Description
Survival mode in Starfield, although a welcome addition, is somewhat flawed as every single item buff lasts 30 minutes. This mod aims to fix and restore some elements of survival that for whatever reason were not fully implemented with the update. The mod currently focuses on the food and drink needs but could be expanded to cover more in the future.
Mod Story
Finally taking the plunge into Starfield, I was struggling to enjoy many aspects of the planet exploration when running and gunning through procedurally generated areas. To offset some of this frustration, I decided to jump into the options and slam everything to the highest difficulty, noticing there was also a survival mode. This helped with my enjoyment of these parts of the game until I came to realise that the food and drink was somewhat lacking in complexity.
Every food and drink item, regardless of the size of the meal, was only offering 30 minutes of buffs. This means there would be no difference between eating an onion versus a slab of meatloaf. Having thus far resisted the urge to mod the game and simply play the damn thing, I couldn't help myself and loaded up xEdit only to discover that Bethesda had set the properties for three tiers of hydration and nourishment incorrectly to tier 2 for everything.
The framework for a slightly more complex survival system was already there but Bethesda had either messed something up, made the decision to keep it super simple, or just didn't have the development time to fully implement the system. What I thought would be a simple hour job turned out to be a good couple of days modding work and the Starfield Survival Sandwich was born.
Features
Tiered Buffs
Different food now keeps you fed for a longer or shorter period depending on the food item being consumed. The same goes for drinks.
Improved Naming ConventionsEach effect is named based on the effectiveness of the food consumed. For example, an onion will keep you Nourished, a canned meal with keep you Fed and a full meal with make you Well Fed.
Effect Layering
Lower effects will not overwrite higher effects. For example, the Nourished effect will not take effect if you already have the Fed or Well Fed effect. However a higher effect such as Well Fed will replace Nourished and Fed.
Alcohol Effects
Alcoholic beverages no longer hydrate you but retain their other effects.
Fruit Hydration
A small number of fruits such as apples, pears and watermelons will also hydrate you alongside providing the nourishment buff.
Installation & Getting StartedUse your mod manager of choice to install the mod and ensure you have the latest version of Starfield.
Also be sure to enable to "Sustenance" feature in the "Game Settings" and ensure it's set to either Positive Only or Positive & Negative.
The Sustenance features will not trigger until after you have met Barrett for the first time on Vectera. Additionally, in rare cases, it may require you to save and reload the game before effects will kick in.
I also recommend you install the BAKA Achievement Enabler.
Compatibility
This will need to be loaded after the Starfield Community Patch in your load order for the alcohol effects to be removed.
Any other mod that edits ingestible food items pre-Starfield patch 1.11.36 may remove the required magic effects added by the patch and cause issues with sustenance working as expected. An example here is MONSTERaider - Weightless Items that inadvertently removes the required sustenance magic effects.
To help with weightless mod compatibility, SSS now has an optional version in the Files Section called Weightless Edition that will remove weight from food and drink items. Place this after other weightless mods in your load order.
Target Audience
This mod is for those similar to me who were left unsatisfied with the survival mode implementation, at least when it comes to food and drink, but who don't want to deal with overly complex options already out there. This tries to stick with Bethesda's fairly clean and tidy implementation whilst restoring some of the elements they neglected to include.
Ideal Solutions
Ideally, this system would not have been tied to magic effects as it means that waiting around or sleeping can have some odd side effects on the magic effects running on the player. It's also tied to real world time as opposed to game time, which in my experience isn't the best method for a needs system. I've experimented with both as seen in my Skyrim mods such as A Cat's Life and A Dog's Life.
Until the Creation Kit for Starfield is released, I'm fairly limited as to what I can change and I have a limited understanding of how the system works without seeing the script source. Yes, I could probably go through the hassle of decompiling them and trying to fix them, but it's not worth the time investment when the CK will makes things far quicker and easier.
Credits
Huge thanks to the xEdit Team as without them, the original mod would not have been made, allowing me to figure the ins and outs prior to the launch of the Creation Kit.
Phayntom for assisting with testing updates and potential issues with new versions of the game.
