can anyone please explain to me why on earth it takes so many survival points to make a simple steak? it takes 50 skill points to make a coyote and bighorn steak, 40 to make a dog steak and only 25 to make a gecko steak. the prime ingredient for all is the meat in question and the 'tool' you need to create one is a campfire.
now i dont put a lot (if any) skill points into my survival catagory but surely making a steak wouldnt be beyond me? when, lets face it, all it entails is heating up meat which even cavemen mastered at some point.
50 points? rather excessive in my opinion. plus, why is it easier to make a gecko steak over a dog steak? surely it entails the same simplistic procedure?

Cause of game-logic?
I'm dead serious.

Game-logic is very funky and it's best to not think too far into stuff sometimes.

easier to hack a steak out of a gecko than a furry, heavier critter maybe. no hair to mess with, no fleas and ticks and fewer flies to stick to your bloody hands, maybe its just a step above on the easy scale for the travel weary survivalist. OR maybe gecko meat is just so tasty it only needs to be seared over a fire and you have a super tasty meal, while coyotes, dogs, et al need more preparation, seasoning etc?

bacause if the steak could be made easy like, people would be ticked off about it. can never really win.

Why does it take no skill to butcher a beast (I think it's safe to say that a lot more people have experience with cooking meat than butchering corpses), and why do you only get one or two pieces of meat off even large critters? *shrug*

For the same reasons why anyone can cook a chicken but you need to know what you're doing when cooking alligator?

It could be because some species meat is too intensely and/or unpleasantly-flavored and can only be eaten when prepared in specific ways that take skill. Or because the meat is too tough. Or because it has particularly nasty muscle worms and one needs to actually know what they're doing in order to make it safe to eat.

Thats how I feel. I mean, you give me some food and say 'cook it' I can probably make a good meal, you ask me to cut out the part that makes steak, I'll stare at you stupid.

Because preparing food just right so you don't end up being poisoned or glowing from radiation is probably a bit of an art in a world like Fallout.



I'll be surprised if I didn't have to discard large portions of a critter that I had just butchered in Fallout. Toxic materials builds up throughout the foodchain, so the meat from the big predators will be much more poisonous than compareable quantities of, say, molerat meat.

Probably because Bighorner Steaks pwn if you're playing hardcoe Mode.


4 rly.

Good amount of logic put forth, most likely half or none of it. The other half I'd honesty bet on is just for game mechanics.

People seem to forget these are pieces of -Entertainment-

I'm sure at points they had to do things or set them a certain way that'd make sense in a game.
And I say that as a fairly big Black Isle/Interplay(Before Brian Fargo's departure) really devoted fan.

This... and to differentiate the healing properties of each item.
IRL no healing would be made from them, only appeasing your stomach.
TBH though the cooking of basic meats should have been a none skill..
Skining of the creature or the effects given, should have just been scaled on a more finite scale to the survival skill instead.

Just another thought.
It's been how many years now since mankind lived a civilized life,this is the wasteland.
Maybe Iguana are more readily availabe than coyote so that is what they remember how to cook and pass down to through the generations.

I guess it boils down to you're interpretation of the game.

We're talking about an area of land with advanced technology scattered about not to mention New Vegas itself. You don't need to be civilized to know cook meat or the various ways to prepare a certain animals meat.

Basically it is the combination of the needs of a Video Game combined with sensibility of how something might be done wether cooking, gutting, building, etc.

Plus it's an RPG that you can play with whatever view you really want of anything. Nuff said.

There is a mod that allows you to make all steaks right from the start, with the quality of the steaks increasing with your survival skill, but honestly, that makes it way too easy and almost totally removes any incentive to put points in survival, because even the beginning steaks are all you'll ever need and you'll end up with enough of them to put Sizzler out of business.

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35706 is the mod I'm talking about if you're still interested.

I'm with you OP, the cooking skill requirements, the food bonuses are all a bit ridiculous.

If u can use mods then go for the cooking mods. I think I'm using the one Mister Nutsy linked. You can make bread. Enough said.