LE Making food more useful?

[eclipsezero]

Could be just me, or the fact that I haven't gotten very far in Skyrim yet, but so far food has been entirely useless to me. Nor have I seen any quests related to it(Please correct me if I am wrong, as said, I still haven't progressed too far.)

Now the Creation Kit is out, so it should be possible to make food play a bigger role in the game?

This could be done in various ways, maybe even a whole questline for it? The quest could be comedic or serious.

Some possible scenario's for the questline:

1. A simple one. There's a contest held in some city to see which man or woman in Skyrim can create the best food. This could include several rival characters and stuff.

 

2. This one is probably not lore friendly, I dunno, this is my first Elder Scrolls experience so yeah :V Basically this revolves around an ancient city in Skyrim renowned for its food, however it was wiped from existence for some reason. Its food was said not only to be great in taste, but able to grant abilities to those who ate it.

After all this time, some old recipes have been discovered and its your job to recover them and let Skyrim experience the wonder of these food items once more.

 

3. This one is probably more comedic, or depending on how you look at it, completely and utterly idiotic(Or just plain impossible). It involves the civil war. The quest revolves around a old cook who believes food can solve many things in the world, and wants to train you so you can broker peace between the Stormcloaks and Imperials. You learn tons of recipes, then the leaders of both sides are called, you have to make the food and enchant it in a specific way which will make them come to terms with each other.

This might be impossible, so if needed, the scenario can be tweaked to make it two rival families or something.

 

Actual gameplay mechanic ideas:

1. Cooking food itself. Like lockpicking, why not have a small and simple minigame for this? I am not really sure how it would work at the moment, I will update this once I get some ideas. Sorry :C

 

2. Enchanting/enhancing food. What if you could enchant food with magic, or enhance it with stuff such as potions or poison?

For example, one mechanic could be added that makes certain enemies hungry. Now leave some poisoned food without them noticing and slip away, if they eat it, they die.

Potions can enhance food and add to its properties, perhaps sometimes the result could be greater than the items on their own.

Or magic, enchant it with a healing spell, and it will continuously regenerate your health for some time when eaten, or enhance it with fury and give it to someone, which will make him or her attack anything in sight.

Or perhaps a fire spell, which if anyone eats will be burned from inside out. I guess those are enough examples lol.

 

3. Magical food. Not to be confused with enchanted. Basically, food made with Draugr or dragon meat/bones or something. Food made with Draugr..er, stuff, would allow you access to any locked shout you have found for a period of time, food made with dragon bones would allow you to breathe fire and jump much higher for a time. You get the idea.

 

Sorry for not going into more detail, currently in a hurry so I am not sure whether it makes any sense or not lol. Hope you peeps consider this idea :3