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. For example, Gecko steak heals 2 HP per second for 15 seconds at Level 15 Survival skill, 3 HP at Level 30, and 6 HP 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 food (such as Bighorner steak) and certain other items (e.g. Atomic cocktail) 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 affect The Courier's dehydration, starvation, and sleep deprivation 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, health restoration and any other bonus from items affected by the Survival skill uses the following formula:


 * $$\text{Total}=\text{Base}+(\text{Base}\times2\times\left\lceil\frac{Skill}{100}\right\rceil)$$


 * ...which can be simplified to:
 * $$\text{Total}=\text{Base}\times(1+\left\lceil\frac{Skill}{50}\right\rceil)$$

The resulting total is rounded to the nearest whole number.

In basic terms, food items become twice as effective with a Survival skill of 50, and three times as effective with a Survival skill of 100. This progression is linear, meaning at a skill level of 75 food items are 2.5x as effective and so on.

Bugs

 * Survival is governed by Intelligence.
 * This has been fixed by a recent patch.

Appearances
Survival appears in Fallout: New Vegas.

Behind the scenes
In Fallout 2 the ability to take a skin from a little gecko or golden gecko was granted by the perk Gecko Skinning.