

In short: This mod brings Jack London's "To Build A Fire" to Skyrim.įrostfall's most notable updates are the inclusion of hypothermia, camping equipment (several other mods do this, too), cold water survival, and factors in several character-specific attributes to determine each of these components.

One of the major go-to survival mods out there, Frostfall, adds a number of highly-customizable realistic mechanics changes to Skyrim. We'll cover other, non-survival changes below (gameplay mechanics, UI changes, graphics, audio, and everything else). We highly recommend completing one playthrough before installing these, since they may make it exceedingly difficult to access some areas of the game (due to cold weather, food accessibility, stuff like that). These mods will fundamentally change how the game is played, but are easy to remove if they don't fit with your playstyle. Hardcore survival, as the name suggests, isn't for the faint of heart.

We'll start with hardcore survival stuff, move to environmental effects (which are more universal, even to non-survivalists), and then cover general realism and immersion for gameplay and other mechanics. This is a true overhaul, so we have a wide array of mods that should be on your shortlist. It's extremely challenging and, depending on the player, can either be one of the most interesting survival games or one of the most tedious real-world simulations out there.īefore we get started, it's time to mention mod conflicts and the infamous crashes: Our recent guide on Skyrim troubleshooting and mod installation instruction will help you keep your Skyrim installation as clean as possible, so please, at least skim over the sections about mod management tools (Wyre Bash and Nexus Mod Manager are highly recommended) prior to installing these. Pick-and-choose mods as you see fit! The true hardcore survivalist will, of course, use as many as possible - we have great respect for those of you who can play like this.

"Hardcore" is used with great reason, here: These realism mods will require, in some cases, monitoring levels of nutrition, warmth, realistic darkness, first person body awareness, more challenging combat, less carrying capacity, and more. After our previous graphics and content overhaul (which will be updated soon, no doubt), we thought it was time to venture into the world of hardcore survival mods for some seriously challenging gameplay. There's something to be said about being able to survive the howling winds of Windhelm with nothing but a loin cloth and cold iron sword Dovahkiin is not only Dragonborn, he is - for playability purposes, of course - resistant to all types of weather and hunger.
