When you release official content, it should perform better than mods, yet Frostfall/Campfire and iNeed work so much better and actually account for problems with the base game. I sure hope Bethesda is willing to change Survival through updates in order to improve these issues. Nison candle scanner.

I download Skyrim Special Edition's Survival Mode. It's several weeks old in Bethesda's Creation Club store now, but I wasn't interested at first. Certain mods had cobbled together a survival mode of sorts before. Mods, however, disable achievements, and anyone that's messed with mods before (I'm new to the mod game) knows that one mod isn't always compatible with another mod. Complications can arise in a game that already lives with more than its fair share of bugs.

But since the Creation Club's Survival Mode is official, achievements stay intact, at least. None of that matters to me, though, since I'm also using a random-start mod to spice up my first hours in game. Some days I just can't handle going through another vanilla start. I'll shoot myself if I have to be on that slow cart ride into Helgen one more time.

Survival Mode introduces a lot to a game that already has a lot going on.

There's no more fast travel system; nothing beyond the city carriages, anyway. Carry weight is cut in half; devastating for heavy armor wearers. You level up only during sleep; not mid-battle like I love doing. Clothing has warmth values; being cold reduces your health and penalizes picking locks and pickpocketing. Food now has a hunger level that it satisfies; being hungry reduces stamina and magicka. The wild creatures hook you up with more diseases, too. Good times.

I turn on Survival Mode. It should kick in the first time I step outdoors. I love you song download. Again, I use a random-start mod. I choose the “Surprise Me” option for where it actually starts me in game.

I open my eyes in a small barracks. An Imperial guard is in the room with me. He doesn’t say much. I sweep the room clean of gold coins, baked bread, salmon steaks, and Nord mead. Just a little something to keep me fed and warm on a cold winter’s night.

I pry open a barrel. Goat legs, potatoes, and bowls of salt. I throw it all into a cooking pot by the fire. I get two Legs of goat roast. Says it restores 220 points of hunger. I have no idea if that’s a full meal or only half-rations. The potato soup restores a whopping 380 points of hunger. That’s a lot of soup. The salmon steaks and sweet roll are only appetizers, restoring a measly 18 points of hunger. Hardly worth their weight in dough. I get that same amount of hunger sated from eating an apple.

I step outside. It’s cool but not cold. I’m apparently in Dragon Bridge. It’s a town southwest of Solitude. Dragon Bridge is named after its chasm-spanning bridge. It's carved of dark stone, with life-sized stone dragon heads in the middle.

The first person I talk to is mad that the Imperials are here. The other person is mad that the Imperials and the Stormcloaks are here. The soldiers have been taking up quarters in the inn, refusing to pay, says the Dragon Bridge resident. One of the soldiers raped his daughter. Stuff is getting dark. I suddenly realize I’m in first-person mode. I pull the camera back into third-person.

Not only did I select to be an Imperial at the beginning…

..I’m also some kind of Imperial soldier.

Considering the locals’ brazenly bad run-ins with the Imperials, I couldn’t feel less welcome.