How To Play

Exposure

Frostfall introduces Exposure, which represents your current condition in the environment. As you get colder, your exposure increases.

Increasing your Warmth causes your exposure to increase more slowly. Clothing, armor, perks, and other items can add to your total Warmth.

When your exposure increases, you will begin suffering penalties. When your exposure is at maximum, you will lose consciousness and re-awaken elsewhere (possibly very far away).

Exposure increases much faster in cold environments, snowstorms, rainstorms, and at night.

A secondary attribute, Wetness, represents if your character is dry or soaked from being in the rain or swimming. When your wetness is high, your exposure increases more rapidly.

Increasing your Coverage reduces the rate you get wet in the rain. Coverage also helps reduce your exposure rate as well when the weather is severe.

Being wet can also have advantages, like increasing your resistance to fire (at the cost of a weakness to shock), and allowing the use of the Vapor Blast spell.

You can also see your current Exposure and Wetness at any time by using Survival Skill: Weathersense. You will receive messages and visual / sound effects when your condition changes significantly. In Classic Skyrim, Exposure and Wetness are represented as meters on the screen.

The blue bar represents your current exposure. As your exposure increases, the meter will fill up.

The white line is the maximum exposure indicator. This is the highest your exposure will increase to in that area. If the indicator is all the way on the other side of the meter, that means that the area has lethal (maximum) exposure. If your exposure is currently higher than the indicator, your exposure will decrease to meet it as you warm up.

The frame of the meter will glow a hot red when you are “warm”. You can become warm by standing near fires or being in warmer locations, such as inside an inn.

The thin sub-meter is the wetness meter. As you get wetter, it will increase. As you dry off, it will decrease.

For more on exposure, wetness, and its effects, see the Exposure page.

Staying Warm and Dry

Falling into a lake or getting caught in a blizzard can spell doom for the unprepared. But with a little planning, resourcefulness, and experience, you can easily overcome these challenges. It all comes down to staying warm, and staying dry. Here are some ways you can do that.

  • Armor or clothing in every slot. Clothing and armor increase your Warmth and Coverage ratings, which reduce exposure. Wear something in your head, body, hands, and feet slots.
  • Wield a torch, eat soups and stews. Grants small bonuses to Warmth.
  • Frost Resistance. Grants a bonus to Warmth. (This means that Nords start the game with a slightly higher Warmth Rating than others.)
  • Endurance perks. Accessible from any built campfire, Endurance skill perks can enhance your ability to survive in various circumstances. See the Endurance Skill page for more information.
  • Keep an eye on the skies. Rain will soak you, greatly increasing your rate of exposure. Blizzards can be swift and deadly.

To warm up and dry off, build a fire (or find one in the world), or go inside. Many homes and inns have lit fireplaces. Simply stand in front of a fire and your exposure and wetness will quickly decrease.

Exposure does not increase while indoors, so ducking into a nearby cave during a snowstorm is often a wise move.

Warmth and Coverage

Frostfall introduces two new player attributes:

  • Warmth – A measure of how well you can endure the cold for long periods of time. Some armors, like fur, have high Warmth. Eating soup and carrying a torch can grant you a temporary bonus to Warmth. There are other ways to increase your Warmth Rating.
  • Coverage – A measure of how quickly you become wet in the rain and how well you resist exposure during severe weather. Some armors, like leather, have high Coverage. Shields add a small bonus to your Coverage as well.

In Classic Skyrim, your total Warmth and Coverage are displayed at the bottom of the inventory screen (when using SkyUI 5.0+ and the optional menu add-on):

The Warmth and Coverage of worn gear is clearly displayed on each armor’s item card as well: