A Starfield hardcore survival mode is finally here

This new Starfield mod adds a well-known set of mechanics to Bethesda’s iconic RPG, turning your experience in the Settled Systems into more of a survival and hardcore adventure akin to the extra difficulty modes in Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, and Fallout 4. With more features planned for the mod too, your next New Game Plus can be fraught with more scares than just a Terrormorph.

Aptly named ‘Eat.Sleep.Drink,’ the Starfield mod from ‘SeriousM00nlight’ adds just what you think it does to Bethesda’s game. You’ll need to eat, drink, and sleep every real-world hour to prevent a series of debuffs on your character, just like in other Bethesda games with the survival and hardcore difficulty mechanic. How this impacts the RPG game will be expanded over time, too.

If you don’t eat food you’ll lose health, not drinking water will lower your carrying capacity, and not sleeping will give you a -80% XP penalty, the opposite of the Emotional Security bonus. You can also pick and choose which of these you want, so if the XP penalty seems like too much for you, you can just not use it.

SeriousM00nlight adds “There will be more adjustments, features, and quests in the future under this mod,” so expect even more mechanics and storylines that potentially tie into them as well.

In SeriousM00nlight’s original Survivability mod, changes to Starfield weapons and carry weights were also implemented, but they say “Based on feedback, all of those adjustments will be kept in separate mods to give people flexibility. I will also likely not be looking to balance environmental damage any time soon either.”

The aim is for this eating, sleeping, and drinking mod to remain, well, modular. If you want to expand to have planetary hazards or other survivability mechanics you can download more mods, while this one will focus on improving and changing these three specific mechanics.

If you want to improve Bethesda’s space combat as well, this Starfield ship combat mod makes a handful of small but incredibly welcome changes. Otherwise, you can find SeriousM00nlight’s Starfield eat, drink, and sleep mod right here.

You can also brush up on all of the Starfield console commands and cheats to help make your space exploration as smooth as possible, along with all of the best Starfield skills you need to be working toward.

Still looking for more? While a good Starfield wiki can be a handy source of information, our new Starfield Database goes further, offering you daily news, searchable databanks, and even interactive tools.