Skyrim Getting A Tough-Sounding Survival Mode, Beta Out Now On PC

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition is getting a new mode made through the game's Creation Club system. The Survival mode makes the game more challenging, principally with three main elements: hunger, fatigue, and harsh weather.

Hunger will impact your stamina, along with your ability to use (most) weapons. "As you become hungrier, your total available stamina will decrease, represented by a dark region inside the stamina bar," Bethesda explained.

Eating food will bring you back, and if you eat enough, you'll get a bonus called "Well Fed." Another thing to know is that cooked food restores your hunger level more than uncooked food. You are what you eat, so if you eat raw meat, you could get food poisoning; this restricts you from getting health benefits until the poison wears off.

Another key element of Skyrim's new Survival mode is fatigue. If you don't rest from time to time, the effectiveness of your potions will drop and your ability to recover things like stamina and magicka will decrease. To restore fatigue levels optimally, you need to sleep in a bed; sleeping outdoors only provides a partial fatigue restore.

The third main pillar of Survival mode is weather. When it gets cold in Skyrim, you'll need to bundle up. Fail to do so and your total available health will decrease, and in time, your movement speed and abilities like lock-picking will drop. If you're unlucky enough to see your health drop to zero, you'll die from exposure. To stay warm, you need to wear clothing an armor, which have warmth values displayed in their descriptions. Additionally, you can eat hot soup or hold a torch to increase your warmth for a period of time.

Check out the map above to see which zones are warm and cold; the map also displays the locations of places where you can heal yourself.

Here are some other takeaways about Skyrim's Survival mode:

• Swimming in a freezing location will immediately impact your health damage.
• Fast Travel is disabled.
• There is no health regeneration.
• You need to sleep in a bed to level up.
• The amount of weight you can carry is "significantly reduced."
• You can contract diseases from animals. If you don't cure yourself, a disease can get worse.
• Shrines don't cure diseases for free; instead you have to make a gold offering.
• The Extra Pockets and The Steed Stone perks give you 50 extra carry weight, not 100.
• Becoming a vampire or a werewolf will slow down the time it takes to get cold. Also, you can restore your hunger by eating your victims as a vampire or werewolf.

You can read Bethesda's full blog post on Skyrim's Survival mode here.

PC players can try the Survival mode right now on Steam by opting into the Steam beta. Xbox One and PS4 users can check it out "early next month."

Bethesda also said the mode will be free during its launch week on each platform, so if you're interested, you may want to get it right away before its price goes up to 800 Creation Club credits.

In other Skyrim news, the game launches for the Nintendo Switch in November.

This story has been updated.