skooma thoughts

in Skyrim, Skooma is a hard drug of some sort that ruins lives, but Skyrim doesn’t do anything with it mechanically, it just gives you a little bit of stamina. the item is totally out of sync with the lore! here is what i think Skooma should do in my often dreamt-of perfect world where Elder Scrolls games are immersive sims

imo, Skooma should give you instant full health any time you use it. So you do it once when you’re desperate and out of health items and you’re like “ok just this once”. But then you end up doing it again, and then the more often you take Skooma, the more-and-more damage you take every time you take damage. But this isn’t signposted in any way, so you’re just like “ugh! doing so bad! emergency skooma to save my life”. And you don’t realise until it’s TOO LATE (and you’ve started just very slowly constantly draining health) that you are hooked on skooma real bad

Eventually it gets so that Skooma’s only even restorin’ like 85% of your health per hit. You gotta mix some Potion of Minor Healing in there with it. Gets real bad, you gotta take 3 or 4 hits o’ Skooma just to get outta bed, and you never Awaken Feeling Well Rested.

illicit drugs in games are weird. Deus Ex has Zyme, which in code is called Crack, so maybe it’s only Zyme because of ratings or whatever. like Skooma, Zyme doesn’t do shit, except you can hoard all the Zyme you find and eventually sell it to a dealer in Paris. Zyme.