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Needs & Survival

SexLab Survival does not ship a full hunger/thirst/warmth system of its own. Instead it layers extra pressure and consequences on top of whichever needs mod you already run, and adapts to it through its interface layer. If no needs mod is installed, the survival hooks that depend on one simply stay quiet.

What SLS integrates with

SLS detects and drives the needs mod you have installed — you do not pick one in SLS, it follows what is in your load order:

  • iNeed
  • Realistic Needs and Diseases (RND)
  • Eating Sleeping Drinking
  • Frostfall — cold/warmth, with its own config surfaced under the Frostfall & Simply Knock MCM page
  • SunHelm Survival — supported through the optional FOMOD patch (the "SunHelm Survival Patch" component), not the base install

See Mod Integrations for the authoritative list of supported needs mods and what each one unlocks.

What SLS adds on top

Rather than tracking hunger and thirst, SLS makes them harder to satisfy and more punishing when ignored:

  • Scaled consumption. Options like 2x More 'Food' and 2x More 'Water' multiply how much you must eat and drink to stay level. A woman surviving alone in this Skyrim spends more of her day just keeping fed.
  • Hunger stages. As you go without food you drop through named stages — Satisfied → Peckish → Hungry → Starving → Ravenous — each carrying heavier effects than the last.
  • Barefoot penalties. Going without shoes applies a movement-speed debuff and can cause staggering on rough ground.
  • Steep-fall damage. Descending steep terrain deals extra damage, discouraging reckless cross-country shortcuts.
  • Movement and carry floors. Minimum-speed and minimum-carry-weight floors stop other penalties from stacking you into complete immobility.
  • Gold weight. Coin carries weight, so hoarding gold competes with food, water and gear for encumbrance — and ties into the wider tolls and begging economy.

It stacks with the base needs mod

These are additions. Your underlying needs mod still governs the core hunger/thirst/cold meters; SLS raises the cost of meeting them and adds the barefoot, fall, floor and gold-weight consequences around them.

No needs mod, no scaling

The consumption multipliers and hunger stages need a supported needs mod to hook into. Without one installed, those specific options have nothing to scale — the barefoot, fall-damage and gold-weight pressures still apply.

Configuring

Everything here lives on the Needs MCM page, with cold/warmth handling on the Frostfall & Simply Knock page. Every consequence — the consumption multipliers, the barefoot debuff, steep-fall damage, the speed and carry floors, and gold weight — can be tuned or switched off there. If a survival pressure is more than you want, turn it down or disable it on those pages rather than uninstalling the underlying needs mod.