Skyrim Special Edition is set to receive a Survival Mode, very much similar to Fallout 4"s Survival Mode that arrived with a free update to the game. However, unlike Fallout 4"s implementation, Skyrim Special Edition"s Survival Mode will need to be purchased via Bethesda"s Creation Club system when it launches.
For now, the mode is freely available in beta form to PC players. Enabling the mode will require players to keep track of a host of new features that will affect them, such as needing to eat food to restore hunger, noting to avoid raw meat as that can cause food poisoning, along with Magicka and stamina recovery lagging if the player is too fatigued.
Adding to the survival nature, the mode also has body heat management, a lowered carry weight, disabled health regeneration, diseases, and other changes that ramp up the difficulty of the game. All the new features arriving with the mode is available to read on the announcement page.
However, community-created mods that add survival aspects very similar to the ones Bethesda is introducing, have been around for quite some time. The popular immersion mod, Frostfall, is a prime example of this, which first arrived for the original Skyrim, and is even available for Skyrim Special Edition, on both PC and Xbox One, arriving fully compatible with quite a range of other gameplay enhancing mods.
In any case, Bethesda did not say how much the new Survival Mode will cost in the Creation Club. We will have to wait and see if the Survival Mode offers a better experience than the community created mods, and if it is worth opening our wallets for.
Skyrim Special Edition"s 1.5 Update that brings along the Survival Mode beta and the Creation Club is now available for beta testing on Steam. Interested players can opt-in by going to the game"s properties and selecting the beta from the drop-down menu in the betas section.
Xbox One and PlayStation 4 players will receive the update in October. Also, Bethesda will give a week of free access to the Survival Mode to players of all platforms once it launches out of beta.
Source: Bethesda
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