New Skyrim mod lets you cook food with fire magic

The Elder Scrolls games, including Skyrim, have primarily gained popularity through how interactive the in-game environments tend to be. Since the third installment, Morrowind, the way this interaction distinguishes itself from other games in the genre is through interactive commonplace objects. The explorable worlds of these games are littered with all sorts of miscellanea, from gemstones and jewelry to dinnerware of varying value.

Other than alchemical reagents, one of the most functional categories of such in-game objects is food. Tamriel's food items are part and parcel of its rich and diverse culture, from the lore of Ash Yams in Morrowind to the meta-humor of Sweet Rolls in Skyrim.

However, mod author wSkeever's newest plugin seems to have finally added some exciting spice to the gameplay for the chefs of Skyrim: the ability to cook food with magic.

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How does cooking in Skyrim work with the mod?

In Oblivion and Morrowind, food items are simply lesser ingredients for potions with no separate functionality. Skyrim, however, completely separates its food from alchemical purposes. Most of the uncooked food in the game is of no remarkable value.

Admittedly, they became a crucial element of their survival mode which was added later on. Survival mode adds resources like hunger, thirst, and sleep that need to be managed, giving food its own much-needed irreplaceable role in the gameplay experience. Outside of survival mode, they serve as little more than window dressing.

Without survival mode enabled, raw potatoes and the like can still be consumed to serve as stackable healing items in times of desperation, but they provide no benefits other than minimal HP regeneration. Cooked food, however, significantly increases the amount of healing, and some of the more complex recipes even add their own unique minor buffs to health and stamina.

On the other hand, they do add great value as cornerstones of roleplaying. The Elder Scrolls games champion many aspects of an immersive sim, a subgenre still in its infancy at the Morrowind era. In this specific case, this translates to immersion using cooking pots and spits.

However, cooking here does not go as far into immersion like games that spearhead immersive sim gameplay such as Arx Fatalis. In Arx Fatalis, players can see dough turning into bread in real time as they place it in an oven.

Interestingly, wSkeever's mod 'Cooking Fire' implements a similar idea in Skyrim. With this mod, concentration fire spells, like the beginner spell 'Flames', can now be cast at uncooked food items to gradually cook them in real time. Obviously, this only works for the most basic dishes, such as Grilled Leeks, but not with more complex recipes like Venison Chop that require Salt Piles.

For a greater dash of immersion, players can also add mods to improve the visuals involved in the process, which could include the new 'Alternative Fire FX' to make use of fine-tuned ENB lights, Embers XD to improve fire texture, Deadly Spell Impacts to sear the ground where the food is placed realistically, as well as Realistic HD Food for lifelike next-gen culinary visuals.