We know that cooking is included in skyrim. cooking is so similar to alchemy so why do we even care about cooking? I hope the food isn't just there to prevent you from starving to death and serve no other purpose.

I think the importance of food should be emphasized this way:

1. remove the ability to heal by waiting, or even sleeping. Instead, food serves as a method to slowly generate a large amount of health over time. You can even eat and then wait, and then your health will be full. Potions on the other hand should have quick instant effect to aim in battle.
2. to make food more important as a health regen agent, make health potions more rare, and restore health spell shouldn't be available to everybody upon beginning of the game.
3. dishes can be made using ingredients that have no negative effects. For example, make food items such as apple, pear, cheese, graqes, wheat, meat... only have positive effects. You'll need at least two of these kind of ingredients to make a dish.
4. to poison a dish, you can add ingredients that have certain negative effects that will damage the health such as damage health, fire damage, frost damage, poison damage etc. or even paralyzation!
5. food should have containers. Remember those useless plates and bowls? when you cook you require one of them, and it becomes part of your dish. after you eat the dish, you get the plate back.

6. By St Frantic: food can be used as a substitute for alchemy. This gives us a variety of possibilities:
A. For characters not specializing in alchemy, they can use cooking to make rudimentary potions;
B. Make it that potions can only be made in town in sophisticated alchemy labs. while you are on the run in the wilderness without access to the lab, you can use cooking to make dishes that serve as a substitute for potions.

How do you think?

I want Runescape's skill system.

that literally sounds perfect, it solves the health regen by waiting system, it sounds very good for immersion, which i am all for. cool ideas man :celebration:

added one more

Someone please explain to me how in any way cooking is similar to alchemy?

Oh, and another point; How would making a dish of 'whatever' heal wounds? My character just gets pinned by 10 arrows and baking a loaf of bread will make it right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s5K5RFzRzg

People complain about healing by waiting, but isn't that exactly what you do to heal from an injury? Wait for you body to repair itself?

You don't eat to heal your injuries. This would be like a big step backwards for people who want a little more realism in their game.

Thought for food, may i recommend a book http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Withershins

I'd rather they remove healing regeneration, make you either drink a potion which would cause you to slowly heal, or return to a bed where you could rest and possibly contract diseases depending on the environment.

10 bottles of mead = Berserker Rage !

well, wound healing is tissue regeneration, basically. to regenerate tissue, guess what, you need protein! so yea technically if you don't eat, your body can't repair itself...

well, I know using food to regenerate health doesn't make much sense in real life. in real life why do we eat?
1. food tastes good
2. food gives us energy

we can't simulate taste in a game so 1 is out. unless we implement some kind of energy system (maybe when you run, fight both consume energy), 2 is out too. So it really leaves us no purpose to give to food and cooking besides health regen. right?

There is an energy system. It's called fatigue.

Hehe... Dude has a tramp stamp.



Thanks, but I do have a somewhat basic grasp of human physiology.

My issue is the immediacy of the effect. Besides, stuffing yourself with pie to cure a gut wound would be something only a mother would think of.

I mean cake and ice cream is fine for hurt feelings, but that stab to the solar plexus will need something a bit more substantial to remedy.

now it's stamina. well, stamina is different from fatigue because it's related to how long you can keep doing one thing, like how many push ups you can do in a row. after resting for 5 minutes, you can do another set of push ups.
but I agree, in the morrowind/daggerfall era, where fatigue isn't self-regenerating, food will server much more purpose. but that era is gone.

I think cooking will be great.
I think it's stated that alchemy ,you do in towns,villages etc now,not 100% on that.
If that is the case,thats where cooking comes in.
I hope you can make camps/campfires to cook food out in the wilderness,would help save those vital potions.
It will also add to the roleplay aspect,say roleplaying a ranger or hunter etc.
Tod howard said he liked the archery mod.....i also believe he liked the camp mod,where you could make camp,sleep in the wilderness,whereever you so desired.
Which would also link to cooking.
Anyway i think cooking is good either as a job/source of income,or as i've said above
Camps,cooking,fishing.....YES please

I think these are all great ideas. I agree with everything here. I think we all just want a more realistic, challenging experience!

added one more, quoting St Frantic

We don't know exactly how stamina will work in Skyrim. If it is anything like the old Fatigue system then option #2 is still in, just like it was for Oblivion. And guess what! Back in Oblivion, eating food did increase your fatigue. I would not be surprised in the slightest if food affected your stamina.

Maybe food should just heal diseases and stamina?


Off topic but I love that book! Whoever wrote it is a genius!

What they really need is not have an hour of rest fully heal you. You need a full nights rest to fully heal.

That alone would allow for both worlds to co-exist in happy land.

All I want is a glass of water.

Its always boozes or some weird ass potion concoction that is made of god knows what.

haha, that made me laugh + you've a point.

It'd be logical for food to restore fatigue with nearly inmediate effects, but not healing wounds. That's what either magic (or bandages + a lot of bed time) are for.

but that only works if fatigue doesn't regenerate by itself

there should be water source in the city where you can get water from.