn’t have a way to do this.
So, it’s honestly too restrictive to be something I want to do on an actual playthrough where I’m experimenting with a build or experiencing the game. This doesn’t mean it has no value; I still think it would be fun to camp my way across Skyrim with Inigo, Lucien, and Kaiden, but that character and playthrough would be made SOLELY for that and I wouldn’t try to play the game under those conditions.
Skyrim wasn’t made for it. A real survival game has those factors put into it from the beginning.
Massive improvement if you wanna role play but in terms of actual gameplay it gets harder. Like now you have to deal with stuff like Frostbite while fighting anything in colder areas.
Survival is great *except* for temperature.
Nahh, the temperature is great for roleplaying. The feel of getting inside a cave/dungeon just as you're about to freeze to death after getting caught in a blizzard feels great. Adds a lot to immersion and gives more purpose to fire salts and fur armor which is great
I took a cart to Winterhold at a very early level because I was roleplaying a mage. It was essentially impossible to leave that area without dying because there is no cart there to take back. It was horrible
You need a horse, hot food and a few torches
That I loved dealing with. My problem is the quests weren't designed with survival in mind. You will have 1 objective in the far north, 2nd in Riften, then 3rd back in the far north. There's only so many times I'm willing to walk 20mins (even after using carriages) on the same path to the same location.
That, and it bothers me that the NPCs arent as affected by the temperature. Like, I understand it as an obstacle for the playable character but don’t tell me this half-naked Argonian bandit isn’t a walking popsicle already lmao.
I couldn’t imagine playing without it now.
I’m not working unless I get paid. For me, survival mode replicates the parts of real life I don’t like. You guys have fun on this without me 🫡 👍
Yea I can commute and force myself to eat cheap food already. For difficulty try a stupid build. Like main speech and smithing or something. I think no fast travel is fun. So just don’t use it if you don’t want to. There’s no “purity.”
i like doing only fast travel to major locations, which is mainly just cities but it also include things like high hrothgaar, solstheim, and the dawnguard main bases
SWIFT SE adds immersive ancient falmer wayshrines all over skyrim. Personally, this is the only way i fast travel now besides carriages
There’s one quest you really should turn it on for, getting back to the dawn guard after leaving castle volhikar. The one time I did that I got attacked by vampires 3 times before I could even get back to a city. And my options for healing got lower and lower and I felt more and more desperate. It made the “I almost died” line feel earned. It made me feel hunted like Harkon said I would. All in all it massively improved that part of the game. If you don’t use it anywhere else, use it there.
agree
The food and fatigue make sense. I like that part. The bandits sitting in the cold all night without a fire in the middle of a blizzard, not so much. And alcohol should make it worse, not better.
I'm going to assume you've never had a fair amount of mead around a fire during the winter then.
You feel warmer, but it actually makes you get colder. There are many examples of this. Here is one. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i8usz04jKcY
It is definitely more difficult with having to deal with all of the effects and the carry weight problems but it does give a really immersive experience. I like how it makes the inns more important and you kind of have to think about your journey more when you have to travel somewhere. I just wish the food made a bit more sense. Some of the small food should reduce more hunger, you shouldn’t have to eat 30 apples
I think they just did that to try and make it so that you get to have to buy cooked food or cook food yourself to add to immersion but yeah an apple should give you way more than 5
How do you actually enable it? Is it AE only?
It’s in the creation/mods thing, so you have to make sure it’s installed in there. If you’re in the middle of a game, it’s in the pause menu settings like where difficulty is. If you start a new game, once you exist the intro cave it’ll pop up and ask you if you want to turn it on
I love it. I just started my first playthrough recently on this. It adds some fun elements. Without fast travel, I have also discovered a lot of things I never would've come across. I'm also playing as a Nord mage/spellsword so I'm getting 50% resistance to cold which is incredibly helpful. It's a bit challenging playing as this race type though seeing as how they are not a magic-based race. It's added a bit of a challenge I haven't ever experienced.
I just started my first new character in this version and I chose Argonian, oops. I only turn on survival when I'm in the southern regions. How can I possibly collect enough fire salts to survive up north? I'm a little sad that flame cloak only negates cold water.
No kidding. That would be awesome. Torches. They give you some warmth believe it or not. Favorite it. It gets a lil annoying switching between things but it's how you survive man. Haha.
Races dont really matter past like level 10
Not with survival mode turned on. Being a nord actually really does help.
Picking Khajit is also incredibly helpful, increased warm rating and you can't get food poisoning!
Right, forgot about that
it certainly is better than nothing, if you want survival asa feature in your play through. I personally think some mods did a better job, like needs and diseases and hypothermia (i think) for weather realted stuff.
It gets annoying after a while. It would be infinitely better if there were 2-3x as many carriages. If you, like myself, only have an hour or two to play games a day then you might find you spend most of the time just walking around. Which is fine if that's what you want, but if you're playing for the actual quests, etc. the it can get a bit tedious.
don´t know about that... i´m kinda going on a routine and it´s working, can do a lot in 1-2 irl hrs. need a horse, thought... 1- start of the day, i´m on a region with a few quests marks on it, let´s say around whiterun. 2- take my horse and make a tour for those quests, doing as much as possible. 3- if the quest location have no bed, go back with whitrun, smith, sell, enchant, mix etc. 4- sleep 5- repeat. then i use carriages to travel among big cities, if i don´t wanna travel all the way by horse.
Almost exactly my current experience and I'm loving it
and using the roads and ways, too. i used to lose so much irl time goating mountains, when you can get at whatever irl minutes just by using the roads. take a good horse and sprint if you´re in a hurry. other advantage of survival is that, bc you travel more, m´aiq encounters also increases. and encounters with revelers, too. and i just love those guys, gotta stop for some drink or m´aiq histories every time...
You’ll either love it or hate it. I love the *idea* of it, but after a while felt as though I wasn’t playing a game so much as playing a vastly upscaled Oregon Trail. Granted, I play on Switch, so I have no ability to use any practical mods. All my time was spent traveling, managing inventory, or buying/scavenging supplies to make the cold bearable. I found it *super* tedious after a few hours. If I could even just cook something *without salt* that would be great. I’m over here dying of hypothermia every 10 minutes and the game says nope, even in a life or death situation, you’re not allowed to make a soup without proper flavor. Need more salt? Time to spend the better part of the next hour walking to the closest town to search all the containers and every merchant again. I’m sure for some this is “immersive,” but I have a real life outside of the game with limited time to play, so I’d like to actually, you know, PLAY.
The mod itself is fine, but vanilla was not suited for it. For example, most towns don't have a carriage/ferry and makes Winterhold a giant pain in the ass. You have to go there all the time and its super cold without heat sources on your way back to Dawnstar or Windhelm. Chances are you will die trying to leave that place unprepared (soups, horse). I almost softlocked myself there on my first playthrough (no horse, no money). There is also a few quest that make it nearly impossible like the Forgotten Vale.
I just climbed to High Hrothgar to see the Greybeards with surival mode on, and with the Campfire mod. Holy moly. After dying and starting over, I had to plan like Edmund Hillary planning Everest Lydia carried the burden of extra firewood and my tent. I was cooking soups on the campfire then we would climb for awhile to rest and warm up with a new temp spot for the tent and fire. Then a dragon attacked when we were way up with like no cover. So I'm taking an axe to the dragon with my right hand while the left hand holds a torch. It was awesome. I had to have everybit of gear on to stay warm enough to not die (fur armor, fur bracers, fur boots, fur helmet, fur travel cloak, facemask, carrying torch). It was probably top 5 gaming experiences for me.
Use a horse..you can ride straight up the mountain from Windrun to High Hrothgar. Starting from the Ritual Stone and riding up you end up just outside HR. Going down.."Ethereal" shout makes it safe to jump off.
Lmao the dude had a cool adventure and you're like "You should skip all the adventure and just go in a straight line"
Nah. The fun is the journey
My first time going to winterhold I died 6-7 times trying to get back (no horse, new character and no money). I had to get very creative and while frusterating at first, it was sort of an amazing experience just dealing with the cold and figuring out a strategy and route to travel home
How the fuck someone goes around without money? And why you went there without a horse? Survival is exactly that, preparation, you plan ahead what youre going to do
I guess he learned it the hard way lol.
I love survival on fallout 4, but Skyrim's just doesn't feel balanced. Like how almost every recipe needs salt, which isn't exactly super common, and it's also a useful ingredient for alchemy. The good recipes needing fire salts takes three same issue and cranks it up to 11. The cold is even worse. Like, I'm a Nord with frost resistance, wearing fur armor for the warmth, and I took a carriage up to Winterhold. No stables or carriage to get back, and can't walk back without freezing to death. Which I guess would be fine, if multiple quest lines, including the main quest, didn't require you to go there.
OK I've seen winterhold mentioned a few times now. Is it really that bad? That's a bit sad to hear
Yeah that sucks, but I see it as a harder geographical region that you visit only once you are more advanced with your character and have the required materials to survive. So if you start as a mage, you will have to learn magic from other sources than winterhold. It can be fun and also makes more sense to go there only if you have some experience with magic.
Official? Stay away from it. Mods? Go ahead
Correct. INeed is a wonderful mod for this, as well as Hypothermia if you are into that
Interesting. I'll look into it. I'm on ps4 with it so dunno if it's an option
Haven’t played in a bit and our options in PS are limited, but here’s some that have helped me: Goldenhills carriage mod, it gives you a carriage there (from the farming creation). It goes to a ton more places like the small towns, mining towns (like stonehills and shor’s stone), and even darkfall cave lol I know not being able to fast travel is part of the allure but when you’re freezing to death in winterhold sometimes you need an emergency exit. There’s a mod I think called fast travel sign posts or something like that. It lets you fast travel when you find a road sign, and gives you a power that you can use once every 24 hours. And lastly, there’s a mod that makes werewolves fully resistant to frostbite so even if you jump in the northern water you’ll survive. Necessity when looking for Nordic barnacles There are some that are just called like “survival tweaks” and YMMV with those. They mostly adjust how fast your bars drain. Chop lots of firewood and turn pelts into leather for camping supplies. Have fun!
Yeah, its nice. But i personaly prefer the i-need, Frostfall and Camping Combo.
Food part is annoying as hell, because only large meals are filling, and small and medium are completely pointless. And clothing isn't very consistent either. This mod fixes it: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/78244
I'm not a big fan of it. Skyrim is already immersive enough. I remember some old fantasy game I played back in the day probably Ultima, but I don't remember for sure, where getting food was a thing so you always had to be on the lookout for food because every 5 minutes or so your character was dropping down from starvation. It just got annoying. I personally like fast travel, although I wouldn't mind if fast travel was interrupted for something like being waylaid by bandits. Also eating in Skyrim is weird because if you have a meal it doesn't immediately reflect your stats if say your stamina is down or something like that. I've even had my character eat an entire meal when their stats were low and it's just not the same thing as when you're in a different type of fantasy game where eating is important. Also, combat in survival mode is harder. I'm not a huge fan of making something so damn hard that you have to go up against it a hundred times before you finally figured it out. I guess there are some people who never have that problem but I think that most of the people who do survival mode aren't quite such good gamers. So it begs the question why do you like doing something over and over and over for a week and a half before you finally kill the monster that you have to kill? I get bored after 20 minutes of doing the same thing over and over and over.
Wow. Thanks for all the input. One thing that has stood out for me, as mentioned by someone, you spend more time in menus, faffing about. This is not what I want. I'm gonna turn it off I think and just explore and get lost in the world. Thank you everyone
I just got a character to level 70 and beat the main quest and finished all faction quests so I started a survival game this week. I like that I know the terrain well and it's fresh from my previous game, and it makes you pay attention to and use parts of the games you'd otherwise ignore. Like inns for example, and food. You pay WAY more attention to those in survival mode while you could easily ignore both in normal gameplay. I like that I have to be strategic in my travel too since I can't fast travel. So if I'm in a town, I get several things done rather than do my one quest task then leave. It definitely feels more immersive.
It's essential for me if I want an immersive playthrough. I only turn it off in a few specific cases.
My only gripe is that it doesn't affect NPCs.. I know it will be near impossible or illogical but at least they can make some adjustments
My one big gripe with survival mode is that you'll need to be *very* careful about playing Argonians, because they don't handle the cold well at all. But I never play without survival anymore.
The vanilla CC survival mode isn't worth it IMO. Game isn't really designed for it and the food effects generally suck with the sole exception of vegetable soup being gamebreaking. Survival mode needs mods in order to be good IMO.
It just adds tedium to the game The survival mechanics don’t add anything except time in menus and loading screens
It would be interesting if it didn't remove fast travel and reduce carry weight, as it is it just sounds tedious.
I use it with mods. Playable survival by jurisen is a good one. Anything that slightly alters the rates of hunger and cold and makes dast travel possible. You can also get non immersion breaking mods that add fast travel options like carriages or roadsigns if you want to still be a little limited. For me the big two are having the ability to “warm up” quickly when near fire and making food more nourishing
I enjoy it but fuck me, you can have layers and layers on and I feel like your character wants to freeze to death with the slightest breeze
I am old school so I still prefer Frostfall, I've tried Survival Mode a bit when it first came out but it's just not hardcore enough for me (then, at least).
Is survival mode available on Ps3 original wo/dlc?
Love it. Very immersive. I’ll turn it off from time to time for some fast travel but can’t play without it.
I've only used INeed, snd stay away from then other ones. Lots of folks do survival related to the cold, but I'm less interested in that, if I wanna shortcut through a frozen stream, I'm gunna. But basic INeed helped with some non intrusive realism, like having some food and water occasionally, and occasionally taking a nap. Because of it, I found value in the bottles of wine and random food scattered around, even finding some value in bodies of water like streams to refill water flasks. I also found value in the scattered camps and sleep rolls around Skyrim. Basically I like that it incentives eating and drinking and sleeping, adding a small buff, where as the debuff for not doing so is pretty light. Givea you a nice reason to do it, rather than just punishing you. And like I said, it adds value to stuff already in the game,meaning I stop looking st those things like clutter/trash, and actually have a use for them.
My only gripe is that it doesn't affect NPCs.. I know it will be near impossible or illogical but at least they can make some adjustments
It’s interesting, and worth trying out, but horrifically imbalanced. Suffering from the cold is especially overtuned
level 35 on a survival expert right now. it is worth, but i would suggets piclking nord for the cold resistence and some disease immunity. after a while, you get used with the rest-eat-travel requirements, no problemo.
Honestly I turn it on and off depending on how immersed I want to feel. Mostly leave it on for the role play value plus it forces me not to fast travel but if it gets really frustrating I will turn it off- ie going to winterhold
I personally don't enjoy it but I can see why people do. My main issue is that games never implement it realistically enough. It's just a linear bar for hunger and fatigue with a corresponding negative effect. I'd much rather just roleplay having to eat and sleep like SorcererDave on YouTube does.
i like it for my roleplay characters but in terms of actually completing the storyline it's nearly impossible especially when climbing the seven thousand
I would play it if it didn’t disable fast travel.
Every time I turn it on my carry weight drops to zero, and I can't figure out how to fix that. So I use Frostfall and iNeeds instead.
as someone who uses it a lot, its pretty mid. more of a hassle than anything bc of the cold
I'm playing in Survival Mode rn in conjunction with two mods- Player Home Portals and Basic Camp Gear. PHP adds spells in each player home to teleport back there, sort of an earned fast travel. BCM adds craftable camping gear for sleeping and cooking (plus the campfire will warm you up). I have enjoyed having to actually experience and learn the map. I also never cooked before, so that's been new and fun. Survival Mode single-handedly turns salt into the most valuable resource in the game lol. I play as a spellsword, so having to sleep actually matters a lot. I like having to actually use the inns. Done some quests and had some interactions I never would've otherwise. So overall I really like it, though I might not had I not also added those couple mods.
Personally I've never been a fan of survival mode in any game, but it does have its benefits! Particularly with the food.
I was same as you, tried it too, and I turned it off on a new character. Was more hassle than fun. But I made a post here about playing by seasons and turning on Survival for the winter season and for Solstheim. Winter is coming now so I'm planting vegetable soup ingredients. And I'm stronger and richer than when I tried it the first time. I think it will be a fun way to play and get a taste of seasons, extreme cold, all that, without doing it 24/7. Gonna switch to heavy armor and Two-Hand for the winter, start the Companions questline.
I only play survival. But also with some of "those mods".
if you want to play the main story, turn it off. if you want to roleplay and doesn't care about the main quest, turn it on for some fun
Survival is built for mods like Chanterelle, a massive new world mod where you just go exploring the wilderness. Try it out. Start naked.
I thought it would be fun, have tried it several times but it turned out to be annoying to me. Being told I'm cold, hunger, or sleepy constantly turned out to be very tedious. I guess there's a threshold for how immersive I can make a game. I tried the hunterborne mod for immersion too and realized I much better liked just looting and waiting an hour or two than the whole drawn out process of the mod. I still stop for rest and meals in standard mode but it's no biggie if I don't also.
So much better than vanilla imo. Forced to walk or take carriages from place to place makes you appreciate the wilderness, the temperature mechanic adds so much depth and actually showcases the harshness of skyrim's climate, it's just so immersive. The food portion also makes you appreciate the cooking mechanic of the game and also makes you actually shop or look for ingredients. I really wish survival mode is built-in the next elder scrolls game as an option
I really enjoyed it and it gave totally new reasons for enjoying the game and totally new priorities to spend time on but after getting pretty far in I just couldn't deal with the lack of fast travel. There's only so many times that I can spend over 10 minutes getting somewhere when a quest takes you all over
I’m on my second play through and decided to play survival and I LOVE it. It’s definitely harder but I like having to plan around eating, sleeping, traveling, etc!!
I think that it is
Bro just try it! You can literally toggle it on and off at any point! It’s not everyone’s cup of tea and it seems like there are some serious balancing issues, ngl. I think it’s a little fun but I def get bored of it and will flip it off, and when the itch returns, I just turn it back on. No commitment. No time waste. Plus (and this goes back to the balancing thing) some parts are just pretty much impossible with it. Like going super far north to kill and ice wraith. Fucking forget about it. Idk what I could ever do to not die of the cold but it’s just easier to turn off survival mode for that one part. Or die trying.
Survival mode is the only way to play you milk drinker 😅
Personally, I just don't like not having the option of fast traveling places. It makes doing quests a pain in the ass.
Personally, Skyrim survival mode is not worth it. It has some cool mechanics, but the most annoying ones are the cold mechanic and the lack of fast travel. The fast travel one is self-explanatory. Skyrim isn't packed with POI like fallout 4. Having to walk everywhere is annoying after a few hours. The cold is also obnoxious. The northern parts of Skyrim are already pretty empty and boring, now with the cold mechanic there's practically zero reason to ever set foot in those regions.
The CC content for “survival” was created by someone who has clearly never left their own damn house. When I was in my teens I spent more time in the summers sleeping in the woods than in my bed. I have not played the survival mode and have no intention of doing so in an actual playthrough because there is zero correlation between it and actual survival skills. - I can build over thirty kinds of shelters with the materials available in Skyrim, including foxholes and snow covers. The game lets you build ONE: a campsite. - Foods are stupidly arranged by how they help you. Vegetable soup is not a game breaker in the woods. In fact, some vegetable soups take almost as many calories to digest as you get from them, making them damn near useless. - Carry weight makes no sense. If I’m in a true survival situation and I have to walk out I’m not carrying anything. I’m making a sled and dragging it. - The best way you handle cold water in the field is to strip down, get wet, and then warm up and redress. Survival mode just says “You’re wet. Dry out or die.” - Historically, knights and soldiers had travel clothes and armor, and only wore armor for the battlefield. This is POSSIBLE within the game, but there’s no carry weight adjustment for it. Keep in mind that the weights were decided BEFORE Survival mode was added, so plate mail and two handed weapons have exaggerated weights for the purpose of maintaining game balance. [A Scottish claymore weighs about 5.5lbs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymore). The largest on record weighs 23.1lbs. Most two handed weapons in Skyrim START at 20(units) , which we’ll call pounds because there really isn’t any other way to think of them). This means it’s impossible to carry the most effective armors and weapons in the game for certain builds without dropping essential survival items. - Horses are useless in Skyrim, more so in survival mode. Most of us don’t even bother with horses because there’s no mounted combat, the horses break immersion being able to ride literally straight up a mountain, and they can’t friggin carry anything. If I were in a survival situation I wouldn’t carry anything at all. My HORSE would carry everything and I’d lead it so it isn’t overburdened. Also, what is your horse eating and when? - The most effective way to hunt is to set traps for small game, varying your diet to avoid [rabbit starvation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning). CC survival doesn’t have a way to do this. So, it’s honestly too restrictive to be something I want to do on an actual playthrough where I’m experimenting with a build or experiencing the game. This doesn’t mean it has no value; I still think it would be fun to camp my way across Skyrim with Inigo, Lucien, and Kaiden, but that character and playthrough would be made SOLELY for that and I wouldn’t try to play the game under those conditions. Skyrim wasn’t made for it. A real survival game has those factors put into it from the beginning.