I was very disappointed in the cooking system, i was hoping for more. But I would still like it if i could atleast see myself eating somethign when i was at an Inn for something. I mean since it serves no purpose outside of rping, and i know there are animations for it, i see NPCs eating and drinking all the time. It would be cool if my character did those also.

My problem with cooking is that you need salt for most of the recipes - which is too usefull as alchemic ingredient to "waste" it on cooking...

But there are scads of salt piles in loot. Do people not loot barrels? Salt has never been scarce for me. I have hundreds and hundreds of salt piles even on my alchemy character.

I am with you Cotax, I think I mentioned before, but maybe in a different post that they should add different role-playing modes (this way hardcoe mode would not up the diffculty of combat as well) Maybe 3 modes like standard, which would leavethe game as it is now. Then have adept, which would add requirements to eat, drink, and sleep. Then add hardcoe, which would have all the requirements of adept, but also remove fast travel. They could so the same things with and economy mode as well... maybe add things as someone else had suggested (maybe in another post as well) that you have to pay taxes on your house, pay up keep for the horse. Make it so that you have to pay for your followers room in a inn... etc. This way the game could be as complicated or as simple as you would like it to be.

Even though it's useless, I hate how cooking requires salt for everything. I don't need put salt on a piece of salty horker blubber when I cook it.

That is kind of difficult to swallow.

I have right now around eight hundred arrows, and I can run like the wind with no problem but if I carry fifty mudcrab chitins and about three hundred blue mountain flowers and I cannot walk.

How is ok to carry an obscene amount of arrows? It is strange indeed.

There is some commands and by speculating maybe hard core mode was in the game but got scrapped at some point.

Although it is now useless, I remember using food and cooking at the first levels. You have few skills and no money for potions, plus you don't theoretically know the ingredients for health potions. On a second playthrought it might be different though...

Actually if you ask Ognar in the Sleeping Giant Inn in Riverwood if you can use the Alchemy table he will tell you that Blisterwort and Wheat will make a healing potion. He also has these for sale, so it is possible to know how to make a healing potion at the begining of the game.

Not trying to bash the game just asking the question. Could cooking have been done better in this game?

Here is my thought on it:

I like that they added this to the game, I did not like food items being alchemal ingredients (like they did in Oblivion), but I think it could have been done better, and here is why. All the recipies do is increase stamina or health, by a minimal amount (I think the best recepie is 15 points). So at lower levels this is good I guess, but with the abundance of health potions that can be found in the game (or bought), after a certain point, the idea of carrying around a 100 venison steaks for a dungeon crawl seems riduculous (not to mention the idea of downing 10 of them during combat when 4 health potions (or less) would do the job. So here is my idea for a solution, I think it would be better if say after not eating for 24 hours, your max health would drop by 1/3, and for each additonal 24 hours another 1/3 drop until you eat something (effectively you could starve your character to death). Now here is where cooking could come in, if your charecter is "hungry" he could just eat an apple or a carrot and resolve the problem, but if he ate a prepared meal (i.e. one of the recipies) it would add a positive effect, such as a 5% bonus to 0ne-handed for the next 8 hours. Each recpie could have its own advantage and more comlicated recipes could provide similar advantages only better (example: eating a venison steak increases one-handed damage by 5%, but venison stew increases damage by 10%). I think this would be better from at least a role-playing perspective, becuase as it stands right now you could theoretically go through the whole game and never eat a meal. Which leads me to another role-playing point in the game that could use improvement, sleeping.

I like that they made the change from Oblivion, where you don't have to sleep to gain a level, as you can now use the level up strategically, but it opens up another point. You can now go through the whole game and never sleep, unless you are looking to get the rested/ well rested bonus. So again, I think this can be fixed in a similar fashion, say if your character has been awake for 20 hours, their stamina would drop by 1/3. Then for every additional 10 hours they go without sleeping another 1/3 drop. If their stamina gets to 0 then make it so they can only move as if they were over-incumbered. Now to help with those long hauls (Solitude to Riften for example) make it so that the player can carry a bed roll in the inventory, then you can stop an camp anywhere along the way. Just drop the bed roll then you can use it and carry on in the morning (maybe though you don't get the rested bonus for camping).

So these are my ideas, do you think they are better than the current system or do you like the way it currently runs?

The way it runs is fine. Granted some recipes are less useful than others, but you have clearly never exploited the power of a simple "vegtable soup". That recipe is a warriors must. Without going into too much detail; it basically lets u continue "shield bashing" & "power attacking" for 15 minutes straight, regardless of stamina loss/stats. How is that "pointless". In some fights, you can almost "bash" an entire bandit camp to death without even raising your sword arm! I am level 52 and I still use them (I carry around 40 in my "favourites menu" at all times). They have even saved me from wasting a perk(s) in the restoration skill tree to regain stamina! And if your not a warrior?!? Then simply make the "elsweyr fondue".

Don't knock cooking recipes!!!!!!!