Feast and Famine- A survival food mod
⚪ Last updated 2024⚠️ Install Order · 2 steps
Install in this order, then this mod last — most mods fail to load without their framework and dependencies in place.
Preview

🔍 Analysis
- 👍 0.1% endorsement rate
- 🏆 #87 of 187 Gameplay mods in this game by downloads
📋 About This Mod
In vanilla fallout, within the first few minutes of the game the meat starts throwing itself at you. Radroaches, molerats, mongrel dogs, all these "tasty" little stimpaks with legs that practically jump into your pockets- so much so that in survival, you can't even begin to carry it all. There's no feeling of scarcity, and you mostly end up just ignoring meat drops.
At the same time, for most of those raw meat items, there's a single, boring, recipe to grill them. Some mods have tried to make cooking more of a crafting system, but they always end leaving the crafting menu (even more of) a confusing mess. In vanilla, for the scant few meats where you actually have a choice about what to cook with it, the options are hidden away, impossible to easily compare, because there are so many useless recipes to grill a hundred different meat types (that you didn't bother to pick up in the first place).
In an effort to address these two problems, Feast and Famine makes the following changes
- Generally, things that are trying to kill you don't drop meat, there are only 7 types of raw meat that commonly drop, and have crafting recipes
- Squirrel, Iguana, Chicken, Rabbit, Mirelurk (dropped by Hatchlings only), Radstag, and Brahmin.
- There are also (chicken) Egg based crafting recipes, and vegetable based crafting recipes.
- A bunch of new recipes have been added that allow you to cook those 7 types of meat (as well as some vegetable based recipes) in a variety of different ways and combinations, with a variety of bonuses. Despite fewer types of meat to cook with, there are actually MORE things available to cook in the workbench than there were before.
- Some recipes are faction or location specific, and cannot be cooked by the player until you've eaten them at least once, so keep your eyes open for new foods when you visit vendors.
- Recipes are sorted into categories by the primary ingrediant, each different protein has it's own category, so it's easy to take a piece of meat to the bench, and see what are the different options that you can cook with it.
- Prewar food is the gold standard. It heals more, it heals faster, and it's more valuable, but it comes with the risk that 1 in 10 of them will have triple the rads.
- Cooked foods heal an amount based on the ingrediants that go into the recipe, cooking the food increases the healing by lengthening the duration, not by making the effect more powerful.
- Cooking doesn't remove radiation from food, prepared foods have the exact same total rads as the ingrediants that go into them, BUT those rads are applied as a DOT instead of all at once, which means that the Lead Belly perk is even more valuable than before.
- All food has had it's various properties rebalanced to work together as a system.
- "Dirty water" is now just called "Water", it's used for crafti
Feast and Famine is a survival food mod for Fallout 4 that addresses the game's food imbalance by adding more food sources while also making food scarcer. With 241 endorsements and 338,683 downloads, it's a popular choice for survival mode players seeking a more challenging and realistic experience.
✨ Key Features
📊 Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- Huge download count (338k) shows it's a proven, popular mod
- Addresses a real balance issue in vanilla Fallout 4 survival
- Simple concept that directly improves gameplay depth
⚠️ Cons
- Only 241 endorsements compared to downloads—some players may not stick with it
- Last updated June 2024—may not be compatible with the latest game patches
For Fallout 4 survival players who want a grittier, more resource-driven experience. If you're tired of tripping over food in the wasteland, this mod tightens the belt. Skip if you prefer a more casual, loot-rich playthrough.
💡 Beginner Tips
- If you're using a mod manager like Vortex or NMM, install this mod through the manager to avoid manual file placement issues.
- Pair this mod with other survival overhaul mods for a more cohesive experience, but check for compatibility patches first.
- Start a new playthrough to fully experience the food scarcity without breaking existing saves.
📊 Mod Details
- Game
- Fallout 4 Mods
- Author
- WhiskyTangoFox
- Version
- 1.18
- Downloads
- 338,683
- Endorsements
- 241
- Category
- Gameplay
- Created
- 2/8/2023
- Updated
- 6/30/2024
🔧 How to Install Fallout 4 Mods
Download from Nexus.
📖 Full step-by-step install guide for Fallout 4 →
Visit the official mod page for specific installation instructions for this mod.
🎮 Need cheat codes or console commands? Check ur gaming wiki for Fallout 4 commands, item IDs, and more.
Keep browsing — more Fallout 4 mods await