Survival (Fallout: New Vegas)

Survival is a skill in Fallout: New Vegas. It replaces the Outdoorsman skill from Fallout 2

The Survival skill allows you to create increasingly powerful poisons and consumable food and drink items at camp fires scattered around the wasteland. Higher skill does not increase the damage poisons do but does increase how many HP you will get from consumable food and drinks whether they are made from Survival recipes or not. By example Gecko steak heals 2 hp per second for 15 seconds at Level 15 Survival skill, 3 hp at Level 30 and 6 at Level 100 skill. So long as you use different types of food the effect will stack with one another and with Stimpaks. Higher skill also increases the stat boosts that some foods such as Bighorner steak provide (increasing from +1 Strength at lower levels up to +3 at 100 skill).

Along with that, you can also tan gecko hides for fun and profit!

In Hardcore Mode Survival also governs how much a food or drink item will reduce The Courier's dehydration and starvation levels.

(Note: Some items created at camp fires require Science rather than Survival skill.)

Equation

 * $$\text{Initial level}=2+(2\times\text{Endurance})+\left\lceil\frac{\text{Luck}}{2}\right\rceil$$

Example: A starting Endurance of 5 and Luck of 5.


 * $$2+(2\times5)+\left\lceil\frac{5}{2}\right\rceil=15$$

In Game, Survival uses the same formula for healing as Medicine:


 * Base+(Base x 2 x Skill/100) or short  Base x (1 + Skill/50)

At skill level 50, your food is healing 2x as many hitpoints and recovering 2x as much Food/Water. At skill level 100 you are healing/recovering 3x as many.

Bugs

 * Survival is actually governed by Intelligence, patching the game will fix this on the 360.
 * A high survival skill will actually increase the negative effect of food items on the player's Hunger or Thirst stats, e.g. with a Survival skill of 100 whiskey will increase the player's level of Thirst by 75.

Appearances
Survival appears in Fallout: New Vegas.

Behind the scenes
In Fallout 2, it was already possible to take the skin of a little gecko and a golden gecko through the perk Gecko Skinning.