Food glorious food? Like all Khajiit, San-daro enjoys her food and drinks – especially if sweetened with moon sugar. Right from the very start of the game, she has been collecting ingredients, picking up any recipes that are not nailed down (and a few that were…) and taking advantage of the many cooking fires scattered across the Dominion lands.
There are three ways to get hold of food and drink items in the game.
You did not know San-daro was expert cook? Ziss! There is no end to this one's talents...
Khajiit knows this ones has sweet tooth...
Baandari code says 'Sometimes objects are loose and uncontained, being neither in pocket, in drawer, or in hand. Such objects are abandoned and may be lawfully salvaged,
A few basics to understand.
1. There’s really no good reason NOT to buff with food or drink. It is widely available and always has a positive effect. Start collecting and using food and drink right out of the gate.
2. You can’t use food AND drink at the same time. And the items don’t stack. Consume a second item and it will simply replace the first. I’ve no idea why you can’t have both food and drink at the same time, it seems counter-intuitive, but there you go…
3. When you first get started, food or drink items have a 35-minute duration. You won’t get any notification when the timer runs down to try to keep an eye on the clock and glug something else every half an hour or so. You can extend the efficacy of what you eat and drink by investing in the Provisioning skill tree.
Food verses Drink?
Food or drink? Choices...choices. Jone and Jode guide Khajiit!
So, should you opt for food or drink? And what is the difference? Well, in a nutshell, food will increase one of your attributes – health, stamina or Magicka. You can make food that buffs more than one attribute, but you can only buy or find food that buffs one. That’s one reason why you will probably want to start getting into the provisioning skill (but that’s for another chapter…)
By contrast, drinks provide a boost to attribute regeneration. Alcoholic drinks increase health recovery; different types of tea boost Magicka recovery, and tonics help with stamina regeneration.
So do you want to increase Max Attribute or Attribute Regeneration? According to those who’ve crunched the numbers, the answer is that food is ‘bang per buck’ the better option.
My experience is that, in actual play, regeneration appears (to me at least) to be more practically useful. What’s the point of having higher stamina if you burn through the extra stamina with a couple of attacks? You then find yourself struggling with lack of stamina for the rest of the battle as your stamina bar seems to replenish slowly.
On the other hand, stamina (or Magicka for a mage character) regeneration is NEVER a bad thing. The faster your bar fills up, the quicker you can be using those abilities!
The exception that proves the rule
There is one occasion when you will likely want to scoff food – and that is when you come up against a boss that can ‘one shot’ you.
There are a good number of bosses who can fire off special attacks that are larger than your max health. You can have all the regeneration you like – but if your max health is 16K, and the boss can hit you for 18K, you’re going to be die when you get hit. If this happens just chew on a loaf of bread (you did pick up all those loaves left around didn’t you?) and you’re going to be packing another 6K or so health. Awesome!
San-daro needs to duck, roll and dive...
Thinking strategically
Whether you want to buff stamina, health or Magicka will largely depend on your chosen character and playstyle, and – to a lesser extent – on the situation you find yourself in.
For a Magicka character, it’s a simple choice – buff your Magicka (or in boss fights, possibly your health). You might as well sell off your stamina food and drink, you just don’t need it. A Melee character is using up BOTH stamina and Magicka all the time, so you need to observe which attribute you tend to deplete first. Simply buff that attribute. It will depend on how much you use using abilities vs how many melee attacks. Observe your own playstyle and make a choice about food and drink from what you see!
Either way, as I said earlier, you might as well make use of food and drink.
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