Starfield's latest must-have mod adds intense survival mechanics to your interstellar exploration

If you’re in search of a way to add an extra element of challenge to your adventures in Starfield, one of the latest mods to hit the Nexus will do just that by giving your character a bunch of realistic needs to keep track of.

That’s right, remember all of those mods - and the Survival Mode eventually released via Skyrim’s Creation Club - that’ve forced you to actually behave somewhat like a human being in Bethesda games over the years? There’s now an incredibly detailed one for Starfield, which’ll finally give you a reason to be carrying around enough patty melt sandwiches and Terrabrew coffee to cater to a small nation.

The mod in question is the wonderfully-named ‘Starvival - Immersive Survival Addon’ and is the work of modder lKocMoHaBTl. They write that it: “provides a fully working NEEDS mechanic with stages, new addictions and full list of other complimentary features,” cheekily adding, “Consider to prepare thoroughly, Starborn!”

So, what are you in for? Well, for starters your character “will develop needs for food, thirst and rest. Each need has several degrees of penalties: from the most moderately harmless to the critically serious.” All of these needs work using a points system that’ll see up to four simultaneous debuffs gradually begin to afflict you once each gauge drops below 75.

Since your totals will drop as in-game time progresses, it’s key to keep on top of when you last ate, drank and slept, with the mod providing handy alerts via your HUD and a book walking you through how everything works to help out. Don’t think you’ll have it easy though, with a bunch of new or improved addictions and afflictions providing extra wrinkles for you to take into account.

There’s also oversatiation, a mechanic that’ll punish those who opt to deal with the requirement to eat by aggressively shoving chunks into their gob every five minutes by ensuring that doing so can render your next meal ineffective in terms of satiating your appetite.

That’s far from it in terms of the mod’s interesting mechanical nuances, so make sure you do your homework by reading through its description thoroughly before you dive in. After all, you don’t want to end up feeling sluggish in the aftermath of a conflict-induced adrenaline rush and unable to work out how to recover.

In other Starfield news, one player recently discovered the utterly bizarre and very rare oxygen-sucking alien creatures alluded to by one of its NPCs.