Hello Modding community!


I'll make this straight to the point for now, and I as I do further testing I will report back and update the OP here.



The issue my mod addresses: Cooking

We all know cooking exists, and we all know its relatively useless and unexciting. Whats the point of creating a Leg of Goat roast over some cooked beef? Absolutely nothing. And whats the point of doing Either over gathering alchemy ingredients for restore health potion? Absolutely Nothing!

So we know the issue. Cooking just isn't useful. Its not special, there's no point in being a hunter over an alchemist. So my mod will set out to change that.

How will I do it?

I plan on looking through each ingredient, determining how difficult it is to acquire, and based on that, creating and modifying the current recipes and their effects. I like the trend of restoring health over time, however 1 point of health every second for 720 seconds is not noticeable. I want the effects of your meals to be noticeable and actually worth it.
Some possible effects may include

-Every meal, no matter what, would in addition to the effects, give an instant restore health effect of a value depending on the quality of the food. aka. Every meal restores X health in addition to the effects unique to it.

-A much greater amount of health restored over a shorter period of time, not completely instant.

-Specific effects based on the meal that improve certain skills, for example the proteins from higher quality meats may temporarily increase your one handed and two handed weapon skills and, because of that, your damage output with those weapons is increased because of the boost of strength it gives you.

-Perhaps a certain meal could improve your focus temporarily, therefor lock picking is easier for the time being.

-Certain foods may give you boosts of energy and allow for a speed increase for a small amount of time.

-Some meals could provide a bonus in maximum health, magicka, or stamina for a small amount of time to give that extra edge in a fight.

-Higher quality meals would provide greater effects. Perhaps the same meal that could be made with rabbit meat could be made with mammoth meat, however with more beneficial stat increases.


Finally, to keep things balanced I may experiment with a 'soft' hunger stat, for example Not eating would not have any negative effect, however eating too much would provide no bonuses, but still restore the X amount of health the meal provides by default. This way, you could eat a lot of food if you found yourself in a pinch and needed health, however you could not temporarily become a super soldier with godly effects. Limiting 1, 2 or 3 meal/s per X amount of time would also solve this issue. I'll have to test more to figure this out.
Finally, bonuses would not stack.


Again for now i'm simply in a brainstorm stage and a slight balance stage, just using math and some in game experience to figure some values out and determine how balanced it may be. In the meantime, I would love to hear feedback and Ideas on the subject!

Thanks guys

Fairly well thought out and I agree that cooking needs some serious love. As it is, the only meal worth making for me is the Elsweyr Fondue. I'd like to see more potential meals for one thing, also I think cooked food should at least be on par with small health potions in their healing effect. Right now its more like "Do I carry this 2kg hunk of venison for 5hp boost or 2x ingredients that weigh 0.1kg each to make a heal potion for 35hp...."

A nice touch to cooking, i had also released a post on Food and Cooking ideas, and id love to help out by giving some ideas:

-Getting Hungry
Over time your character in Skyrim can become hungry and as a result can become slightly choppy in combat. The longer you go without eating, the harsher the penalties.
Eating will sustain you for a few hours, after that a character may experience a decrease in performance. For example:
-decrease in damage out put from weapons by 5%,10%,15% and up to 20% depending how long it has been since they last ate.
-increase cost of magicka when casting spells, as your mind may not be completely focused on the task at hand due to hunger, by 5%,10%,15% and up to 20%.
-the cost of stamina when swinging weapons, holding breath for bow, and while running is increased by 5%, 10%, 15% and 20%
-health, magicka, and stamina suffer a decrease in regeneration by 30% at all levels
-and maybe a last example could include a decrease in running speed slightly by 5% and up to 10%.

- Skill Tree For Cooking
This could include features such as buffs and improvements to eating food. For example:
-20%,40%,60%,80% and 100% increase to health gained from eating foods
-buffs from foods are doubled in duration and potency.
- the last perk could be a master chef perk that allows you to learn certain rare recipes that give the user access to foods much greater than regular meals, and with substantially larger buffs.
-Foods can be poisoned and can be placed in inventories of victims for a swift death, same as poisons.
-temporary speed buffs from certain foods.
-other possibilities if you guys have ideas.

IF it is possible. Id love to add a cooking skill tree. However as far as hunger goes, I am going to leave it out.
I don't want this mod to force users to eat, simply to allow them to cook as an alternative. However I plan on fully supporting this with other popular hunger mods should they arise.

For the time being, I will focus strictly on the positive effects of cooking.

Ofcourse ^.^, looking forward to seeing your work.

Great idea.
I myself was also thinking along those lines (http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1275191-idea-gastronomy/), although, I didn't envisage a 'soft stat' (especially since I'm not sure how to do it, even with a Creation Kit).
I'd imagine something like that might come in the form of a hardcoe mod.

Have a look at my topic, maybe you can get some ideas I won't be working on it until we have the Creation Kit, which might take a while.

Honestly I don't think cooking needs to be buffed since it feels like it was only added to the game to give all the hunger-mods something better to work with, and if you do buff it enough to be useful it becomes completely unrealistic (i.e., eating vegetable soup to recover from serious sword wounds).

That said, I like the idea of making poisoned foods and limiting how much food you can eat per game hour (stomach only has so much room in it).

Some other ideas you could use:

1) Make cooking more useful without having to increase the effectiveness of food at all by adding a "Well Fed" buff similar to the Well Rested buff that adds 5% faster skill leveling if you've eaten enough food. You only get it if you eat cooked meals though, not from raw food ingredients, and only if you eat enough to reach the limit of food you can eat per hour. The buff stacks with Well Rested and lasts longer if it was cooked by you or your spouse.

2) Limit the player to only a few basic recipes at first, and make them seek out cooks and inkeepers and people's grandma's to learn more recipes. Maybe let the player experiment to try and create new recipes from scratch similar to alchemy.

3) New recipes. Lots of em.

4) Cooking isn't useful enough to justify giving it a new skill, so instead base cooking effectiveness off of the alchemy skill. Cooking and alchemy are already very similar crafts anyway, only one mixes mundane ingredients and the other mixes magical ones. Cooking food gives half the experience as brewing a potion and eating food gives none (unlike eating ingredients).

I understand your concern. However.

I dont plan on allowing vegetable soup to heal sword wounds. Allowing for a small amount of health regened for each food item is simply to allow for balance. And it isnt as unrealistic as you think. A little food can go a long way. But most certainly not heal a sword wound. and, my mod will only add maybe 15-25 health per food item, not enough to cure a sword wound.

1. The buffs I will apply will act a lot like a well fed buff, however there will be multiple buffs depending on what food you eat. Like I said before, food wont heal more, its not meant to replace alchemy. It will simply act in giving bonuses in a different way.

2. Limiting recipes would work best with a skill tree. It doesnt matter how well the cookbook is written, a cook who hasn't made a single meal cannot make a perfectly cooked filet mignon. You wanted realism? Skill tree is best approach.

3. More recipes = more content. More content = more to put into a skill tree. Thus solving your problem of cooking not being Important enough for its own tree.

4.see above.

as for the poisons Idea. I like the idea as well. and seeing as a few of you are asking for it, I will definitely add it to the list. Perhaps an oblivion style Poisoned apple.

This all of course assumes we can implement custom trees. And only time will tell if we can or cannot. Fingers crossed.

Giving this a bump. These pages move quick!

Could use some more feedback

I could have sworn Bethesda said cooked meats and foods you make would have lasting effects, akin to the resting bonus. I'm disappointed to see that it just heals you 10HP vs just 2.

I think a great thing to do would be a "Fed" and "Well Fed" bonus on a basic level. Fed = uncooked snacky food, might give you a 5% bonus to XP and stamina regen, while "Well Fed" involves cooked foods and would give you a 10% bonus to both XP and Stamina regen for 4-6 hours or so. Special recipies might also have additional effects, such as 5% health boost or magicka boost for 4-5 hours. I think the key is to not make it so you need to cook to get powerful, but just nice bonuses to encourage eating well (much like there being a bonus to actually sleeping in a bed for a certain length of time).