I've noticed that food and drink is suddenly less effective at curing thirst and hunger, 2% less effective, to be precise. Purified water is -98 where it was -100, and food that was -150 is now -147. I checked my status and have no ill effects. I didn't change equipment at all. My Survival skill is at 50, the same place it's been for a few levels. So nothing is different about my character that I can see.

Is it possible that food goes bad? At first I thought it might only be crafted food, since I craft my own purified water, too, but even the Cram I have in my inventory is affected.

The only explanation I can think of is that the Survival skill is scaled to your level. What I mean is, at a low level, a low level of Survival is all that is required to get the full benefit of food, but as you level up, the level of Survival needs to rise. Does that seem far-fetched? Anyone here have a high level character with a low Survival? If so, how much thirst does purified water cure for you?

Oh, and it also seems to affect Sleep. My Atomic Cocktails only subtract 196 from SLP, whereas it always used to be -200.

Obviously something has changed your survival skill, be it directly or through your endurance stat.

As I said, Survival has been at 50 for several levels. It is still at 50. My Endurance hasn't changed. It is at 5, where it's been the whole game. If it had changed, my Survival would no longer be at 50, now, would it?

I understand the basic mechanics of the game, thank you. The major ones do not explain this, as I showed, so I was hoping someone here might know of something more obscure that might be the cause.

The only thing that has changed with my character recently is that I purchased the Strength mod from the clinic. Unless it's a bug, that wouldn't have an effect on food.

Ok, I'm going to chalk it up to some strange bug. I loaded a save from just before I got the implant, and everything was normal. I then went and got the implant, and, just to check everything, went and sold some items (the only other thing I'd done). Everything is still normal.

Comparing my character now to the character with the problem, there is absolutely no difference. Skills, stats, equipment, effects, radiation level... they are all identical. The only difference is that one gets 2% less benefit from food and water. It is very strange. I'm glad I made a hard save just twenty minutes before this happened, so I can just continue with the normal character. I wonder if this has happened to anyone else. It would be very easy to miss, though.

I'm just going to go on the assumption that getting the Strength mod bugged out the first time. Maybe, since mods check your endurance stat to see if you can get them, it somehow reduced either endurance or its dependent skills, but under the hood, so to speak. That is to say, without actually displaying the change. IDK.