Stellar Needs

Stellar Needs offers a straightforward yet effective system for managing essential survival needs, including Hunger, Thirst, and Fatigue. These needs progress through five stages, each affecting your character with unique buffs and debuffs as they deteriorate. To maintain your strength, you must eat, drink, and ensure you get adequate rest.

I created Starfield Survival Sandwich to improve the vanilla survival system, but I found it overly simplistic and flawed in several key areas. Persistent bugs that I couldn’t track down ultimately soured the experience for me. Additionally, tying survival mechanics to magic effects caused unpredictable behaviours, making the systems difficult to plan around.

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Stellar Needs introduces three separate survival mechanics, Hunger, Thirst, and Fatigue, each managed independently. These needs start at a value of 100 and range between 0 and 100. As universal time passes in-game, each need gradually decreases, triggering debuffs at various stages based on the specific need.

To manage these needs, you’ll need to eat to reduce Hunger, drink to quench Thirst, and rest to manage Fatigue. Sleeping will pause Fatigue loss and gradually restore it, while certain drinks, like coffee, can temporarily stave off Fatigue.

Allowing your needs to drop too low will result in more severe debuffs but there is no major penalty such as passing out or dying as this proved to be too dramatic for what this system aims to achieve.

Are there more complex and feature-rich Needs mods out there? Absolutely, with Starvival arguably being the best of the bunch. However, my mod isn’t designed to compete with it. Instead, it offers a different approach, focusing on enhancing the simpler vanilla systems rather than overhauling them completely. It aims to provide a more familiar experience, rather than throwing you into something entirely new.

First and foremost, I created this mod for myself, to help fill the void left by some of Starfield’s repetitive combat scenarios and vast, empty spaces. That said, anyone looking for a similar, straightforward experience without too many bells and whistles is welcome to download and enjoy the mod. It was a fun project to work on, and it challenged me to adapt to the m