Needs & Survivial

Exposure

Frostfall introduces Exposure, which represents your current condition in the environment. As you get colder, your exposure increases.

Increasing your Warmth causes your exposure to increase more slowly. Clothing, armor, perks, and other items can add to your total Warmth.

When your exposure increases, you will begin suffering penalties. When your exposure is at maximum, you will lose consciousness and re-awaken elsewhere (possibly very far away).

Exposure increases much faster in cold environments, snowstorms, rainstorms, and at night.

A secondary attribute, Wetness, represents if your character is dry or soaked from being in the rain or swimming. When your wetness is high, your exposure increases more rapidly.

Increasing your Coverage reduces the rate you get wet in the rain. Coverage also helps reduce your exposure rate as well when the weather is severe.

The Frostfall temperature gauges on the UI page are a visual aid to these settings.

Staying warm

Falling into a lake or getting caught in a blizzard can spell doom for the unprepared. But with a little planning, resourcefulness, and experience, you can easily overcome these challenges. It all comes down to staying warm, and staying dry. Here are some ways you can do that.

1. Build a campfire and pitch a tent next to it Nothing like a nice big roaring campfire, and a fur tent to keep you toasty!
2. Armor or clothing in every slot. Clothing and armor increase your Warmth and Coverage ratings, which reduce exposure. Wear something in your head, body, hands, and feet slots.
3. Wield a torch, eat soups and stews, Eat Full meals. Grants small bonuses to Warmth.
4. Frost Resistance. Grants a bonus to Warmth. (This means that Nords start the game with a slightly higher Warmth Rating than others.)
5. Endurance perks. Accessible from any built campfire, Endurance skill perks can enhance your ability to survive in various circumstances. See the Endurance Skill for more information.
6. Keep an eye on the skies. Rain will soak you, greatly increasing your rate of exposure. Blizzards can be swift and deadly.
7. Use New spells to Bolster warmth. Spells such as Mage Coat, Soothe or bound cloak have been added to provide warmth. Kindle Consumes 1 wood to instantly lose 20 exposure - the “I’m freezing to death” panic button

To warm up and dry off, build a fire (or find one in the world), or go inside. Many homes and inns have lit fireplaces. Simply stand in front of a fire and your exposure and wetness will quickly decrease.

Exposure does not increase while indoors, so ducking into a nearby cave during a snowstorm is often a wise move.

Two new stats are visible on each piece of clothing, as well as in the inventory screen.

1. Warmth – A measure of how well you can endure the cold for long periods of time. Some armors, like fur, have high Warmth. Eating soup and carrying a torch can grant you a temporary bonus to Warmth. There are other ways to increase your Warmth Rating.
2. Coverage – A measure of how quickly you become wet in the rain and how well you resist exposure during severe weather. Some armors, like leather, have high Coverage. Shields add a small bonus to your Coverage as well.

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Hunger

All food will be classified as one of the following:

• Light (Such as a apple or sweet roll)
• Medium (Cooked Meat normally drop into thie catagory)
• Heavy (Meals made from the chef kit live here)
• Soup (Such as Apple Cabbage Soup will restore hunger and thirst)

Heavy foods obviously restoring the most hunger, while light foods restore the least. All Heavy and medium foods give you a bonus to your character which increases your warmth.

Innkeepers have the ability to serve you a full meal (20 Gold).

Thirst

• Thirst can be restored by drinking water. Empty bottles can be refilled at any body of water.
• Drinking bottles of alcohol will give you back an empty bottle that you can refill. (breakdown also has a Empty bottle option)
• If you refill your bottles with ocean water, you will receive salt water.
• Saltwater can be “distilled” into fresh water at any cookpot or using player crafting .
• Some towns have a well which can be used to fill empty bottles.
• Mead barrels will give you a bottle of mead every 30 days (if you dont enter the cell using that period)

Water has also been added to innkeepers to sell. They should almost always have a stock of water to sell. You can also ask them to refill water (10 Gold).

Alcohol will give you a wamrth bonus - but at the expense of a not nice to look at visual effect.

Exhaustion

Sleeping in a bed will restore your exhaustion. Sleeping on the floor, in a bedroll or tent will restore 25% less of your fatigue than sleeping in a normal bed.

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Clean

There are 4 stages of Dirt or blood. Your character will become dirtier every about 2 days, probably faster if you get into combat often. Getting hurt in combat has a small chance to make you advance a stage.

If you’ve reached stages 3 or 4 of the dirt/bloody level, you will get small buffs/debuffs to your speech related abilities (prices, persuasion, intimidation) as well as disease resistance.

Clean

You take your appearance seriously and those around you take notice. You are more likely to get a good price at shops, less likely to catch a disease and more likely to succeed when using your persuasion skills. (+5 Speech, +5% disease resistance)

Dirty

1. You are slightly dirty, but still clean judging by the local standards.
2. You are somewhat dirty, but no more than the usual adventurer.
3. You are quite dirty. Your lack of hygiene can affect your persuasion skills. Time to take a swim? (-5 Speech, -5% disease resistance)
4. Dirt has been accumulating on you for a while. Merchants will dislike you and you will have a hard time persuading those around you. Your lack of hygiene also makes you more susceptible to disease. (-10 Speech, -10% disease resistance)

Bloody

1. You have some blood on you, but nothing the locals are not used to.
2. You have some blood on you, but no more than your average adventurer. The locals will not pay attention to it.
3. You have blood all over you. You are no longer sure if it belongs to you or your enemies, but it certainly helps intimidating those around you. (-5 Speech, -5% disease resistance)
4. You are covered in blood and dirt. Although very intimidating, you’ll have a hard time getting a good bargain or persuading anyone with your current appearance. (-10 Speech, -10% disease resistance)

To wash yourself, you only to find a small patch of water, like a pond, river, or lake. Almost all of the water in Skyrim will work, even if it’s only foot deep. You simply need to stand in water and use a soap from your inventory (in the potion category) or press the keybind to take a bath. Your equipped items will be automatically unequipped and re-equipped after the animation has played. Taking a swim will wash most of the dirt and blood away. Standing in the rain also gets you clean, but it’s not as effective as bathing properly.

Baths in Inns

Bathing rooms have been added to all the vanilla inns in Skyrim and Solstheim. Each is its own cell, with a minimal footprint inside the inns – usually just a trapdoor and a small basket or other clutter to indicate the bathing room. Exceptions are some inns that have a basement, like the Bee & Barb in Riften or the Nightgate Inn– the bath has a full door in the cellar. Or full door to the New Gnisis Cornerclub and the Retching Netch in Raven Rock.

You must speak to the innkeeper to obtain the key to the bathroom. You will then have access to the bath for 12 game hours.

When using the bath, your player character will feel warmer & more relaxed.

All soap baskets in Inn baths open a merchant container where you can buy some soap and sell yours.

Note: all directions to the bathing room are relative to the entrance of the tavern.

Soaps

7 types of soaps which are craftable through player crafting near the cooking pot :

• Plain Soap (Fortify Sneak +5)
• Blue mountain Soap (Regenerate health +5)
• Red mountain Soap (Regenerate magicka +5)
• Purple mountain Soap (Regenerate stamina +5)
• Superior mountain Soap (Regenerate health +3, Regenerate magicka +3, Regenerate stamina +5)
• Lavender Soap (Fortify Speechcraft +3, Resist Magic +4)
• Dragon tongue (Fortify Speechcraft +3, Resist Fire +5)

Plain soap needs 1 Animal Fat, 1 Salt, All flowers soaps with the exception to Superior mountain, in addition to the plain soap requirements also needs 3 flowers of the type. Superior mountain needs 2 each of the 3 colors of mountain flowers.

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