In the distance, you spot your quarry. Your food stash has been getting low, and standing a crest a mossy knoll a hundred paces away a proud, broad-chested elk forages leaves from a low hanging vine. You knock an arrow onto your bow string; the bones in your hand feeling every twitch of the stretching twine in your fingers as you pull it back. Your eyes, well adjusted to determining the distance, focuses on a spot a hands-width down from the snout of the beast. You raise your front arm slightly and with a snap, the arrow is loosened. A split second later, a groaning screech erupts from the beast; it turns and runs. The hunt is on.

What is Hunterborn?

Hunterborn changes the simple routine of kill-and-loot on animals into something more immersive. Gone are the standard loot screens from the various beasts of Skyrim. Instead, you are given the option to skin and butcher animals for their pelts and meat. Additionally, you are given new methods of crafting as well as the ability to create mobile tanning racks and a mortar and pestle for alchemy.

To get started, you must find or craft a hunting knife. This will give you the ability to process an animal as well as access the new crafting menus.

Note: There exists a "Hunting Knife" in list that you can loot off hunters and bandits which does not work with Hunterborn. The knives that are usable in this mod will named "[Material] Hunting Knife," like "Bone Hunting Knife" or "Dragonbone Hunting Knife."

For more information about Hunterborn, please see the mod page here: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/7900

The powers

Hunterborn adds several new powers to the game that are used with Z in QWERTY, or Y in QWERTZ. These include:

Foraging

Foraging allows you to spend time searching the nearby area for resources to consume, utilize or craft with. Such resources include a sharp rock, which can be used as a very rudamentary skinning-knife.

Other than when cleaning a carcass you will always spend an hour using the foraging power. The more you improve the more options you will get for foraging specific things, like edible items, bones, or ingrediens.

Improving your foraging skill also provides some usefull buffs when gathering ingrediens. With a higher skill in foraging you will uncover more effects from ingrediens up to all 4 at skill level 10; without putting any skillpoints into alchemy.

Leveling the skill also provides an increasing chance to gather twice or three times the amount from plants and some other objects (like hung up hares or pheasants).
This bonus is multiplicative, so if used for example on a cultivated plant in a planter, which have their yield already trippled, you will get a lot ingrediens from a single plant (Another way to get quick arcane resin for the spell forge, by cultivating glowing mushrooms).

Scrimshaw

Scrimshaw allows you to craft a lot of stuff rather easily, especially in combination with Campfire's "Make Item". Gather a rock and make a stone knife for example. Others include a Hunter's cache to store items in.

Scrimshaw also allows you to craft arrows, which improve with your harvesting skill. These go from worse than iron arrows all the way up to slightly better than elven at harvesting skill 9.

Primitive Cooking

Use a heat source to quickly cook food.

Getting started

While you can process animals with your bare hands, the resources you'll will be rather poor. You can use the "Foraging" power to look around for resources and you may find a sharp rock which doubles as a knife. Alternatively you can make an Iron Hunting Knife at the Smithy or rarely buy them from General good vendors. If you want to ignore cities entirely, this is another way:

1. Find a sharp rock using "Foraging"
2. Process animals for some of their bones
3. Use the "Scrimshaw" power to craft a "Bone Hunting Knife"

Integrations with other mods

Campfire

You can gather a ton of meat using this Hunterborn. When using the campfire, you can cook most meats without needing Salt Piles. While the health and stamina restoration from the food cooked this way isn't as good as the Cooking Pot, it will still keep you from starving.

Additionally, you can use the "Create Item" power from Campfire to turn a single fur plate into Rough Bedding. This is a great early game option for sleeping outside.

Spellforge

You can use the various bones you harvest from the animals and break them down into bonemeal. Bonemeal can be used to create Arcane Resin, the primary resource for using the Spell Forge.

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