Even without any mods or add-ons, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is still a pretty engaging game. There’s such a large map to see and so many different quests to finish that players who plan on finishing the game vanilla-style aren’t likely to get bored any time soon.
For those wanting to change things up and introduce challenge into the game, turning Skyrim into a survival experience might just be the solution. Countless of mods out there change the gameplay in a way that makes it essential for players to focus on details like hunger, diseases and even temperature changes.
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Updated on January 1st, 2021 by Anastasia Maillot: With survival and legendary difficulty becoming increasingly more popular concepts among fans of Skyrim, the modding community has experienced a bit of a boom in the last few years. Survival mods are completely changing the way players get to experience Skyrim’s hostile environment.
By adding new features like taxes or fear of the dark, as well as tweaking already existing functions, modders have been able to completely overhaul the way the game feels. If Skyrim feels like a walk in the park, try adding these survival mods to the game.
15 Immersive Horses
With some survival mods and the principles of survival gameplay, fast travel is a big no-no, as it allows players to go past the hostility of the wilds. Due to this, having a good mod that overhauls the horses of Skyrim is a necessity, and there’s no better one for this than Immersive Horses.
Not only does it add a bunch of commands and a whole system for summoning a specific horse to the player’s location, it also brings in a few new breeds. Moreover, horses won’t just be docile vehicles from now on. They can also attack and move in different ways, making them more adjusted for combat.
14 Survive The Night
Night time in Skyrim isn’t all that scary. However, what if it was made to feel like a game of Amnesia: The Dark Descent or Minecraft? Survive The Night introduces a terrifying alternative to a regular night outside in the dark forests of Skyrim, forcing the player to find shelter.
It will become incredibly difficult to remain outside in the dark between 9 and 5 at night. The Dragonborn will risk going insane and even witness strange creatures lurking in the shadows that might suddenly find them a great target to attack.
13 Simple Taxes
Survival isn’t just about living and camping in the wilds. It’s also about managing money and economy in an era of medieval cities and merchants. Without making things too complicated, the mod Simple Taxes introduces the burden of taxation on the Dragonborn’s shoulders.
With money already scarce, the player now also has to budget with taxation in mind. Property like horses and houses will need to be paid for, although their respective cost and whether these systems are active can be tailored depending on the player’s wants and needs.
12 Wearable Lanterns
One of the most annoying features of Skyrim is the inability to carry a lantern on one’s belt for some extra light during the night or in dungeons. Instead, the player is forced to sacrifice either hand in order to carry a torch or cast a mage light. Wearable Lanterns changes this.
The Dragonborn can now carry a lantern at their belt, one which they’ve crafted themselves as well. This becomes especially useful in Campfire as well, since the two mods complement each other when making a campfire or paper lanterns.
11 Hunterborn
Survival deals a lot with cooking food in Skyrim, which is a generally underappreciated mechanism of the game. As such, it’s nice to have a few additional recipes with new effects to make survival a bit more plausible. Slaying a dragon will now not only yield a bit of loot but also some ingredients for hearty food.
It’s not just new recipes that the mod Hunterborn introduces. The process of actually hunting and preparing the animal for cooking is more complex as well. Foraging for foods in the forests of Skyrim has also been changed to feel more realistic, so there’s a real reason to get cooking.
10 Diseased
If the diseases in Skyrim feel far too easy to deal with, rest assured there’s a mod called Diseased that addresses this flaw to perfection. Rather than having diseases just be temporary negative status effects, this mod actually makes players care about diseases as they can even present life-threatening symptoms.
Players will have to learn from books how to make cures and appropriately take care of themselves when they eventually do come down with a sickness. In the first care scenario, players can even die if they’re not treated in time.
9 Chasing The Dragon
In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the concept of toxicity was introduced as a gameplay mechanic. The use of potions would yield some negative effects on top of the positive ones, which made the whole system feel much more realistic and with concrete stakes.
Now, a similar mechanic has been introduced with the mod Chasing The Dragon. Overuse of potions will now have some much-needed risks, rather than just being an easy thing to do. Higher toxicity levels will actually stop the player from regenerating any of their attributes. Players can also become addicted to some potions.
8 Exhaustion
Not all mods need to actually do something concrete to have a significant effect on the feel of the game. The Exhaustion mod for instance is incredibly simple, and yet it adds that extra bit of realism that feels right at home in a game like Skyrim.
Whenever the Dragonborn’s attribute, whether it be health, magicka or stamina, goes low enough, the player will be able to hear an audible breath from their character. In the vanilla version, a breath is only played when the Dragonborn runs out of stamina entirely.
7 Mealtime
When thinking about survival, food is one of the first things that come to mind. There’s not a huge amount of variety in Skyrim as it is, which is why mods like Mealtime are absolutely crucial in making the game feel a bit more immersive.
With over a hundred new recipes added to the game, each food item provides a unique value of health to the player. Some even have special effects that players can discover as they learn all different recipes.
6 iNeed
Paired well with the Mealtime mod, the iNeed mod is a must-have for anyone who wants some basic survival in their game. The Dragonborn will now have to think about three sets of needs: hunger, sleep and thirst. All of these have to be addressed roughly three times a day, with the exception of sleep that only needs to be filled once at night.
Thirst in particular is a really interesting mechanic, as it introduces waterskins as items, which can carry some water and which need to be periodically refilled. Not tending to the needs will make the character weaker, whereas being well-rested, fed and hydrated gives positive status effects.
5 Art Of The Catch
Gone are the days when players could simply walk into a river and fish with their bare hands. With the Art Of The Catch mod, the Dragonborn will actually have to make their very own fishing rod if they wish to catch fish to make some food.
Fishing has its own unique animations, and with the right technique, the player needs to find a spot where fish are plentiful before casting their line. Making noise or moving around will also scare the fish off.
4 You Hunger
Skyrim is a game famous for having a ton of clutter just about anywhere the player goes. This makes it easy for players to play the game, even with a mod like iNeed activated. Due to this, it’s important to have You Hunger in the game, which is a mod that remedies this situation.
The mod drastically reduces the amount of random food stuff that can be found lying around everywhere. Moreover, players can now starve to death in the worst-case scenario, which just ups the stakes.
3 Scarcity
Part of survival that’s easy in vanilla Skyrim is just how easy it is to find almost any type of loot and sell it for money. When managing needs like hunger, as long as the player has money they can simply buy all their food. However, with Scarcity, this becomes trickier.
Loot of all kinds is now much rarer and when the player does find something truly exceptional, it makes that find even more rewarding than usual. It’s a necessary fix to the bloated economy of the game, which gives players incentive to really go out and hunt food on their own when in a pinch.
2 Frostfall
Previously, crossing a river in a frozen environment or swimming in a cold ocean wasn’t a problem at all for the Dragonborn. However, with this mod, things change drastically. Frostfall makes the weather of Skyrim actually mean something to the player.
Depending on the location the player is in, the mod will introduce various temperature effects on them, including hypothermia. It also forces the player to consider what kind of clothing they’re wearing in each area.
1 Campfire
It’s pretty surprising that a game like Skyrim, with so much nature, doesn’t have a camping system. Camps can be found all around the world, but actual camping isn’t an interaction or a gameplay feature that’s really available to players.
The Campfire mods finally makes this possible. Players can set up their own camp by gathering resources and buying tools needed for camping. It even introduces a brand new skill tree that has to do with all things camping.
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