Cooking is a curiosityfeature. The game hands out so much free potions that cooking is just an extra chore of choice. The gameplay wouldn't suffer at all if all food was cut out from the game, that's how much it is worth in its current state. Not to say it couldn't have been made a feature more worthwhile or even that its current presence is bad, though... but, like I said, it's a curiosityfeature of no real value but immersion to some.

Cooking would have been very useful and fun if there has been a hardcoe mode (like in New Vegas, too bad this great idea wasn't imported, wonder why...) or if they didn't added the huge life regeneration and you needed to eat to get back your HP (I really hate this life regen...).
Wasted opportunity, really. But the good point is, the structure does exist in the game and it will be usable in mods, so it's fixable.

I like it. :tops:

I'd like it more if there was a hardcoe mode.

I hope they improve cooking at some point. They could perhaps integrate it with Alchemy for instance. IE: Make some of the reagents for Alchemy only available via cooking or at least significantly cheaper if you obtain it via cooking. Something like that

Elysweyr Fondue: Regenerate Magicka 25 for 720 seconds Fortify Magicka by 100 for 720 seconds.
Doesn't sound useless to me.

That's what I'm betting also. hardcoe mode will be created and suddenly food will be awesome cause I know I'll play hardcoe.

Cooking should be a levelable skill if you ask me.

Food/potion saved me countless times from dying when I only have a hair of health left.

Yeah I really don't know why they didn't include a 'hardcoe' mode to give the food items a bit more of a point. Yeah they're good for the health and stamina regain if you don't have potions, but I'm only as far as Level 12 and already have upwards of 10 "standard" health potions and several more ones made with alchemy. Ingredients for health and stamina are not uncommon. So yeah, even considering that, it's still not that much of a validation.

And as for the RP aspect - yeah I'll buy into that. BUT - why don't the player characters display eating and drinking animations like NPCs do!? Laziness?

EDIT: As for discussion on a hardcoe mod being released....if it happens I really hope Bethesda make it themselves, as part of a DLC or something. Even if I had to pay to get Microsoft Points to get it, I probably would. If it was just a player's mod for PC users, that'd piss me off.

THe only use for wood is improving your long bow, or having more weight. Id like to see many more uses for food, such as feeding your horse to give it a boost, and lots of special recipies that give you more bonuses than some potions

... what else could you possibly do with food?

It's for your wives....XD I like to cook the apple cabbage soups? because they heal 15 stamina and 10 health.

will you all try the poison thing ?? in your cooking ??

Do the 720s buffs from beef stew, horker stew, vegetable soup and venison stew stack? If they do 4 stamina/s and 3 health/s may not sound like a lot but could make a hell of a difference in a protracted battle.

Fallout:NV had the "hardcoe" option that made food/hunger/thirst/sleep part of the game. It wasn't just in a DLC.

I like the cooking aspect of Skyrim, but it would be nice if it felt like you were working towards something, more. Doesn't have to be skills/levelups....but something. I haven't come even close to the amount of hours played as many here probably have....do you ever get to do something, like, say, enter cooking contests in the towns? Anything like that? It might be fun if you had to hunt around for/discover recipes that would win such contests. I dunno...maybe...something...just thinking out loud. :laugh:

i think its just for role playing and i like it. everytime i enter a city i find a inn buy some mead sit down by a fire eat some food then read some books whar i havent yet read. just adds to the experience...

Regenerating health is a lean mean feature killing machine

RPG or go to Mac D

As I progress the benefits of food become less and less, but I still really enjoy hunting and cooking for some reason and some of the food looks delecious tbh.
The salmon looks amazing and I can almost smell the apple and cabbage stew lol.

So I still cook from time to time and having a bit of food in my inventory has saved my life a couple of times when I was starting out, I don't use magic at all and when you run out of potions you're damn glad you still had that stack of mammoth snout steaks or whatever in your bag.

But yeah... New Vegas style hardcoe mode, please!

We'll need water skins for that too, another use for leather.

sure is. the game is great but sometimes I wonder who pushed ideas like this... Ive got a [censored] load of worthless food. It would be nice to do more than just "pretend" to need it. Ive played since Morrowind and Im still just not that into the whole pretending thing. Not with food at least.


Dont count on it. Not their style

no hardcoe mode= no use for food :sadvaultboy: .

like a much of skyrim's failings, i have a sneaking suspicion that food is useless because its just there as a jumping off point for modders to implement things like hardcoe modes.

Just tested beef stew, venison stew, and vegetable soup together. They do stack, adding a noticeable amount to my sprint distance (though part of that is the fortify buff) and allowing me to sprint more often. Not terribly important in the scheme of things but helpful.

I agree they could have done more with it, but it's not totally useless, especially at lower levels. My cooking was the only reason my mage managed to beat a dragon priest at level 8 and get a really awesome mask. Seriously, Elsweyr Fondue is incredibly handy. Plus it's a nice little addition for RP purposes and realism.

But, as usual, we get people complaining because they included a feature but it's not the "right" feature. I honestly believe these people would turn TES into Generic D&D Clone #10,693 if they were given the chance.