Groceries in Skyrim

[Alliecienti]

Have you ever noticed or rather wondered where some of the groceries in Skyrim come from?

I see farms with wheat, potatoes, leaks and gourds but have NEVER found a single apple tree with either red or green apples on it. I have found plenty of bee hives to get honeycomb (honey both wild and farmed) from too. However,I have never seen a single farm growing carrots, tomatoes, garlic, elves ear or frost mirriam. Yet you find these foodstuffs ALL OVER the place. There seems to be plaenty of cows and goats but milk and butter seem to be hard to find on the other hand. You find loads of cheese tho.

It's just one of those oddities in Skyrim I guess. No one seems to eat anything other than bread anyways .... well except for that one guy who takes a taste of some potage le magnifique but that doesn't turn out so well for him.

[Mirri]

Imports and traders. Hence, their presence in barrels.

[CarolusMagnus]

Apparently, if you build a kitchen and have an animal pen with a cow in it in the same house, once in a while you'll have a jug of milk there. I can't confirm it personally tho, haven't tried waiting for it to happen.

I think there's also a butter churn in the kitchen.

For cheese, I dunno.

Basically, try looking around the Hearthfire homes. You might find something out.

Originally posted by Mirri:

Imports and traders. Hence, their presence in barrels.

That makes sense, but they don't seem to be preserved. I don't think apples can last that long.

[Alliecienti]

Tomatoes for one won't last very long without being preserved or canned so they are probably not an import item but no one seems to grow them locally. The ones you find are always ripe and ready to eat.

Why when you harvest a chicken, do you only get one piece of breast meat? You easily get 8 to 10 good pieces out any chicken. 2 wings, 2 thighs, 2 legs, breast (canbe divided into 2) and back (can be divided into 2) This is normal everyday portioning of a chicken. But since no NPC eats chicken, I guess they think only the player wants 1 piece???

I've always had the opinion that Skyrims food system was a bit lacking. All anyone ever eats is bread. How come you don't see anyone munching on a leg of roasted goat or even eating some stew or soup (except for that one guy I mentioned in the starting post)?

Eating does have benificial effects but nothing too dramatic in the game. It seems more like an afterthought addition to the game than something that should be a requirement. I have gone entire playthrus and never eaten a single thing. (according to the log that keeps track of food eaten) I should have starved to death! Why even bother to track it if it doesn't matter?

I've seen a mod that adds bathing as a required thing and you develop health issues when you go too long without a bath. Great immursion there. What about eating? I haven't seen a mod for that one yet. Eating very little or rather not eating at all would for more detrimental to your performance than not bathing I would think. Anyone seen a mod for making you NEED to eat? The devs at Big B sure didn't think it was important enough to add to the game.

[mpd1958]

The mods iNEED and/or Realistic Needs and Diseases makes it to where you have to eat, drink and sleep in the game or your health is effected. Adds a great deal of immersion. You can also use Frostfall: Hypothermia, Hunterborn and Campfire to round it out. Combined they make it hard to just survive, let alone defeat bandits, dragons and such.

[Longhaul]

Originally posted by mpd1958:

The mods iNEED and/or Realistic Needs and Diseases makes it to where you have to eat, drink and sleep in the game or your health is effected. Adds a great deal of immersion. You can also use Frostfall: Hypothermia, Hunterborn and Campfire to round it out. Combined they make it hard to just survive, let alone defeat bandits, dragons and such.

I run with iNEED with the Deadly Disease options, Hunterborn and Camping Kit of the Northern Ranger.... really fun with my pure Ranger/Hunter character. That character has almost 100 hours and has not even touched the main quest.

[Alliecienti]

Originally posted by Daynox:

Originally posted by mpd1958:

The mods iNEED and/or Realistic Needs and Diseases makes it to where you have to eat, drink and sleep in the game or your health is effected. Adds a great deal of immersion. You can also use Frostfall: Hypothermia, Hunterborn and Campfire to round it out. Combined they make it hard to just survive, let alone defeat bandits, dragons and such.

I run with iNEED with the Deadly Disease options, Hunterborn and Camping Kit of the Northern Ranger.... really fun with my pure Ranger/Hunter character. That character has almost 100 hours and has not even touched the main quest.

Thanks for the suggested mods. I will definitely give them a look.

I am approaching the 5000 hours played mark and have been slowly turning toward trying to build a completely immursive Skyrim experience. There's that and having my more adult aspects that I've thrown in there too make the whole game a much more rounded experience. It all goes to my goal of making it how you might really play out the game rather than just following questlines. There are so many things you can do with the game by adding mods that specificly target what you want to see, do and interact with as you play. Thats the best thing about Skyrim. Big B gave us the base game platform but the modders have turned it into a whole new world.

[mpd1958]

100% correct!!!!!

[Alliecienti]

Those are all Nexus mods, right?? Am going to try and pull them up now.

[mpd1958]

Originally posted by Alliecienti:

Those are all Nexus mods, right?? Am going to try and pull them up now.

You should find all of them on Nexus!

[Alliecienti]

Ok THNAKS AGAIN! I read thru the mods and made sure I had all the requirements/. I'll be adding Realistic Needs and Diseases, Hunterborn and Camping Kit fo the Northern Ranger when I start my next play thru. I'm bit bit far along with my current one to drasticly change things up. I can already forsee some new and interesting play coming up when I add them.

That Camping kit will definitely help me wean off of aquiring so many homes all over the country that I rarely visit once aquired. And since I will be needing to stop, eat and sleep it will definitely be handy to be able set up camp and take care of needs rather than trying to stagger back to town or the nearest owned home.

Seriously... in the unmodded version of the game you NEVER have to sleep or eat at all. These additions will definitely make it more like a real trek while adventuring in Skyrim.

[loriaw]

Some other mods you might want to look at are CACO (Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul), More plants all extras (lets you plant just about everything including tomatoes, garlic, frost mirriam, and elves ears ~ plus a CACO patch so you can plant some of the new foods and plants that adds), and also Hearthfire Extended. Even if you don't build a HF home, it does make all of the apiaries and butter churns in Skyrim working, as well as allows you to milk most cows.

There are also some egg/nest mods that show smaller/more eggs in every nest, allow you to harvest more eggs, and daily eggs. You're not the only one that thought the food system lacked some things.

Sate that Appetite, Sliced Bread, etc. are also mods that add foods and most of these have patches to work with iNeed and the disease mods.

[Zwart]

Reading your wishes for a more expansive food system I also highly recommend CACO[www.nexusmods.com] like loriaw said in the post above, the cooking is quite deep. It also comes with an optional lightweight needs system, draining your attributes when you don't eat and sleep enough. It is fully compatible with Hunterborn[www.nexusmods.com] too, making use of the extra food and ingredient items you can harvest from creatures and even NPCs. The animal fat from Hunterborn can be crafted into lantern oil for Wearable Lanterns[www.nexusmods.com], which in turn can be used as tinder for Campfire[www.nexusmods.com], the foundation mod for Frostfall[www.nexusmods.com] which I recommend you to use instead of that Camping Kit mod. Also when you install CACO you might as well go for CCOR[www.nexusmods.com], WAFR[www.nexusmods.com], CCF[www.nexusmods.com] and SPO[www.nexusmods.com] while you're at it, a great collection of fixes and crafting overhaul from the same creators.

Note that if you plan on using them all not every patch is clearly mentioned on those main pages, some are made by community effort but can mostly be found on Nexus too though. Just put the name (or abbreviation) of the mod you install into the searchbar and those patches will turn up. I'm willing to help you set it up though, I have all of those mods installed in my current setup except for Frostfall.

[Johnny Casey]

I guess it's because Skyrim is very cold place so that only few crops can grow? I mean, back in Oblivion, you can see pumpkins, grapes, watermelons and all that.

[Siddha]

There should be apple trees...
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/25793

[Alliecienti]

Thnaks for all of the inputs and recomendations on mods. I knew they had to be out there since this has been lacking since Skyrim launched.

And to Johnny Casey...the southern parts of Skyrim are fairly temperate (Falkreath and the Rift) and would allow a vast number of additional crops to be grown. Tomatoes, apples, grapes, melons, garlic, corn and such will all grow pretty much wherever you can grow wheat, leeks, cabbage and potatoes.They just aren't there since the devs didn't put that stuff into the base game. So modders had to take the point and add the missing things.

Lots of wine in Skyrim...no vineyards.. I guess every bottle is imported stuff since I doubt jazbay grapes would make a good wine. Haven't seen any pears, walnuts, pecans, peanuts, cherries or plums either tho...... Wouldn't you just love to walk into your favorite tavern just in time to see two burly Nords , half drunk and betting which can crack the most walnuts on his own forehead before passing out??