Once again, free mods have more to offer than the Creation Club’s paid content
Creation Club recently arrived for Skyrim Special Edition, and like Fallout 4 it supplies a small selection of armor and weapons available to buy for Skyrim SE. Additionally, there are two ways –one that brings mobs of zombies during the night, and yet another that introduces an official survival mode.
I am sure I’m not alone in believing Bethesda promoting a survival mode for Skyrim SE is a bit dubious. There are tons of free survival mods and have existed around for years, for both the original Skyrim and the Special Edition–most notably Chesko’s outstanding Campfire and Frostfall mods–and certainly these mods will be the inspiration for Skyrim SE’s brand new paid content. Plus, when Bethesda’s survival mode for Fallout 4 was released it had been (and still is) totally free. While survival style for Skyrim SE was free for the first week, it’s currently for sale, and I don’t have to take the internet’s temperature to understand that plenty of individuals are somewhat hot about it.
At the same time, I am interested in the mode itself. Having already bought some things from Creation Club for Fallout 4, I made a decision to purchase and test the brand new survival system. SSE’s survival style costs 500 credits at the Club store, which is roughly $5, even though naturally you can not purchase $5 worth of credits: the minimum sum is 750 credits for $7.99. Even with all the 100 free credits Bethesda provides you, you still will need to spend $8 if you didn’t catch the survival mode while it was free (I forgot to). I’ve said it before, and may as well say it again: it stinks when you need to buy a preset amount of fungus for something that you need, instead of just paying whatever the actual cost is.
Faced with the prospect of starting a brand new game and starting with that long wagon-ride in to Helgen, the coming of Angry Shouty Dragon, the recognizable tutorial escape, and the uneventful trot into Riverwood, I decide to download the consistently lovely (and free) Alternate Start mod (here is the link for normal Skyrim), which lets you begin your game as somebody other than the Dragonborn in your way to implementation in Helgen.
One of the several options is to begin is as a traveler who awakens on a sinking boat in freezing water away from the coast of Solitude. You have to escape the capsized boat, collecting what few items which you can along the way, and float to safety through frigid waters. Seems like a great way to start a survival game.
May confirm: cold water is cold. Really cold. As I splash around in the bowels of this flooded boat, the freezing water eats my health away immediately, and I am only able to devote a couple of seconds paddling around before I am close to death. In SSE’s survival style, being cold limits you from filling your health meter entirely (it also makes lockpicking and choosing pockets more difficult, presumably because of vibration fingers). You do not automatically recover health with time in this manner, either, although that’s not such a huge deal in Skyrim since every character is born with a healing spell. Provided that it is possible to find a few moments of solitude and a have several centimeters of magic, you will have the ability to remain alive and cure.
Like I escape the ship and climb out on the iceberg it struck, the desire system kicks in often –a bit too often for my tastes, even though that is certainly not exclusive to Skyrim SE’s survival style (I have griped about the typical problems with appetite systems earlier ). I do like the appetite notification itself: it has a fairly convincing sound impact of a hungry stomach gurgling. I only wish it would not happen so frequently: I’ve scarfed down several apples and five whole cabbages already but I am still almost always hungry.
There’s no desire system in Skyrim SE survival, which feels like an odd omission. Granted, the entire world is largely covered in snow so that it appears unlikely you’d become dehydrated (if this hypothetical thirst program lets you have a fistful of snow( that’s ), but it does feel odd nothing regarding thirst has been included.
Position on the ice floes, I try repeatedly to float into the relative safety of property. For a little while, it feels like I just will not be able to make itI maintain freezing to death that the minute I make it to the next floe. Below, like a little supercut of my repeated deaths just as I reach security.
After about five tries I eventually make it, after taking a sprinting jump off the first floe and using my healing spell the moment I’ve got my boots onto the subsequent one. Rather than run toward Solitude, I plan for Dawnstar. Fast-travel isn’t an option in this manner, however at least you can save your game whenever you want.
Along the way, I try to keep warm. There is something fun about warming yourself by the fire at a game, and you may do that in SSE’s survival mode. In terms of keeping warm with clothes and armor, however, it feels somewhat like they just slapped a warmth rating on things, and also often it’s the exact same rating. I analyze each wearable thing I find, expecting to have to make difficult decisions, sacrificing armor rating for warmth, but it is never actually the case. Iron armor includes a heat evaluation of 27. Fur armor includes a heat rating of 27. Standard clothing has a warmth rating of 27. I do find some items with ratings as high as 54, but that I never really feel like I’m making a tough decision in terms of things to wear, or spending time assessing the pros and cons of outfits is worth it. This might also be because there’s simply so much clothes and armor easily found in the game, and even with the mode’s reduced carry weight I have many kinds of armor and clothing in my inventory.
Unable to cook in the first few fires I come across (and unable to construct my own flame and use it for cooking where and whenever I want) I scarf down some raw fish meat to answer my growling stomach and am immediately stricken with food poisoning. This reduces my stamina and magic recovery and prevents food from curing me, but the major effect is that the NPCs in Dawnstar constantly tell me I look ill. It feels somewhat impolite of them, so that I slip as much food and clothes from their homes as I can.
I am fairly tired of being cold all the time so I decide to go south, though I instantly encounter a blizzard, which compels me to return to Dawnstar for a little, and later I’ve a harrowing few minutes of trying to warm myself by a troll’s fire while mammoths try to stomp me into paste. I am currently fighting my way through a cave full of bandits, mainly because I am only hoping one of these will have a potion that will cure my food poisoning, some warmer booties, or maybe just a damn cooking kettle so I could sip this fish meat before eating it.
After a few hours of play, I am generally feeling as the Creation Club survival style is fine: it’s a fantastic way to introduce gamers to the notion of survival if they’ve never used a survival mod (or never played a survival game before). It will add an additional layer of thought, slows down the speed of the game down, and gives you a series of little decisions and makes those decisions feel much more weighty. For someone who does not want to go through the rigamarole of installing free mods and utilities, and does not mind spending 5 (technically, $8), it is not a bad choice to get your feet wet.
There are, nevertheless, better, stronger, more elastic, and more enjoyable choices if you would like to bring intriguing and hard survival components into Skyrim, and they are free. Again, begin with Chesko’s Campfire and Frostfall. (Special Edition versions here and here). They require a bit more work to get up and running, but they are absolutely worth the additional time, and you do not have to get anything.
