I think Survival mode is annoying.

[Henry]

Here's the thing, I bought Skyrim for the first time and went with survival mode, am a seasoned gamer. Survival mode in practice is a set of annoyances that distract you from adventuring. I like the cold mechanic and am ok with the reduced carry weight, it works relatively well with backpacks. Cooking up food for supplies is fun too.

However, what isn't fun is to have to open the menu and "eat" every couple of minutes and have to go find a place to sleep if you haven't got a sleeping bag when you're half way through a dungeon. The thing is, the day cycle is too short in real time so survival mode will bother you with eat and sleep way to often to be fun, thus turning into a huge annoyance, rather than a challenge. The inability to monitor your hunger and sleepyness status throughout the day. If days were longer or realtime long in survival mode, then yeah, that would be fun.

[ĿIFE oƒ ƤIE]

Install a mod to reduce the Timescale, can set it to 1 minute real life is 1 minute in game... but really don't do that, your game will get screwed. Default Timescale is 20, setting it to 12 works great.

As for hunger etc, yeh the survival mode for Skyrim is rubbish, get a mod from the Nexus instead. Hunger is basically that, you start starving and you eat food to satiate that hunger, how would you change that?

[Henry]

Originally posted by ĿIFE oƒ ƤIE:

Install a mod to reduce the Timescale, can set it to 1 minute real life is 1 minute in game... but really don't do that, your game will get screwed. Default Timescale is 20, setting it to 12 works great.

As for hunger etc, yeh the survival mode for Skyrim is rubbish, get a mod from the Nexus instead. Hunger is basically that, you start starving and you eat food to satiate that hunger, how would you change that?

The problem is that you get hungry far too quickly because the ingame clock runs much quicker than real life. I'd change the amount of time that passes before you get hungry by changing ingame time to last longer. having to eat something what feels like every 5 minutes is too annoying. Plus the food/drink costs more than weapons sometimes. If I understood your question of how to change that correctly.

[Rez Elwin]

You don't need a mod to reduce timescale, you can do that with the console. Just don't go lower than 6, I use 7 in my games.
To change it use

Set Timescale 7

Then you have a lot more time in the day, though I don't play survival so I don't know if that will actually affect your hunger rate.

[John]

Survival is just a pain the ass in this game.
-Horses don't work correctly without mods
-No good methods of travel, i mean you have a few carts, that's it. Again mods are needed
-Eating, like you said, every few minutes

I wouldn't really call it survival, just annoying, a chore. If i wanna play a survival game, i'll play a game which actually functions as a survival game, not this.

[th]

I personally think that Survival should be a little annoying. That's the whole point of it. A convenient inconvenience is an oxymoron, don't you think?

But timescale change is a good idea. You just need to change it to be slower and after that see whether you like it more or not.

[ĿIFE oƒ ƤIE]

I like survival mode because it presents extra challenge (I did change the timescale) and immersive gameplay. It is supposed to be a struggle in some ways, as long as its not a petty tacked on annoyance.

[th]

Originally posted by John:

-Horses don't work correctly without mods

What do you mean? They work the same as with Survival toggled off.

Originally posted by John:

-No good methods of travel, i mean you have a few carts, that's it. Again mods are needed

I don't get it. Do you want more "hardcoredness" or not? You too are telling oxymoronic things.

Originally posted by John:

If i wanna play a survival game, i'll play a game which actually functions as a survival game, not this.

Like what?

[ĿIFE oƒ ƤIE]

Originally posted by th:

Originally posted by John:

-Horses don't work correctly without mods

What do you mean? They work the same as with Survival toggled off.

Originally posted by John:

-No good methods of travel, i mean you have a few carts, that's it. Again mods are needed

I don't get it. Do you want more "hardcoredness" or not? You too are telling oxymoronic things.

Originally posted by John:

If i wanna play a survival game, i'll play a game which actually functions as a survival game, not this.

Like what?

- Horses in general are known to be... finicky.. and often bugged (don't run into a wall while mounted... you won't survive).
- He likely means he wants more ways... to travel? I mean you have fast travel (survival mode disables this), carts, horses, and dragon riding. Is he waiting for the thalmor express-rail to be built?
- Indeed, like what?

[SpeedFreak1972]

Personally I use the mod Sunhelm it does the same as survival and you can totally configure it in a mcm also if I start a new game it doesn't even mentions if I want to enable Survival .... sooo much better that Bethesda half baked crap.

[Senor Cinco]

Survival is challenging until mid level. I say 'challenging' but in all honesty, it's more tedious, than anything. Once you have enough supplies to circumvent the negative effects, it gradually becomes a non issue.


Horses are a must for me, in Survival. That demands the use of the Convenient Horses mod. Vanilla horses are all but useless. They have 3 main flaws.
- You can travel as fast, if not faster in some cases, than a horse
- Horses have no means of storage
- Horses will charge into combat if not being ridden
- Mounted combat gets a dishonorable mention, as it's lackluster and incomplete

... and Horse Whistle? Who doesn't want that?

[th]

Originally posted by Señor Cinco:

... and Horse Whistle? Who doesn't want that?

There are some summonable horses.

[SpeedFreak1972]

Well that also depends on how you play as 1 of those is locked in a questline for not so good people (DB)

[Senor Cinco]

Originally posted by th:

Originally posted by Señor Cinco:

... and Horse Whistle? Who doesn't want that?

There are some summonable horses.

True. Alas, that does nothing for controlling the other 98% of horses. The whistle is implemented as part of the CH mod.

I am compelled to press the point that vanilla Horses are an incomplete and failed feature.

[Senor Cinco]

In general... Eating, sleeping and what have you, isn't something I completely rule out. Your character does get boons from being rested and fed. It grants a mechanical incentive for the player. Aside, from simply being a tedious time-tick mechanism that adds nothing but, the element of, the idea of having to do it.

Still... it becomes part of the natural 'living' of the character, for me. If they are in cold environments, then I feel there should be detrimental effects to contend with. Your character is interacting with the game's environment and it adds a layer of imer... imures... imutter... Hell, I can't even say it, anymore.

[Talithmara]

Honestly, I hate all four extras added with the Anniversary Edition Update:


- Survival Mode is excessively obtrusive if enabled and lingers if disabled (you need to change cells before it re-enables Fast Travel, for example.) The only saving grace is that it needs to be enabled. Which makes it the best of the four; you never need to interact with it outside of the prompt to not enable it every new character. If this was gone it'd be perfectly harmless.

- Saints and Seducers lead to a delicate tip-toe around parts of the map where they are, because in my experience, interacting with them populates the roads with them, and they will just senselessly murder NPCs, some of which may be tied to quests and whatnot. I remember I once fast travelled to Dragon Bridge, and loaded in to watching the innkeeper being struck down for no reason. I wish I could just turn it off, but NOPE, that would make sense. Thanks, Bethesda, for objectively making your broken mess of a game even WORSE!

- Fishing is just annoying since it clutters merchant inventories with maps and fishing stuff. It's harmless and probably works nicely alongside Survival Mode, but it's annoying. This may seem like a nitpick. That's because it admittedly is. But as someone who's been playing on and off since launch of the base game, seeing items I don't recognize just makes me go "Where did this come from? What mod is over-extending and doing things I didn't personally okay?" And that's a perfectly reasonable reaction considering how many mods needlessly change things. I once downloaded a mod that added a new hat, and it changed my quiver placement to line up with how THEY had the quiver, not making sense with my animations. This makes me picky about my mods and I hate having stuff added without my consent.

- Curios? Yeah, see what I said about fishing. Enough said.


I wish I could like them all. But I just can't. They're forced upon us, and unable to be disabled. Even the Unofficial Patch now includes them as Masters, so we'd risk breaking that if we made mods to disable them. Bleh.