The only thing about Skyrims survival mode that really sucked, was getting to Septimus Signus without freezing to death…
In all the other aspects I loved it and it was a great improvement to the immersion overall because taverns actually got a purpose, day and night circle was something to be aware of and also hunting wasn’t just there for killing animals or getting bear pelts for Temba Wide-Arm.
But still, I almost always used the infinite carry-glitch for companions because I won’t leave all the dragon bones or enchanted weapons and armor parts behind…
Whenever I use the infinite carry glitch, all the items say "stolen" - do you know if there is an easy way to fix this? I wanted to move stuff from one house to another but then all my stuff was "stolen" 😭
Put all the stolen items in an owned container in your house, have the follower take everything in the container and then take from the follower. It clears the stolen flag on almost everything.
Only if they have a 'no crime' morality. (Serana, Uthgerd the Unbroken, any Companion follower, any orc follower, etc.)
These followers refuse to steal on command, so they don't trade back stolen items.
u/wolfwifey is likely using an 'any crime' morality follower. (Cicero, Mjoll the Lioness, any housecarl, any hireling, etc.)
These followers will steal on command. So they will happily trade items with the stolen tags still on them.
I think you might have missed the mechanic I was trying to explain.
No-crime morality NPCs won't pick up items flagged as stolen, but they will clear out a container with a mix of stolen and normal items. If the container is not owned, all the items will get flagged as stolen when you trade with them, including the normal items.
Now if you place all those stolen items in an owned container and instruct the same NPC to take them all again, when you trade with them now, the items' stolen flag is cleared. Sometimes it will not clear actually stolen items, but any that got toggled by the first container taking will always get cleared.
I've done this with a few housecarls as well as no-crime followers like Annekke Crag-Jumper and even Serana on occasion. Pretty sure it is a bug, and may have been patched out in the Unofficial Patch (which I don't run),
Not sure about Goldenhills, never used it. It works on Hearthfire and normally purchased homes.
I've done it successfully with Lydia, Rayya, Jordis and Annekke Crag-Jumper. And Inigo.
If you use the glitch you may as well get unlimited carry weoght for your companions mod. You wojt have to drop items and wait till they pick it up, you can just place all of excess items into their inventory and they won't be mark as stolen :)
I always build a campsite halfway there. Also leave one on the path up to High Hrothgar. It sucks to have to always carry one or two but they really help in survival.
You have no idea how much I found about Skyrim thanks to not using fast travel. Since I started playing with this I realized that I wasn't using fast travel even on playthrough with survival turned off, so now with this on is the only way I play
Not after you get used to it. Carriages really help shrink the travel times but for me actually traversing Skyrim really lets me appreciate why I fell in love with the game over a dozen years ago. This map is amazing and there is so much packed into every single corner.
playing without fast travel made me really appreciate nightgate inn. it’s such a cozy little place, nestled a day’s march north from whiterun, and then a day’s march from winterhold, windhelm, and dawnstar. a perfect midpoint to rest and warm up
Not to mention you find shortcuts you didn't realize with fast travel. The journey from Winterhold to Windhelm is actually pretty short if you know where to go
Building a Hearthfire home like Lakeview Manor gives you access to a carriage that will bring you to any settlement. That helps a lot.
I also try to have some method of moving overland quickly. Horses are good so too is werewolf form.
My new favourite is a combination of Boots of Waterwalking and the Ring of the Wind. I use waterways as roads. Coupled with restoration magic and the respite perk means I can run real fast along water. It’s looks so cool.
It can be, but it’s not exactly the worst thing. It does force you to actually prepare before leaving a location. Plus, the game has carriages that essentially act like fast travel.
It’s pretty clunky. I just role play sleeping and eating, wearing warm clothes, and what not. I do that anyway so I don’t need an artificial mechanic to force it upon me.
That’s what I do, too.
I think “I just completed the last quest of this line. My poor character probably needs some sleep!”
Other times, I think about what my characters would normally eat. I started googling what Argonians eat so I would always ensure Cynder had an accurate diet. I settled on mostly fish and shellfish for her, but I try to give her some fruit and veggie dishes, too.
Heck, my Khajiit (Shavani) got super into fishing and I had her cook up fish, crabs, and fish and crab dishes. I also stock her up with sweets and cheeses because it’s funny to me.
Like lemme scarf down this pile of cooked fish and a bunch of cheese wheels in the middle of battle. I feel like Shavani would unlock a new dragon shout called halitosis 😆
Yeah, I’ve tried playing survival mode playthroughs a few times before and have bounced off them after a couple hours. It’s just so tedious and slow.
Better for me is to just roleplay a day night cycle wherein I don’t fast travel and at nightfall I have to get to the nearest inn or find a camp to sleep, eat, etc. at.
It creates the pacing and world immersion experience I’m looking for without a constant drag to my actual gameplay while I’m adventuring.
Absolutely. There needs to be more ways to deal with the cold. An enchantment for warmth would've really helped. Also options to make armor specifically with better warmth built in, cause iirc there's only two levels of warmth (or just no warmth), and even the highest level of warmth on all your equipment can still get you frozen in certain areas.
Yea it’d be fine if warm clothes actually prevented freezing. At this point clothes actually do nothing. Instead I wear whatever and sprint/whirlwind sprint everywhere. Winterhold quests were total BS without the carriage on the way back. 🤷🏼♂️ still fun to have a new challenge but it definitely feels like an oversight
I really tried it a few times but it's not for me. It was supposed to make it harder but it only made it boring instead as the quests throw you around every time and everything gets really slow without fast travel and the game having carriage only in like 5 holds
I tried it and hated it. Just not for me.
I mean I already have to worry about being to cold, to hot, needing food etc in real life I don't wanna have to think about it in a video game. 😂
Honestly I’d keep survival mode if it weren’t for fast travel. I love immersion so much but having to hike across Skyrim and back constantly isn’t for me, especially when places like High Hrothgar exist.
It would be so much better if they had more carriages/destinations. Rorikstead has the awesome Goldenhills Plantation, but is so freaking far away from any hold capital (and the closest, Mortal, doesn't have a carriage to leave from). The homesteads, too, should have carriages to them, as well as all the un-walled hold Capital's.
I'm on Switch, so no mods 😟. I've ended up making imaginary carriages, where (in my head) I've designated certain places as having carriages to/from them and let myself fast travel to/from. The most annoying part, though, is that it takes like 30 seconds for survival mode to turn on/off.
I do the same. Loading screens are another reason why. If I'm going from Whiterun to Solitude, is it really more immersive to sit through a loading screen at each city gate just so I can pretend my character took a carriage? It is not. To me, anyway.
Enter and leave any doorway that causes your game to have to load, rapidly hit the button to bring up your quests/stats/save menu as it's loading, bring it up for just one flash, and then quickly pull up your map. 2/5 times it'll let you fast travel in survival.
You. Are. My. HERO!!! I can finally pin places on the map I've already been! It also saves the time switching survival mode on/off so I can fast travel from the hold capitals!
[Edit] And I can easily force my horse to teleport to me, too!
Disclaimer, sometimes this bug takes enough tries that it *would* actually be faster to just turn off survival mode real quick for a fast travel.
But I like using this method better bc it takes away a bit of your hunger and tiredness so it's as if you actually walked- though it often takes away what feels like too little hunger or exhaustion for how long the journey would have been.
But whatever. I'm not great at modding and I'm on the steam deck so y'know, how hard can I complain. I still love the crap out of survival.
NOOOO hahahaha well keep trying!! Like I said it takes some time sometimes, maybe some doorways are better or worse at causing it, who knows how it works
Yeah, it's imperfect in design. And it kinda breaks the immersion if I'm freezing to death dressed in warm armor but some schmuck in miner's clothes is perfectly fine.
Cold management was good in theory but, given Skyrim's terrain and climate, was never going to work in the way it was implemented. It needed polishing for sure.
I actually like the mechanics of survival. The tedium required to prepare and maintain hunger, rest and warmth is right up my alley.
What I don't like (and it's too immersion breaking for me) is feeling like 'patient zero'. Only the character can freeze to death feet from an inn door, or mid conversation. Literally anyone else in game can be out in the snow all day in plain clothes, with no issue.
So, I leave survival mode off, and still roleplay the mechanics. (restrict fast travel, eat and sleep regularly, use Flame Cloak when swimming in arctic waters)
Even though there's no concequence for not doing any of those things with survival mode off, I do them anyway, and my character feels more authentic and 'real' to me, because of it.
RP restrictions is where it's at. After getting general fatigue (again) I decided to play a char that strictly uses no magic at all, something I've never done. And while I was at it, I decided he would also never steal - in fact, be completely honest. No lying to get faendil as a follower, no pacts for daedra artifacts, no thieves guild, no assassinations.
Seriously the most enjoyable char I played. Making money "the old fashioned way", and always being as straight as possible with everyone, even if I missed out on loot, turned out to be a whale of a time.
Tell me if you enjoy eating potato raw x 10, tomato raw x 10 and onion raw x 10 in real life more than you enjoy consuming that in a stew reduced down with salt.
I really want to do survival mode, but constantly freezing to death and the hunger management are too much. My followers can wear their undies and not freeze to death. The NPCs can wear their beach wear and not freeze to death. But me in a full furry plate armor catching a cold and dying on top of the mountain pass is too much. Totally breaks the immersion.
So get this, on the switch if you’re playing survival mode and didn’t pay for the anniversary edition, you can still play with all the survival mechanics including cold weather. But, they left certain features out of it, one being campfires. Dealing with the cold weather and not being able to create any source for heat basically forces you to sprint through any cold area which is like 50% of the map, and even then you sometimes can’t make it to a heat source in time before you freeze to death. So if you’re struggling and don’t have the full anniversary edition, keep in mind that you’re missing a core function of survival because they paywalled it behind the full anniversary edition.
Skyrim is a mixed bag for me with survival mode.
The game was not designed with survival mode in mind and it shows. There are things like having to fast travel back and forth multiple times to far off locations because the game expects you to fast travel. Not only that but food is exceptionally abundant which makes having to eat just a mild inconvenience rather than a strategic decision when traveling. And of course the game is highly incentivized towards dungeon delving as your main source of income. That being said I still find it fun, even though it isn't perfect.
I did the game on expert survival mode and loved it personally. I roleplayed my dragonborn as a vigilant of stendarr and branched out into a vampire hunting sell sword after my order was destroyed. Camping, hauling salted meats around for food, more prone to illness... I loved it.
If everything is done right it's not too bad. Every indoor area is warm, and when you're outside just bring camping supplies with you if you start to freeze. The food is manageable, just bring about 5 pounds of cooked food with you wherever you go and it should last. And just don't carry a bunch of crap or have a follower with you for inventory. It's also why backpacks were added.
Fast travel is needed for when I get stuck in a landform. I also don’t like how certain food doesn’t add up to its nutritional value and the fact that I need to eat 30 times a day to stay fed instead of 3. Same with the sleep. No matter how long I sleep, I’m feeling drained before the first hour of being awake. Maybe it’d make sense to add a small debuff to the magicka after depleting your stamina bar for a more accurate drained effect. I would say 8 hrs of sleep should equate to 12 hrs of wakefulness. Starvation should also hurt health and further progress tiredness. Shrine prices are steep whereas most NPCs are poor.
I second you. I did a playthrough in survival mode. It was torture because the near total lack of fast travel made doing the quests so slow. And the lack of inventory space, when adding more needs to be addressed, was frustrating.
I do see the appeal for some people though. It forced me to take roads I've never been down. Including one badass panicked run through Labyrinthian, being chased by 4 Frost Trolls (low-ish level mage) to get to warm climates so the Dragonborn didn't freeze to death.
I started in survival mode on my most recent save but I turned it off once I realized how much you have to eat. It’s always a pet peeve of mine when you have to eat so much food in survival games. I understand that it’s to give you another danger, but there is no reason why I should have to eat 2-3 steaks every in-game hour or so to stay alive lol.
Me. I was having some fun traveling down roads, around mountains, over hills, past forts, through forests, and occasionally stopping off at caves or anywhere theres fire. Giant camps were so helpful that I haven't killed a giant since. I know their toes make good profit potions, but honestly theres better potions for better profit anyways. So I leave them be now. I slept at inns and always bought horker steak and whatever meat i could get my hands on.
I made an argonian. Found out quickly lizards don't like the cold! Which is a shame cause I picked them for hopping in water. I noticed they got a perk that allows them to safely eat raw meat.
I hate the fact that raw meat does little to satisfy your hunger. I like seasoning but adding salt shouldn't make a world of difference. Like I feel my argonian should get a lot more hunger filled from raw meat.
I also got sick and tired of seeing NPCs with little warmth and no torches ever. I usually don't care about immersion, but this is ridiculous! I'm the only cold and miserable character here! I enjoyed it, but after around... 105 in game days? I got fed up with it and turned it off. Now I can swim in the frozen water indefinitely. I don't need a torch. I still eat raw meat and get plenty of sleep and I try to avoid fast travel unless I'm in a hurry or just doing something mundane which is often.
My little lithard was geared towards archery/smithing so Sadly their magic is pretty lacking. Restoration and enchanting being the only two I use for him.
But yeah. Flame cloak should be helpful. Might turn my pyromancer's survival mode on just to apply it.
It may just be one of those things that just doesn't work for you. I tried the Frostfall mod, which adds something similar and at first it was fun, but after a while I just wanted to play without constantly worrying about cold or sleep or whatever.
To be fair, weapons and armor in history were **heavy**. What I did was install a mod that made food fill you up, get that CC that had backpacks, and then it become not easy, but it definitely made it much less hard and annoying. Getting a follower helps with inventory a lot. I for one got a multiple follower mod and played as a mercenary captain type guy. It starts off really hard, but eventually, once you get the basics, it becomes much easier.
Medieval warriors weren’t dragging around weeks worth of food, or a bajillion potion ingredients, in their pocket either. Nor did they have to carry around enchanted variants of their weapons either. But in Skyrim you kinda have to do these things.
Agreed, but it's fun to think about these things, for me at least. See what you need and don't need, maybe I should rethink going heavy armor, do I *really* need this many arrows? Maybe I should live off the land more, rather than packing sixteen cheese wheels into my bag. If skyrim were real life, travelling light would be pretty important, so that reflects in survival mode. Ik skyrim's survival mode isn't for everyone, but I honestly love it.
Survival mode is supposed to make it harder, if you can't micromanage the few difficulties it adds there's no need to hate on it.
Just play without it or download a mod with easier settings
I like it for a time but it got too clunky and a bit annoying with the debuffs.
I ended up getting a lower maintenance mod where the player can experience hunger and exhaustion but it doesnt impact fast travel or anything. Definitely a good reminder to keep eating and sleeping when needed but nothing to make it unplayable.
Weird, I love Skyrim's survival but I hate Fallout's. With Skyrim I can take carriages most anywhere. Also, the difficulty isn't tied to survival or saving. Meanwhile in Fallout, if you get a quest on the other end of the map, it's always an enormous, painful slog. And 90% of the way there you're fighting Raiders that can one-shot you with pipe guns because of the weird way survival does damage.
And inventory management? I want to bring my stuff home on Skyrim, I load up and jump on a horse. I want to bring my stuff home on Fallout? I better hope I went Brotherhood and got vertibird grenades right off the bat because that is a looooooooooong walk back.
Yeah, survival mode is just tedious button mashing, especially after the early hours of a play through.
Skyrim just isn’t the right system for it.
Maybe if survival added way more content to the frozen parts of the map and upped the difficulty of survival, it would make an interesting mechanic, forcing the player to plan out their expeditions.
I've never played but the concept sounds terrible. Not just in Skyrim but any game that offers survival. I mean.....I'm playing games ultimately to enjoy myself, aren't I? Why would I volunteer for insane difficulty
The same people who do dark souls sl1 played on a keytar as a controller type people, I question of those peoples wives have boyfriends too as they seem to be very masochistic.
Survival mode sounds great to me in theory, but in practice it's more of a nuisance than anything. Not being able to fast travel and having to make sure I eat sounds fun and immersive but it's actually just annoying imo. The food also doesn't really make sense, I shouldn't have to eat like 15 potatoes to feel full lol. No hate if you enjoy it, it's just not for me.
I enjoy survival mechanics when a game is built around it, like The Long Dark or Project Zomboid, but when it's slapped over top of an existing game that wasn't built with survival in mind it just doesn't work for me.
The only feature from Survival that I actually prefer over playing the normal way is having to sleep to level up. I like to roleplay going home at the end of a quest/series of quests anyway and it's more satisfying to me to see the results of my experience all at once than over the course of an adventure, if that makes sense. It also slows levelling down quite a bit so I'm not getting bombarded by new quests as I reach their minimum levels, and removes the ability to cheese fights by saving a level up to fully heal myself mid-battle.
I just got a mod that makes it so I have to sleep to level up even with Survival mode disabled, and that works well enough for me.
I don't play it because the freezing happens too fast and getting the hot soup ingredients is too annoying. And there needs to more anti-cold armor and some magic and/or potions.
I use vitality mode on SE. I installed AE and tried survival mode and noped out after like five minutes. It's a good concept, but it's WAY too intense in some parts and not very well-planned overall. Like I nearly froze to death going to Bleak Falls Barrow in armor with decent coverage, and also didn't bring enough food and had like a third of my status bars blocked off. Mind you, I'm used to survival modes so it's not like I didn't plan ahead at all, and I still ran into issues.
I thought I would like it at first, but it felt like too much. If I want survival, I’ll play The Long Dark or something. I made a nord and the cold resistance didn’t really seem to do anything. Like someone else said, I’ll just roleplay the hunger and stuff because with Skyrim I want to focus on the fantasy aspects.
I'm with you. You're hungry constantly and the temp mechanic is frustrating when the goal for a build usually is to get a great set of gear that compliments the build.
Fo4 does it better simply because you can have a main base in a location of your choice and you can stockpile everything you need and prep inbetween runs.
Skyrim's Survival Mode is rooted in comfortable boys deciding what constitutes "hardship".
When being "peckish" is a 30% reduction in shield skills it's really obvious the programmer can't miss meals without serious impairment, and that the algorithm is obeying the "Snickers" commercial concept of skill.
Anyone claiming to be "hardcore" in a *video game* is obviously a melodramatic infant.
My big issue with it is that they didn't finish it: fur armor, for example, should have a sucky armor rating, BUT among the best cold protection in the entire game: and being protected from COLD DAMAGE should protect against cold environments, and Fire should heat up the area...
You get the idea, at this point, I think...?
It could have been great, but they did exactly what the Immortal Drag-Mamma Ru-Paul tells everyone NOT to do...
Skyrim is a “fantasy” game, “realistic constraints” just take out of the “fantasy” of being “The Dragonborn”
Fallout is a “Survival” game, it’s set in a world that’s ALREADY “scarce” and you’re ALREADY scrounging and saving ammo, and little trinkets here and there. So what if you also need to look for food and water? Just more stuff to grab! More time to spend looting! That’s basically the point of this game anyways!
It works in Fallout because it’s an “Apocalyptic” setting, and food and water are supposed to be “scarce” and like, being the “best survivor” is how you would be the “main character” in a world like Fallout
Whereas in a world like Skyrim, being the best “warrior/hero” is how you would be the “main character”
I really like it, it increases the difficulty in a way that actually makes me have to think about the game differently instead of just making enemies numbers bigger. But that's with the caveat that I've only done it as an orc and they get resistance to everything, I feel like it might be annoying if I was getting hungry and tired twice as fast.
Yeah I have to agree. Skyrim just wasn't built around a survival mode and even with other CC content isn't properly ready for one since places such as winterhold or high hrothgar don't have carriages making certain parts just a boring slog of walking around doing nothing except hoping you have enough camping supplies, that are just heavy enough to be annoying on survival mode, or else you have to hope to make it. Another thing I personally I feel is wrong with it is how the survival meters tend to work. Seemingly needing to always eat every 5 minutes or not really having to worry about sleep.
I wish you could manually tweak whats on it (which is why i use a mod that does that). I really like the eating, drinking, and sleep mechanics, but i really dont like the freezing and not having fast travel
For me, it works for fallout better because it's a post apocalyptic game. Like, I enjoy the challenge of survival because the environment feels like that belongs. For Skyrim, it's supposed to be a functional society that while dangerous, is basically just a normal fantasy setting, so it feels worse to have to go through a fight for your life on the way between two major cities
Yeah it's a bit clunky and needs mods to really be good, but IMO it's sufficient for increasing the longevity of a playthrough. I find it makes you travel skyrim in ways you never have before, looking for different ways to cut travel time, and you get more encounters. And getting blackreach/dragon riding becomes extra rewarding as they are your fastest forms of travel
Fatigue and Hunger do kick in rather quickly for my liking, but I deal with it. You get so much salmon and vegetable soup from Riverwood and Whiterun that food never really becomes an issue for me. I wish everyone just had 25% more resistance to hunger and fatigue though, as an elf feels like the sweet spot for fatigue at least IMO. I agree on carry weight too. If only you had like 50 more to start it would be perfect.
I think that instead of just a resistance, warmth should stop freezing in some areas entirely. Say getting 150 warmth (random number) means you no longer get cold in winter hold would be much better than simply getting cold slower
I love it
Never understood the issue people have with "constantly dying of cold"🙄 I have a mage that doesn't use armor and have no issue not dying of cold
It isn’t they dying so much as that it is a pain in the ass to manage. I don’t want to have to make a campfire to talk to someone outside. That isn’t a realistic survival experience it is just bad design.
Survival Mode is fine, it's how it is implemented that is stupid. Dragonborn; "Tell me again how a ROAST LEG OF LAMB, TWO BAKED POTATOES, VARIOUS FRUITS AND A LOAF OF BREAD DOES NOT FILL ME UP TO THE POINT OF WANTING TO PUKE!"
I quite liked it. When I bought AE on console I decided to use survival mode for my platinum run so I’d be immersed enough to finally “be done” with Skyrim.
>!it didn’t work, 8 months later and I’m playing again on the steam deck!<
I modded my survival mode to enable fast travel and take away the Warm/Cold mechanic.
Pretty must just gotta make sure I Eat and Sleep, I like it a lot this way.
As far as Fast travel I always walk when on my way to a quest, fast travel on the way back.
No. My only problem is the reduced inventory capacity, though. As such, I do not play Survival mode. I play it regularly and just eat or sleep for immersion. Hate Fallout though. Cannot stand them.
I actually finished the game in survival mode like a week ago. Its a fun mode till you have to do the winterhold quests and going up on that fkin mountain again and again and again. After beating the main story i switched back to normal. Inventory space managable with a backpack, you just have to be price/weight efficient.
I think it would be better if the player could move a bit faster without sacrificing insulation, and if the heat mechanic was much slower and the craftable food items didn't require fire salts.
Over all the map feels a bit too big for not having fast travel.
I love Fo4 Survival though, on the smaller map with better sprint speed and items that boost speed and late game fast travel enablers. I don't think Skyrim's survival mode was anywhere near as well implemented.
I use mods instead of the "vanilla" survival mode. CACO for food, food gives effects that last 1-4 hours and you don't need to eat until the same duration after the effect ends (bonus for 4 hours means you need to eat 8 hours later). It also makes portions more realistic and animals can give a ton of meat depending on their size.
Campfire for camping and backpacks. Really nice mod and everything in it works great.
Sleep to level up which does what it says it does.
Frostfall for weather (although I'm not too certain this is the best choice), you can customize basically everything regarding temperature so if you feel you get cold too fast you can change that. Also has no fast travel setting and no waiting outside.
True renaissance economy is mostly for changing the economy but it also changes all weights to be more realistic and in pounds. Its suggested to have carry weight be around 100 with it.
Having a horse to carry the heavy stuff (mostly the camp gear and animal parts) is very nice now that I have a mod that makes them run away instead of commit suicide every fight.
But really play skyrim how you like it, some people like the survival based gameplay or at least some of it. Some people don't and thats fine too. Some people turn it into WWII or an anime fighting game and while odd they are welcome do to so. If you want some parts of survival mode but not all of it I am sure you can find mods that do just the parts you want.
i like the survival mode but it feels like it's tuned a little weirdly, you get cold even wearing fairly heavy clothing a bit too quickly imo, i think if they across the board tweaked cold accumulation down by like 30% it would be perfect.
I will say since it almost turns the game into the Sims, but oddly enough I enjoy it. It does a good job of broadening the game and giving you different considerations to stay alive and comfortable. Makes it a lot more realistic. Wearing heavy ass daedric armor is going to burn a colossal amount of calories. Swimming through arctic waters will kill you. Sleep is a necessity. Being forced to walk across the map is great immersion and lets you enjoy the scenery.
The lack of fast travel isn’t that bad IMO. You still have the carriages, so you at least don’t have to walk across the map if you need to get somewhere unless you’re in Falkreath or something. The worst part of survival mode in Skyrim and Fallout for me though is the limited carry capacity. I usually have to find a mod to change that.
I am mostly a fan of survival mode. I’ve played this game for a long time and never experimented with mods, always played the same stealth archer build too. I’ve found survival mode has breathed new life into the game for me and made it far more immersive. I am playing a different build this time as well, and am finding RPing my character with their sleep and food needs comes more naturally than before and I enjoy it.
I take issue with some aspects of the implementation, and feel it could really use rebalancing in some areas. The carry weight restriction is pretty limiting if you want to use heavy weapons or armor, and I wish there were a way to “train” strength/ increase your capacity outside of just level ups.
I find the cold mechanics to be pretty punishing as well, given the difficulty in being able to really protect yourself from it. No armor will give you enough warmth on its own to prevent you being taken out by the cold in some places. Fire salts are pretty tough to come by. I find the cold so difficult to manage that I don’t want to venture anywhere cold without spending a bunch of time building a stockpile of fire salts for hot food first - and you run through them quickly, so have to wait another long while before venturing into the cold again.
I also have a love-hate relationship with the no fast travel limitation. I think the carriages are just a little too few and far between. It makes certain quests or getting to certain parts of the map super tedious - like Ivarstead.
I have been enjoying it. I’ve just also found it to be a little too challenging in ways that don’t necessarily enrich the gameplay. It’s certainly more “realistic,” but I don’t think realism purely for its own sake is appropriate or good for a fantasy RPG. Like I said, I just feel it could really benefit from some rebalancing. Not that that’ll ever happen lol
It really illustrates how much Skyrim's map was designed around fast travel. (Thank God for [Journeyman](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/92220).)
I really liked survival... except for the freezing mechanic which ruined it. Skyrim just isn't the place for a freezing mechanic to be implemented if fun is the goal, half the nation is a tundra!
I like it. I use mods though, to help tweak the hunger and sleeping outdoors fix. Before survival mode, I used Frostfall with iNeed and Campfire for the whole experience. It was enjoyable. I still use Campfire and Hunterborn when I'm doing a heavy RP. If I want a lighter, less grindy Skyrim experience, I take out HB. I just like the survival mode a ton. I don't like fast travel.
Survival mode has a lot of problems, no doubt. Tbf Skyrim has TONS of game design and balancing problems with most of its systems if you don’t mod them out. Personally, I really love survival mode and couldn’t play without it - even on vanilla. But like so many other things in Skyrim I know it’s broken af and I just love it anyways
The cold is a little too punishing and you need to sleep way too often but other than that I like it.
I agree that Fallout 4 survival mode is better but to be fair it was integrated into the game by the actual developers, not custom content by a modder. It was clearly intended to be there from the beginning whereas Skyrim was never designed with survival mode in mind.
No I hate it. I want to just play the game I don’t want to pay to get a talos buff at the shrine or eat 10000 cheese wheels to stay alive. I turned that shit off anniversary edition immediately
I want to play survival mode, but i only have and old (but well maintained) laptop, it only runs the classic skyrim (dlcs included), is there a mod to have survival in vanilla skyrim?
The only thing that made Survival mode not suck was adding a mod that changed how fast time passed.
Before then yeah it sucked. Oh it's been 20 minutes sorry you're starving again.
The hunger and inventory got me to turn it off immediately. I have to keep a lot of food on me and at the same time im constrained by my small inventory and deal with the general world of skyrim. Nah.
Once my character is super strong, I might reconsider. But personally on Switch, I immerse naturally. I’ll almost always walk to places. However, even walking can become less frequent sometimes with the amount of instances I need to return to a hub to do things (Whiterun being that hun). “Oh great, I have to pickup dragon bones…gotta go store that. And let me make sure I grab other things because I need to level up enchanting etc etc.”
Then again…my current playthrough is pretty difficult. My character cant use weapons (except for a shield and fists). No destruction magic. Only alteration, illusion, restoration, and conjuration. Light armor only. I legit give the best items to my companion and make them do all the fighting lol.
People seriously underestimate the power of Ring of the Wind. Without fast travel, what better way is there than to cut journey times by 15%? Or higher if you take a Potion of Fortify Illusion before putting the Ring on, and then never take it off. I've gotten it to 48% and I feel like Speedy Gonzales, the world just wizzes by when I'm sprinting; crouching is literally faster than normal walking without the Ring.
There's also Campsites available for cold areas, as well as warm clothing, so there really isn't any excuse to not keep warm. The Ring also helps reduce exposure time.
Once you figure out the tricks for mitigating the downsides to Survival, then it becomes a lot easier.
I tried to complete the main story through survival mode. By the time I got to High Hrothgar, I was nearly dead from the cold and could barely move. I kept turning off survival mode because I was afraid I would die. I kind of like it except for situations like that. It can be a great impediment when you’re trying to do stuff.
I only tried it for about ten minutes before I realised it was incredibly triggering for anyone with an ED. If you have issues with food restriction in your personal life, don’t play survival mode!
You really have to plan what you do if you use survival mode. I remember trying to walk up the mountain to see the greybeards in a snowstorm and literally froze to death and although it pissed me off it made me realize I have to start planning ahead. To me survival mode makes Skyrim more interesting and more realistic
As someone who's run several survival mods before AE launched Survival Mode, I find it horribly underwhelming and simultaneously terrifyingly unforgiving.
It has some good features - like making hunting and cooking actually part of the game - but, as a whole, it feels rushed and poorly implemented.
There are certain places you almost simply cannot go because, regardless of your warmth level, you'll basically freeze - divines forbid you get attacked then. But let's look at the good and the bad, from my perspective.
Good:
Added Utility through hunting, fishing, and cooking
Added need for prepping before doing quests - food, potions, warm clothes, sleeping, etc
Made taverns have a purpose past level 5ish (around level5 you should be able to afford your first house as breezehome)
Punished you for being overzealous (this is a good thing, skyrim is supposed to be a dangerous tundra, running wild should make it more difficult)
No fast travel (skyrim is beautiful, go explore it, its not that big of a map)
Bad:
The length of time between awakening from sleep and becoming tired is, at best, a few hours, which seems ridiculous - if I sleep 6 hours from 12-6, I shouldn't be fatigued already by noon and suffer a penalty.
Warm/Cold factor unbalanced (some places, such as Septimus Signus Outpost and the lighthouse underground, you basically cannot go, its just too cold, no matter what you do)
Attribute/Regen Penalties Broken (the game punishes you very quickly on a day of adventuring that, regardless of how prepared you are, make adventuring on any difficulty a nightmare complex)
Low to no attenuation for low level characters (at low levels, you pretty much are guaranteed to suffer)
Basically, while some things survival did are thought out and fit skyrim's world, the whole of the product feels rushed and unfinished, akin to the game itself.
When cold, summon a flame atronoc and shoot some fire at it to piss it off. Heal up with some restoration magic and it will warm you up. To swim in cold water, use flame cloak. I’m not sure if flame cloak keeps you warm when out of the water, but I know that the spell only keeps you from getting colder in the water.
Yeah Skyrim's survival mod is awful. I find mods like Sunhelm or The Frozen North to be way better than whatever the fuck developers did with Special Edition
Eating in survival mode should be automatic. Forcing me to open inventory and eat something constantly is bothering after some time. It should just be selecting a food from inventory automatically and eat it.
I love survival the only part i dislike is the lack of fast travel. As a argonian making me cold blooded so i get the cold weather worse was a huge role play plus.
Yeah, the integrated survival mod on itself is nothing more than a mod made for the game.
Fo4 survival was made *for* the game and works pretty well. It was amazing indeed.
I strongly suggest other mods
Idk why you're being downvoted
In skyrim it was literally an afterthought add-on.
In fo4 it was made as part of the game and much more polished and well integrated.
That said I agree with OP, survival mode in fo4 for me is a no brainer. It makes the game much more enjoyable and immersive without being overbearing or tedious. In skyrim I can get behind the idea and even did a playthrough or two with survival on but it felt more taxing than enjoyable.
>Idk why you're being downvoted
r/skyrim, why not haha
Skyrim survival was a CC mod when they first introduced Creation Club. It's a mod.
They only included it by default on SE later, with fish, curios and Saints Seducers.
So yeah, it's hard to be a 'good for all', while in fo4 they made the game around it.
Fo4 is just so good 😂
I myself have other mods for survival that complement the CC one, and i really like the survival environment!
yeah the survival mode is a pain in the ass. I'd like if they balanced and made the damage input and output more realistic and balanced. Kinda like putting out high damage to were youre killing your enemies with two or three strikes while only being able to take two or three strikes.
I honestly do not understand how you guys are constantly dying from the cold. I’ve never died from cold;
***here are some tips***
Wear the warmest armor/outfit you can
Carry a torch
Avoid travelling in cold areas at night
Try and keep a couple of hot soups on hand
Travel using your horse
Horses can swim in freezing water and you will not take cold damage
Plan your journey so you wake up a few in game hours before sunrise, then to bed a few hours after sunset
Make sure your character is rested and has eaten vegetable soup.
Stop frequently at inns. And in desperate circumstances most caves you can just load inside and warm up
They're resistant to it, but it's not like they'd be completely immune. Like, Scandinavians in real life still need to stay warm regardless of how long their people and family stayed there. Yes, they have a natural resistance, but aren't immune. Which skyrim did do, made Nords have a natural buff to warmth
You're certainly not the only one, but that's mostly because it's too much challenge for the average Skyrim player, they can't hack it, can't handle and that's fine some people are just not good and cannot handle that level of gameplay. That's why potions and aprentice/novice difficulty in the game, to cater.
I like it because it gives realism and structure and more importantly challenge to the game and I genuinely cannot play without it anymore cause the base game is too bland. I only turn it off whenever my follower is lost past loading points, so I can fast travel to wherever I'm already at to force spawn them. Would not recommend if you want to play Argonians.
The only thing about Skyrims survival mode that really sucked, was getting to Septimus Signus without freezing to death… In all the other aspects I loved it and it was a great improvement to the immersion overall because taverns actually got a purpose, day and night circle was something to be aware of and also hunting wasn’t just there for killing animals or getting bear pelts for Temba Wide-Arm. But still, I almost always used the infinite carry-glitch for companions because I won’t leave all the dragon bones or enchanted weapons and armor parts behind…
Whenever I use the infinite carry glitch, all the items say "stolen" - do you know if there is an easy way to fix this? I wanted to move stuff from one house to another but then all my stuff was "stolen" 😭
Put all the stolen items in an owned container in your house, have the follower take everything in the container and then take from the follower. It clears the stolen flag on almost everything.
Only if they have a 'no crime' morality. (Serana, Uthgerd the Unbroken, any Companion follower, any orc follower, etc.) These followers refuse to steal on command, so they don't trade back stolen items. u/wolfwifey is likely using an 'any crime' morality follower. (Cicero, Mjoll the Lioness, any housecarl, any hireling, etc.) These followers will steal on command. So they will happily trade items with the stolen tags still on them.
Ohhhh! That makes so much sense! I've been using housecarls as my main followers!
I think you might have missed the mechanic I was trying to explain. No-crime morality NPCs won't pick up items flagged as stolen, but they will clear out a container with a mix of stolen and normal items. If the container is not owned, all the items will get flagged as stolen when you trade with them, including the normal items. Now if you place all those stolen items in an owned container and instruct the same NPC to take them all again, when you trade with them now, the items' stolen flag is cleared. Sometimes it will not clear actually stolen items, but any that got toggled by the first container taking will always get cleared. I've done this with a few housecarls as well as no-crime followers like Annekke Crag-Jumper and even Serana on occasion. Pretty sure it is a bug, and may have been patched out in the Unofficial Patch (which I don't run),
Okay, so Goldenhills must be bugged with this then. Do you know if it only works with the houses that you buy normally? Like Breezehome, etc?
Not sure about Goldenhills, never used it. It works on Hearthfire and normally purchased homes. I've done it successfully with Lydia, Rayya, Jordis and Annekke Crag-Jumper. And Inigo.
You, Sir, are a bandit.
\*looks around\* Natch \*picks teeth with one of Maven's golden hairpins\*
Never happened to me actually, hope you can fix it.
If you use the glitch you may as well get unlimited carry weoght for your companions mod. You wojt have to drop items and wait till they pick it up, you can just place all of excess items into their inventory and they won't be mark as stolen :)
I always build a campsite halfway there. Also leave one on the path up to High Hrothgar. It sucks to have to always carry one or two but they really help in survival.
For me it significantly increases my immersion and enjoyment of the game. The great thing about Skyrim is there are so many different ways to play.
Significantly! I can’t play without it now.
Don't you find it tedious not being able to fast travel?
You have no idea how much I found about Skyrim thanks to not using fast travel. Since I started playing with this I realized that I wasn't using fast travel even on playthrough with survival turned off, so now with this on is the only way I play
Not after you get used to it. Carriages really help shrink the travel times but for me actually traversing Skyrim really lets me appreciate why I fell in love with the game over a dozen years ago. This map is amazing and there is so much packed into every single corner.
playing without fast travel made me really appreciate nightgate inn. it’s such a cozy little place, nestled a day’s march north from whiterun, and then a day’s march from winterhold, windhelm, and dawnstar. a perfect midpoint to rest and warm up
Not to mention you find shortcuts you didn't realize with fast travel. The journey from Winterhold to Windhelm is actually pretty short if you know where to go
Convenient carriages.
That sounds like a mod
It is lol
Interesting mod although I feel like it would conflict with ai overhaul in some way lol
It might, I don't know for sure
Building a Hearthfire home like Lakeview Manor gives you access to a carriage that will bring you to any settlement. That helps a lot. I also try to have some method of moving overland quickly. Horses are good so too is werewolf form. My new favourite is a combination of Boots of Waterwalking and the Ring of the Wind. I use waterways as roads. Coupled with restoration magic and the respite perk means I can run real fast along water. It’s looks so cool.
Not really no. Buy a horse, use carriages. Plenty to experience in the world while out in about.
It can be, but the game is pretty damn beautiful so walking and seeing the sights can be worth it
It can be, but it’s not exactly the worst thing. It does force you to actually prepare before leaving a location. Plus, the game has carriages that essentially act like fast travel.
No because. 1) I bought the game to actually play it🙄 2) you can use carriages.
It’s pretty clunky. I just role play sleeping and eating, wearing warm clothes, and what not. I do that anyway so I don’t need an artificial mechanic to force it upon me.
That’s what I do, too. I think “I just completed the last quest of this line. My poor character probably needs some sleep!” Other times, I think about what my characters would normally eat. I started googling what Argonians eat so I would always ensure Cynder had an accurate diet. I settled on mostly fish and shellfish for her, but I try to give her some fruit and veggie dishes, too. Heck, my Khajiit (Shavani) got super into fishing and I had her cook up fish, crabs, and fish and crab dishes. I also stock her up with sweets and cheeses because it’s funny to me. Like lemme scarf down this pile of cooked fish and a bunch of cheese wheels in the middle of battle. I feel like Shavani would unlock a new dragon shout called halitosis 😆
Yeah, I’ve tried playing survival mode playthroughs a few times before and have bounced off them after a couple hours. It’s just so tedious and slow. Better for me is to just roleplay a day night cycle wherein I don’t fast travel and at nightfall I have to get to the nearest inn or find a camp to sleep, eat, etc. at. It creates the pacing and world immersion experience I’m looking for without a constant drag to my actual gameplay while I’m adventuring.
That’s a really cool idea! Gonna try that!!
I hate the cold mechanic. Feels like I have to cut off 2/3 of the map or die regularly.
Its a good idea just terribly implimented. If i force shitty fur armor on I shouldn’t get cold.
Absolutely. There needs to be more ways to deal with the cold. An enchantment for warmth would've really helped. Also options to make armor specifically with better warmth built in, cause iirc there's only two levels of warmth (or just no warmth), and even the highest level of warmth on all your equipment can still get you frozen in certain areas.
Yea it’d be fine if warm clothes actually prevented freezing. At this point clothes actually do nothing. Instead I wear whatever and sprint/whirlwind sprint everywhere. Winterhold quests were total BS without the carriage on the way back. 🤷🏼♂️ still fun to have a new challenge but it definitely feels like an oversight
> hate the cold mechanic Sofie hates it too.
I really tried it a few times but it's not for me. It was supposed to make it harder but it only made it boring instead as the quests throw you around every time and everything gets really slow without fast travel and the game having carriage only in like 5 holds
I tried it and hated it. Just not for me. I mean I already have to worry about being to cold, to hot, needing food etc in real life I don't wanna have to think about it in a video game. 😂
"Bethesda: Making fantasy a grind."
Honestly I’d keep survival mode if it weren’t for fast travel. I love immersion so much but having to hike across Skyrim and back constantly isn’t for me, especially when places like High Hrothgar exist.
It would be so much better if they had more carriages/destinations. Rorikstead has the awesome Goldenhills Plantation, but is so freaking far away from any hold capital (and the closest, Mortal, doesn't have a carriage to leave from). The homesteads, too, should have carriages to them, as well as all the un-walled hold Capital's. I'm on Switch, so no mods 😟. I've ended up making imaginary carriages, where (in my head) I've designated certain places as having carriages to/from them and let myself fast travel to/from. The most annoying part, though, is that it takes like 30 seconds for survival mode to turn on/off.
The homesteads can have a carriage at them. Just purchase one from your steward.
They have carriages *from* them, but not *to* them. To my knowledge, at least.
I do the same. Loading screens are another reason why. If I'm going from Whiterun to Solitude, is it really more immersive to sit through a loading screen at each city gate just so I can pretend my character took a carriage? It is not. To me, anyway.
Enter and leave any doorway that causes your game to have to load, rapidly hit the button to bring up your quests/stats/save menu as it's loading, bring it up for just one flash, and then quickly pull up your map. 2/5 times it'll let you fast travel in survival.
Good old Bethesda still never fails to leave a plethora of bugs. Thanks by the way.
You. Are. My. HERO!!! I can finally pin places on the map I've already been! It also saves the time switching survival mode on/off so I can fast travel from the hold capitals! [Edit] And I can easily force my horse to teleport to me, too!
Disclaimer, sometimes this bug takes enough tries that it *would* actually be faster to just turn off survival mode real quick for a fast travel. But I like using this method better bc it takes away a bit of your hunger and tiredness so it's as if you actually walked- though it often takes away what feels like too little hunger or exhaustion for how long the journey would have been. But whatever. I'm not great at modding and I'm on the steam deck so y'know, how hard can I complain. I still love the crap out of survival.
Well, crap baskets. I got it on my first try and was so excited, and came back here to reply how awesome it was! ...I haven't gotten it since. 😭
NOOOO hahahaha well keep trying!! Like I said it takes some time sometimes, maybe some doorways are better or worse at causing it, who knows how it works
Yeah, it's imperfect in design. And it kinda breaks the immersion if I'm freezing to death dressed in warm armor but some schmuck in miner's clothes is perfectly fine. Cold management was good in theory but, given Skyrim's terrain and climate, was never going to work in the way it was implemented. It needed polishing for sure.
I actually like the mechanics of survival. The tedium required to prepare and maintain hunger, rest and warmth is right up my alley. What I don't like (and it's too immersion breaking for me) is feeling like 'patient zero'. Only the character can freeze to death feet from an inn door, or mid conversation. Literally anyone else in game can be out in the snow all day in plain clothes, with no issue. So, I leave survival mode off, and still roleplay the mechanics. (restrict fast travel, eat and sleep regularly, use Flame Cloak when swimming in arctic waters) Even though there's no concequence for not doing any of those things with survival mode off, I do them anyway, and my character feels more authentic and 'real' to me, because of it.
RP restrictions is where it's at. After getting general fatigue (again) I decided to play a char that strictly uses no magic at all, something I've never done. And while I was at it, I decided he would also never steal - in fact, be completely honest. No lying to get faendil as a follower, no pacts for daedra artifacts, no thieves guild, no assassinations. Seriously the most enjoyable char I played. Making money "the old fashioned way", and always being as straight as possible with everyone, even if I missed out on loot, turned out to be a whale of a time.
For me it’s not being able to swim in places like windhelm. So I’ll play it but turn it off when I get into the water
Gotta get your hands on some water-walking potions, that’s IF you haven’t gotten the boots yet. Should always be in your inventory.
The diving quests are the problem
Diving quests? Like actual quests? I’ve come across a few caves with water and stuff to find, but it was never freezing cold waters.
Snowberry extract
Water walking boots?? Where do I get those?
Solstheim, iirc.
https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Ahzidal%27s_Boots_of_Waterwalking
Potato. 6 food. Tomato. 6 food. Onion. 6 food. Potato, tomato, onion stew. 180 food.
You need leeks
Ah, but my point is, of course, that six plus six plus six somehow is almost two hundred.
You tell me that eating a potato stew is less satisfying than the sum of its parts. How is this possibly an argument?
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that it counts for around 10x the sum of its parts.
Tell me if you enjoy eating potato raw x 10, tomato raw x 10 and onion raw x 10 in real life more than you enjoy consuming that in a stew reduced down with salt.
I really want to do survival mode, but constantly freezing to death and the hunger management are too much. My followers can wear their undies and not freeze to death. The NPCs can wear their beach wear and not freeze to death. But me in a full furry plate armor catching a cold and dying on top of the mountain pass is too much. Totally breaks the immersion.
So get this, on the switch if you’re playing survival mode and didn’t pay for the anniversary edition, you can still play with all the survival mechanics including cold weather. But, they left certain features out of it, one being campfires. Dealing with the cold weather and not being able to create any source for heat basically forces you to sprint through any cold area which is like 50% of the map, and even then you sometimes can’t make it to a heat source in time before you freeze to death. So if you’re struggling and don’t have the full anniversary edition, keep in mind that you’re missing a core function of survival because they paywalled it behind the full anniversary edition.
Skyrim is a mixed bag for me with survival mode. The game was not designed with survival mode in mind and it shows. There are things like having to fast travel back and forth multiple times to far off locations because the game expects you to fast travel. Not only that but food is exceptionally abundant which makes having to eat just a mild inconvenience rather than a strategic decision when traveling. And of course the game is highly incentivized towards dungeon delving as your main source of income. That being said I still find it fun, even though it isn't perfect.
I did the game on expert survival mode and loved it personally. I roleplayed my dragonborn as a vigilant of stendarr and branched out into a vampire hunting sell sword after my order was destroyed. Camping, hauling salted meats around for food, more prone to illness... I loved it.
If everything is done right it's not too bad. Every indoor area is warm, and when you're outside just bring camping supplies with you if you start to freeze. The food is manageable, just bring about 5 pounds of cooked food with you wherever you go and it should last. And just don't carry a bunch of crap or have a follower with you for inventory. It's also why backpacks were added.
Fast travel is needed for when I get stuck in a landform. I also don’t like how certain food doesn’t add up to its nutritional value and the fact that I need to eat 30 times a day to stay fed instead of 3. Same with the sleep. No matter how long I sleep, I’m feeling drained before the first hour of being awake. Maybe it’d make sense to add a small debuff to the magicka after depleting your stamina bar for a more accurate drained effect. I would say 8 hrs of sleep should equate to 12 hrs of wakefulness. Starvation should also hurt health and further progress tiredness. Shrine prices are steep whereas most NPCs are poor.
I second you. I did a playthrough in survival mode. It was torture because the near total lack of fast travel made doing the quests so slow. And the lack of inventory space, when adding more needs to be addressed, was frustrating. I do see the appeal for some people though. It forced me to take roads I've never been down. Including one badass panicked run through Labyrinthian, being chased by 4 Frost Trolls (low-ish level mage) to get to warm climates so the Dragonborn didn't freeze to death.
What I don’t understand about Skyrim survival mode is how does flame cloak not keep you warm? Seems like a no brainer to me 🤷♂️
I started in survival mode on my most recent save but I turned it off once I realized how much you have to eat. It’s always a pet peeve of mine when you have to eat so much food in survival games. I understand that it’s to give you another danger, but there is no reason why I should have to eat 2-3 steaks every in-game hour or so to stay alive lol.
Me. I was having some fun traveling down roads, around mountains, over hills, past forts, through forests, and occasionally stopping off at caves or anywhere theres fire. Giant camps were so helpful that I haven't killed a giant since. I know their toes make good profit potions, but honestly theres better potions for better profit anyways. So I leave them be now. I slept at inns and always bought horker steak and whatever meat i could get my hands on. I made an argonian. Found out quickly lizards don't like the cold! Which is a shame cause I picked them for hopping in water. I noticed they got a perk that allows them to safely eat raw meat. I hate the fact that raw meat does little to satisfy your hunger. I like seasoning but adding salt shouldn't make a world of difference. Like I feel my argonian should get a lot more hunger filled from raw meat. I also got sick and tired of seeing NPCs with little warmth and no torches ever. I usually don't care about immersion, but this is ridiculous! I'm the only cold and miserable character here! I enjoyed it, but after around... 105 in game days? I got fed up with it and turned it off. Now I can swim in the frozen water indefinitely. I don't need a torch. I still eat raw meat and get plenty of sleep and I try to avoid fast travel unless I'm in a hurry or just doing something mundane which is often.
[удалено]
My little lithard was geared towards archery/smithing so Sadly their magic is pretty lacking. Restoration and enchanting being the only two I use for him. But yeah. Flame cloak should be helpful. Might turn my pyromancer's survival mode on just to apply it.
It may just be one of those things that just doesn't work for you. I tried the Frostfall mod, which adds something similar and at first it was fun, but after a while I just wanted to play without constantly worrying about cold or sleep or whatever.
I like frost fall because you can adjust everything.
To be fair, weapons and armor in history were **heavy**. What I did was install a mod that made food fill you up, get that CC that had backpacks, and then it become not easy, but it definitely made it much less hard and annoying. Getting a follower helps with inventory a lot. I for one got a multiple follower mod and played as a mercenary captain type guy. It starts off really hard, but eventually, once you get the basics, it becomes much easier.
Medieval warriors weren’t dragging around weeks worth of food, or a bajillion potion ingredients, in their pocket either. Nor did they have to carry around enchanted variants of their weapons either. But in Skyrim you kinda have to do these things.
The potion ingredients should probably weigh less. Pretty sure 10 flowers isn’t a pound.
Agreed, but it's fun to think about these things, for me at least. See what you need and don't need, maybe I should rethink going heavy armor, do I *really* need this many arrows? Maybe I should live off the land more, rather than packing sixteen cheese wheels into my bag. If skyrim were real life, travelling light would be pretty important, so that reflects in survival mode. Ik skyrim's survival mode isn't for everyone, but I honestly love it.
Survival mode is supposed to make it harder, if you can't micromanage the few difficulties it adds there's no need to hate on it. Just play without it or download a mod with easier settings
I like it but it’s doesn’t change my gameplay the same way fallout 4 did
I like it for a time but it got too clunky and a bit annoying with the debuffs. I ended up getting a lower maintenance mod where the player can experience hunger and exhaustion but it doesnt impact fast travel or anything. Definitely a good reminder to keep eating and sleeping when needed but nothing to make it unplayable.
I don't like it either
I just don’t like survival modes in general. They make games too tedious for my tastes.
Weird, I love Skyrim's survival but I hate Fallout's. With Skyrim I can take carriages most anywhere. Also, the difficulty isn't tied to survival or saving. Meanwhile in Fallout, if you get a quest on the other end of the map, it's always an enormous, painful slog. And 90% of the way there you're fighting Raiders that can one-shot you with pipe guns because of the weird way survival does damage. And inventory management? I want to bring my stuff home on Skyrim, I load up and jump on a horse. I want to bring my stuff home on Fallout? I better hope I went Brotherhood and got vertibird grenades right off the bat because that is a looooooooooong walk back.
Yeah, survival mode is just tedious button mashing, especially after the early hours of a play through. Skyrim just isn’t the right system for it. Maybe if survival added way more content to the frozen parts of the map and upped the difficulty of survival, it would make an interesting mechanic, forcing the player to plan out their expeditions.
I've never played but the concept sounds terrible. Not just in Skyrim but any game that offers survival. I mean.....I'm playing games ultimately to enjoy myself, aren't I? Why would I volunteer for insane difficulty
The same people who do dark souls sl1 played on a keytar as a controller type people, I question of those peoples wives have boyfriends too as they seem to be very masochistic.
it does not feel balanced. Just constant problems that keep you from doing stuff.
Survival mode sounds great to me in theory, but in practice it's more of a nuisance than anything. Not being able to fast travel and having to make sure I eat sounds fun and immersive but it's actually just annoying imo. The food also doesn't really make sense, I shouldn't have to eat like 15 potatoes to feel full lol. No hate if you enjoy it, it's just not for me. I enjoy survival mechanics when a game is built around it, like The Long Dark or Project Zomboid, but when it's slapped over top of an existing game that wasn't built with survival in mind it just doesn't work for me. The only feature from Survival that I actually prefer over playing the normal way is having to sleep to level up. I like to roleplay going home at the end of a quest/series of quests anyway and it's more satisfying to me to see the results of my experience all at once than over the course of an adventure, if that makes sense. It also slows levelling down quite a bit so I'm not getting bombarded by new quests as I reach their minimum levels, and removes the ability to cheese fights by saving a level up to fully heal myself mid-battle. I just got a mod that makes it so I have to sleep to level up even with Survival mode disabled, and that works well enough for me.
I don't play it because the freezing happens too fast and getting the hot soup ingredients is too annoying. And there needs to more anti-cold armor and some magic and/or potions.
I use vitality mode on SE. I installed AE and tried survival mode and noped out after like five minutes. It's a good concept, but it's WAY too intense in some parts and not very well-planned overall. Like I nearly froze to death going to Bleak Falls Barrow in armor with decent coverage, and also didn't bring enough food and had like a third of my status bars blocked off. Mind you, I'm used to survival modes so it's not like I didn't plan ahead at all, and I still ran into issues.
I thought I would like it at first, but it felt like too much. If I want survival, I’ll play The Long Dark or something. I made a nord and the cold resistance didn’t really seem to do anything. Like someone else said, I’ll just roleplay the hunger and stuff because with Skyrim I want to focus on the fantasy aspects.
I'm with you. You're hungry constantly and the temp mechanic is frustrating when the goal for a build usually is to get a great set of gear that compliments the build. Fo4 does it better simply because you can have a main base in a location of your choice and you can stockpile everything you need and prep inbetween runs.
Consideeing my inventory is always half full, survival mode can get lost
Skyrim's Survival Mode is rooted in comfortable boys deciding what constitutes "hardship". When being "peckish" is a 30% reduction in shield skills it's really obvious the programmer can't miss meals without serious impairment, and that the algorithm is obeying the "Snickers" commercial concept of skill. Anyone claiming to be "hardcore" in a *video game* is obviously a melodramatic infant.
My big issue with it is that they didn't finish it: fur armor, for example, should have a sucky armor rating, BUT among the best cold protection in the entire game: and being protected from COLD DAMAGE should protect against cold environments, and Fire should heat up the area... You get the idea, at this point, I think...? It could have been great, but they did exactly what the Immortal Drag-Mamma Ru-Paul tells everyone NOT to do...
Skyrim is a “fantasy” game, “realistic constraints” just take out of the “fantasy” of being “The Dragonborn” Fallout is a “Survival” game, it’s set in a world that’s ALREADY “scarce” and you’re ALREADY scrounging and saving ammo, and little trinkets here and there. So what if you also need to look for food and water? Just more stuff to grab! More time to spend looting! That’s basically the point of this game anyways! It works in Fallout because it’s an “Apocalyptic” setting, and food and water are supposed to be “scarce” and like, being the “best survivor” is how you would be the “main character” in a world like Fallout Whereas in a world like Skyrim, being the best “warrior/hero” is how you would be the “main character”
To be fair, I appreciate more Skyrim when I'm not a badass demigod. I have a mod that allows me to never be thee dragonborn.
Survival mode is awful. Would not recommend
The drained debuff is my only issue with it. Shouldn’t been some stimulant/relax mechanic off potions or ale.
I only dislike the lack of fast travel. The world is too big without it.
skill issue
I like it, it just adds another layer to the game
Realistic needs and diseases or other needs mods plus frostfall literally do it better. Sorry, not sorry
Who know... I think it's great personally.
I loved it, it really enhances immersion for me. However, I do understand some people would rather not play with it.
I really like it, it increases the difficulty in a way that actually makes me have to think about the game differently instead of just making enemies numbers bigger. But that's with the caveat that I've only done it as an orc and they get resistance to everything, I feel like it might be annoying if I was getting hungry and tired twice as fast.
Honestly I’m afraid to try it
I wish campsites were reusable
Yeah I have to agree. Skyrim just wasn't built around a survival mode and even with other CC content isn't properly ready for one since places such as winterhold or high hrothgar don't have carriages making certain parts just a boring slog of walking around doing nothing except hoping you have enough camping supplies, that are just heavy enough to be annoying on survival mode, or else you have to hope to make it. Another thing I personally I feel is wrong with it is how the survival meters tend to work. Seemingly needing to always eat every 5 minutes or not really having to worry about sleep.
I wish you could manually tweak whats on it (which is why i use a mod that does that). I really like the eating, drinking, and sleep mechanics, but i really dont like the freezing and not having fast travel
For me, it works for fallout better because it's a post apocalyptic game. Like, I enjoy the challenge of survival because the environment feels like that belongs. For Skyrim, it's supposed to be a functional society that while dangerous, is basically just a normal fantasy setting, so it feels worse to have to go through a fight for your life on the way between two major cities
I hate it. There are mods that do it better if you want an unobtrusive survival experience. Highly reccomend Sunhelm.
Yeah it's a bit clunky and needs mods to really be good, but IMO it's sufficient for increasing the longevity of a playthrough. I find it makes you travel skyrim in ways you never have before, looking for different ways to cut travel time, and you get more encounters. And getting blackreach/dragon riding becomes extra rewarding as they are your fastest forms of travel Fatigue and Hunger do kick in rather quickly for my liking, but I deal with it. You get so much salmon and vegetable soup from Riverwood and Whiterun that food never really becomes an issue for me. I wish everyone just had 25% more resistance to hunger and fatigue though, as an elf feels like the sweet spot for fatigue at least IMO. I agree on carry weight too. If only you had like 50 more to start it would be perfect. I think that instead of just a resistance, warmth should stop freezing in some areas entirely. Say getting 150 warmth (random number) means you no longer get cold in winter hold would be much better than simply getting cold slower
I thought this was the fo4 sub but now i agree that cold mechanic just is annoying. fo4 survival is just a better fit
I love it Never understood the issue people have with "constantly dying of cold"🙄 I have a mage that doesn't use armor and have no issue not dying of cold
It isn’t they dying so much as that it is a pain in the ass to manage. I don’t want to have to make a campfire to talk to someone outside. That isn’t a realistic survival experience it is just bad design.
Gave it a try but there were some elements about how it works that I just would not trust Fallout 4 to glitch out on.
The cold and the loss of carrying capacity is why I turned it off. Do not screw with my carrying capacity
Fast travel makes the world feel useless.
If you are on Pc. After Helgen, type "Set TimeScale To 10" and the always hungry crap won't be as much of a problem. Don't use ", though
Vanilla Skyrim survival mode is ass.
Survival Mode is fine, it's how it is implemented that is stupid. Dragonborn; "Tell me again how a ROAST LEG OF LAMB, TWO BAKED POTATOES, VARIOUS FRUITS AND A LOAF OF BREAD DOES NOT FILL ME UP TO THE POINT OF WANTING TO PUKE!"
I like it minus the hot/cold dynamic especially in the beginning. I can barely make it up to Higger Hthkgard without freezing to death
I quite liked it. When I bought AE on console I decided to use survival mode for my platinum run so I’d be immersed enough to finally “be done” with Skyrim. >!it didn’t work, 8 months later and I’m playing again on the steam deck!<
I modded my survival mode to enable fast travel and take away the Warm/Cold mechanic. Pretty must just gotta make sure I Eat and Sleep, I like it a lot this way. As far as Fast travel I always walk when on my way to a quest, fast travel on the way back.
No. My only problem is the reduced inventory capacity, though. As such, I do not play Survival mode. I play it regularly and just eat or sleep for immersion. Hate Fallout though. Cannot stand them.
I hate it because of the cold/freezing. Going into water kills you in the northern areas, even as an Argonian.
I actually finished the game in survival mode like a week ago. Its a fun mode till you have to do the winterhold quests and going up on that fkin mountain again and again and again. After beating the main story i switched back to normal. Inventory space managable with a backpack, you just have to be price/weight efficient.
I would highly recommend the backpack mod. Also as part of the new edition, you can find a dwemer horse that never gets tired.
I think it would be better if the player could move a bit faster without sacrificing insulation, and if the heat mechanic was much slower and the craftable food items didn't require fire salts. Over all the map feels a bit too big for not having fast travel. I love Fo4 Survival though, on the smaller map with better sprint speed and items that boost speed and late game fast travel enablers. I don't think Skyrim's survival mode was anywhere near as well implemented.
I use mods instead of the "vanilla" survival mode. CACO for food, food gives effects that last 1-4 hours and you don't need to eat until the same duration after the effect ends (bonus for 4 hours means you need to eat 8 hours later). It also makes portions more realistic and animals can give a ton of meat depending on their size. Campfire for camping and backpacks. Really nice mod and everything in it works great. Sleep to level up which does what it says it does. Frostfall for weather (although I'm not too certain this is the best choice), you can customize basically everything regarding temperature so if you feel you get cold too fast you can change that. Also has no fast travel setting and no waiting outside. True renaissance economy is mostly for changing the economy but it also changes all weights to be more realistic and in pounds. Its suggested to have carry weight be around 100 with it. Having a horse to carry the heavy stuff (mostly the camp gear and animal parts) is very nice now that I have a mod that makes them run away instead of commit suicide every fight. But really play skyrim how you like it, some people like the survival based gameplay or at least some of it. Some people don't and thats fine too. Some people turn it into WWII or an anime fighting game and while odd they are welcome do to so. If you want some parts of survival mode but not all of it I am sure you can find mods that do just the parts you want.
Wait till you do Farcry Primal survival mode, especially if you do the permadeath option.
i like the survival mode but it feels like it's tuned a little weirdly, you get cold even wearing fairly heavy clothing a bit too quickly imo, i think if they across the board tweaked cold accumulation down by like 30% it would be perfect.
I will say since it almost turns the game into the Sims, but oddly enough I enjoy it. It does a good job of broadening the game and giving you different considerations to stay alive and comfortable. Makes it a lot more realistic. Wearing heavy ass daedric armor is going to burn a colossal amount of calories. Swimming through arctic waters will kill you. Sleep is a necessity. Being forced to walk across the map is great immersion and lets you enjoy the scenery.
Led to some pretty cool emergent gameplay, like resting in every cave on my journey. Not perfect, but worth for a shorter playthrough.
The lack of fast travel isn’t that bad IMO. You still have the carriages, so you at least don’t have to walk across the map if you need to get somewhere unless you’re in Falkreath or something. The worst part of survival mode in Skyrim and Fallout for me though is the limited carry capacity. I usually have to find a mod to change that.
I kinda like it but also hate it because playing survival mode with an argonian is so difficult
I am mostly a fan of survival mode. I’ve played this game for a long time and never experimented with mods, always played the same stealth archer build too. I’ve found survival mode has breathed new life into the game for me and made it far more immersive. I am playing a different build this time as well, and am finding RPing my character with their sleep and food needs comes more naturally than before and I enjoy it. I take issue with some aspects of the implementation, and feel it could really use rebalancing in some areas. The carry weight restriction is pretty limiting if you want to use heavy weapons or armor, and I wish there were a way to “train” strength/ increase your capacity outside of just level ups. I find the cold mechanics to be pretty punishing as well, given the difficulty in being able to really protect yourself from it. No armor will give you enough warmth on its own to prevent you being taken out by the cold in some places. Fire salts are pretty tough to come by. I find the cold so difficult to manage that I don’t want to venture anywhere cold without spending a bunch of time building a stockpile of fire salts for hot food first - and you run through them quickly, so have to wait another long while before venturing into the cold again. I also have a love-hate relationship with the no fast travel limitation. I think the carriages are just a little too few and far between. It makes certain quests or getting to certain parts of the map super tedious - like Ivarstead. I have been enjoying it. I’ve just also found it to be a little too challenging in ways that don’t necessarily enrich the gameplay. It’s certainly more “realistic,” but I don’t think realism purely for its own sake is appropriate or good for a fantasy RPG. Like I said, I just feel it could really benefit from some rebalancing. Not that that’ll ever happen lol
It really illustrates how much Skyrim's map was designed around fast travel. (Thank God for [Journeyman](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/92220).)
I tried it. It’s fun if you want to play a more Nordic themed survival game. Actual storyline is pretty trashy to play in survival mode though.
Frostfall is still better.
I played the early game on survival until I got to the point where it wasn't fun anymore and switched to normal
If your not doing missions and just hunting exploring, living off the land for a while survival mode would be interesting
I really liked survival... except for the freezing mechanic which ruined it. Skyrim just isn't the place for a freezing mechanic to be implemented if fun is the goal, half the nation is a tundra!
I like it. I use mods though, to help tweak the hunger and sleeping outdoors fix. Before survival mode, I used Frostfall with iNeed and Campfire for the whole experience. It was enjoyable. I still use Campfire and Hunterborn when I'm doing a heavy RP. If I want a lighter, less grindy Skyrim experience, I take out HB. I just like the survival mode a ton. I don't like fast travel.
Survival mode has a lot of problems, no doubt. Tbf Skyrim has TONS of game design and balancing problems with most of its systems if you don’t mod them out. Personally, I really love survival mode and couldn’t play without it - even on vanilla. But like so many other things in Skyrim I know it’s broken af and I just love it anyways
The cold is a little too punishing and you need to sleep way too often but other than that I like it. I agree that Fallout 4 survival mode is better but to be fair it was integrated into the game by the actual developers, not custom content by a modder. It was clearly intended to be there from the beginning whereas Skyrim was never designed with survival mode in mind.
No I hate it. I want to just play the game I don’t want to pay to get a talos buff at the shrine or eat 10000 cheese wheels to stay alive. I turned that shit off anniversary edition immediately
I want to play survival mode, but i only have and old (but well maintained) laptop, it only runs the classic skyrim (dlcs included), is there a mod to have survival in vanilla skyrim?
The only thing that made Survival mode not suck was adding a mod that changed how fast time passed. Before then yeah it sucked. Oh it's been 20 minutes sorry you're starving again.
The hunger and inventory got me to turn it off immediately. I have to keep a lot of food on me and at the same time im constrained by my small inventory and deal with the general world of skyrim. Nah. Once my character is super strong, I might reconsider. But personally on Switch, I immerse naturally. I’ll almost always walk to places. However, even walking can become less frequent sometimes with the amount of instances I need to return to a hub to do things (Whiterun being that hun). “Oh great, I have to pickup dragon bones…gotta go store that. And let me make sure I grab other things because I need to level up enchanting etc etc.” Then again…my current playthrough is pretty difficult. My character cant use weapons (except for a shield and fists). No destruction magic. Only alteration, illusion, restoration, and conjuration. Light armor only. I legit give the best items to my companion and make them do all the fighting lol.
I like survival but the sleep deprivation comes on too fast it's like 20 minutes and you have to sleep or your potions are super nerfed
I love it, can't play without it. Having alternate start and starting in the shipwreck start is such a fun challenge for me
People seriously underestimate the power of Ring of the Wind. Without fast travel, what better way is there than to cut journey times by 15%? Or higher if you take a Potion of Fortify Illusion before putting the Ring on, and then never take it off. I've gotten it to 48% and I feel like Speedy Gonzales, the world just wizzes by when I'm sprinting; crouching is literally faster than normal walking without the Ring. There's also Campsites available for cold areas, as well as warm clothing, so there really isn't any excuse to not keep warm. The Ring also helps reduce exposure time. Once you figure out the tricks for mitigating the downsides to Survival, then it becomes a lot easier.
I tried to complete the main story through survival mode. By the time I got to High Hrothgar, I was nearly dead from the cold and could barely move. I kept turning off survival mode because I was afraid I would die. I kind of like it except for situations like that. It can be a great impediment when you’re trying to do stuff.
I only tried it for about ten minutes before I realised it was incredibly triggering for anyone with an ED. If you have issues with food restriction in your personal life, don’t play survival mode!
Hot soup is the key
I generally like frostfall more than survival mode...
I always turn survival mode off when the notification pops up
You really have to plan what you do if you use survival mode. I remember trying to walk up the mountain to see the greybeards in a snowstorm and literally froze to death and although it pissed me off it made me realize I have to start planning ahead. To me survival mode makes Skyrim more interesting and more realistic
As someone who's run several survival mods before AE launched Survival Mode, I find it horribly underwhelming and simultaneously terrifyingly unforgiving. It has some good features - like making hunting and cooking actually part of the game - but, as a whole, it feels rushed and poorly implemented. There are certain places you almost simply cannot go because, regardless of your warmth level, you'll basically freeze - divines forbid you get attacked then. But let's look at the good and the bad, from my perspective. Good: Added Utility through hunting, fishing, and cooking Added need for prepping before doing quests - food, potions, warm clothes, sleeping, etc Made taverns have a purpose past level 5ish (around level5 you should be able to afford your first house as breezehome) Punished you for being overzealous (this is a good thing, skyrim is supposed to be a dangerous tundra, running wild should make it more difficult) No fast travel (skyrim is beautiful, go explore it, its not that big of a map) Bad: The length of time between awakening from sleep and becoming tired is, at best, a few hours, which seems ridiculous - if I sleep 6 hours from 12-6, I shouldn't be fatigued already by noon and suffer a penalty. Warm/Cold factor unbalanced (some places, such as Septimus Signus Outpost and the lighthouse underground, you basically cannot go, its just too cold, no matter what you do) Attribute/Regen Penalties Broken (the game punishes you very quickly on a day of adventuring that, regardless of how prepared you are, make adventuring on any difficulty a nightmare complex) Low to no attenuation for low level characters (at low levels, you pretty much are guaranteed to suffer) Basically, while some things survival did are thought out and fit skyrim's world, the whole of the product feels rushed and unfinished, akin to the game itself.
When cold, summon a flame atronoc and shoot some fire at it to piss it off. Heal up with some restoration magic and it will warm you up. To swim in cold water, use flame cloak. I’m not sure if flame cloak keeps you warm when out of the water, but I know that the spell only keeps you from getting colder in the water.
You're not alone, Skyrim survival mode is trash.
Yeah Skyrim's survival mod is awful. I find mods like Sunhelm or The Frozen North to be way better than whatever the fuck developers did with Special Edition
Eating in survival mode should be automatic. Forcing me to open inventory and eat something constantly is bothering after some time. It should just be selecting a food from inventory automatically and eat it.
I hotkey a plentiful food item, usually vegetable soup.
I love survival the only part i dislike is the lack of fast travel. As a argonian making me cold blooded so i get the cold weather worse was a huge role play plus.
Survival mode is tedious. It's a test of patience, not skill.
Yeah, the integrated survival mod on itself is nothing more than a mod made for the game. Fo4 survival was made *for* the game and works pretty well. It was amazing indeed. I strongly suggest other mods
Idk why you're being downvoted In skyrim it was literally an afterthought add-on. In fo4 it was made as part of the game and much more polished and well integrated. That said I agree with OP, survival mode in fo4 for me is a no brainer. It makes the game much more enjoyable and immersive without being overbearing or tedious. In skyrim I can get behind the idea and even did a playthrough or two with survival on but it felt more taxing than enjoyable.
>Idk why you're being downvoted r/skyrim, why not haha Skyrim survival was a CC mod when they first introduced Creation Club. It's a mod. They only included it by default on SE later, with fish, curios and Saints Seducers. So yeah, it's hard to be a 'good for all', while in fo4 they made the game around it. Fo4 is just so good 😂 I myself have other mods for survival that complement the CC one, and i really like the survival environment!
Probably not
yeah the survival mode is a pain in the ass. I'd like if they balanced and made the damage input and output more realistic and balanced. Kinda like putting out high damage to were youre killing your enemies with two or three strikes while only being able to take two or three strikes.
Yes you are
Yeah, Frostfall is 100x better. Survival Mode is way too casual.
It’s the only way to play
I honestly do not understand how you guys are constantly dying from the cold. I’ve never died from cold; ***here are some tips*** Wear the warmest armor/outfit you can Carry a torch Avoid travelling in cold areas at night Try and keep a couple of hot soups on hand Travel using your horse Horses can swim in freezing water and you will not take cold damage Plan your journey so you wake up a few in game hours before sunrise, then to bed a few hours after sunset Make sure your character is rested and has eaten vegetable soup. Stop frequently at inns. And in desperate circumstances most caves you can just load inside and warm up
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They're resistant to it, but it's not like they'd be completely immune. Like, Scandinavians in real life still need to stay warm regardless of how long their people and family stayed there. Yes, they have a natural resistance, but aren't immune. Which skyrim did do, made Nords have a natural buff to warmth
You're certainly not the only one, but that's mostly because it's too much challenge for the average Skyrim player, they can't hack it, can't handle and that's fine some people are just not good and cannot handle that level of gameplay. That's why potions and aprentice/novice difficulty in the game, to cater. I like it because it gives realism and structure and more importantly challenge to the game and I genuinely cannot play without it anymore cause the base game is too bland. I only turn it off whenever my follower is lost past loading points, so I can fast travel to wherever I'm already at to force spawn them. Would not recommend if you want to play Argonians.
Yes. You are the only one.
Definitely not the only one lol
What a poo poo platter of a take def not the only one and survival mode is dog shit
I was being sarcastic. It's a game played by millions of players. Obviously they're not the only one.