Survival Mechanics

Sunhelm

From Sunhelm's mod page, "SunHelm is an all in one survival and needs mod. It includes many features such as Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue, and even hypothermia mechanics all while attempting to stay as streamlined as possible."

In practice, this means that Sunhelm is a lightweight, straightforward needs mod that requires you to manage your needs in only a mildly intrusive way.

Sunhelm in Gameplay

The first time you sleep, you'll be given a popup asking if you want to enable Sunhelm. You do not have to enable Sunhelm if you don't want to!

If you do enable Sunhelm, you will then have to manage your needs going forward. In general, you'll need to eat approximately every 6 in-game hours, drink every 4 in-game hours, and sleep for at least 6 hours every day. You'll also need to contend with the elements, meaning that if you go into cold weather, you'll need to wear warmer clothing or armor to stave off the cold.

⚠️ If you enable Sunhelm, you will also need to sleep to be able to level up!

Manually Enabling/Disabling Sunhelm

You can enable or disable Sunhelm at any time via its MCM. Simply head into the Sunhelm MCM and enable or disable the mod as you wish.

Campfire

Campfire is an all-in-one camping solution that can be used throughout Skyrim. It adds features such as being able to scrounge for firewood, build campfires almost anywhere, as well as set up tents and bedrolls for the full camping experience. It can be invaluable if you have enabled Sunhelm to help manage your needs while in the wilderness, or simply an extra bit of immersion if you don't have Sunhelm enabled.

Refer to the Living Skyrim Keymap for the keybinds of Campfire. You can also rebind the keys used for Campfire in its MCM at any time.

In general, the process of using Campfire goes as follows:

1. Gather some tinder and firewood using the Harvest Menu (semicolon key by default). This is more effective if you have a woodcutter's axe.
2. Build a campfire (> key by default). Acceptable locations will have the campfire be blue, invalid locations will have it be red.
3. Once you've built your campfire, you should light it and add some firewood.
4. After this, set up your tents by using them from your inventory.
5. Voila! You now have a campsite you can use as a temporary base of operations.