Requires Far Harbor and Nuka World and Contraptions DLC



Lead Belly perk has been renamed "Wasteland Gourmet" and it now functions as a properly balanced food based perk set. Many recipes and foods in the game have been changed, as well as new ones added. All foods are now radioactive and cooking does not fully remove radiation. This makes food feel like a fully fleshed out part of the game. Also, all sodas have been edited to only buff Action points (no longer a health source) to make them stand out.



With no points in Wasteland Gourmet your character will be extremely limited to what they can cook. Recipes are limited to cooking easily prepared chunks of meat. You are new to the wasteland and besides, Wordsworth did all the cooking before the war. What parts of a radroach are edible exactly? That Salisbury Steak is starting to look tasty.

Once you unlock the first rank of Wasteland Gourmet your character can finally start living off the land. You can prepare many more recipes. Including batches of jerky, which heal more and take up less space than a basic steak. Great for a traveling adventurer!

Rank two of Wasteland Gourmet will start to show off your skills in the kitchen and knowledge of wasteland foods. These recipes offer bonuses to things like damage resistance, carry weight and action points.

If you are committed to being a true Wasteland Gourmet and take rank three, you will unlock the best recipes in the game. Each recipe creates a food that will buff one or more SPECIAL!

Each level of Wasteland Gourmet adds 2, 4 and 8 points to ingested rad resistance respectively. This adds up to 16 at rank 3, which negates about half or more of the rads in food on average.


Added Brahmin Milk to the game. It can be acquired the same way you acquire fertilizer in settlements or from food merchants. It is a recipe ingredient and can be used as a drink to stay hydrated in survival. You might want some more feeding troughs in you settlements as the milk is an uncommon drop. Brahmin milk can be fortified to restore a small amount of limb damage (even in hardcore) but you need to collect one of the ingredients from Far Harbor.

Water(purified/dirty/Institute) is nerfed. It heals half as much and ways 1.0 instead of 0.5. Also value is reduced. It's too easy to create water farms in settlements for currency and radiation free health. This will make survival harder, but this mod is primarily balanced for normal game play. Also, the new weights match the weight of every other beverage in game.

Bonus effects from some foods have been removed. Often moved to new recipes unlocked with later ranks of Wasteland Gourmet.

Some foods have had names changed and or models changed to reflect what they are. For example "roasted radroach" is now "radroach bits" and looks like chunks of meat to reflect that it is chunks of edible flesh scrapped out of three bug shells.

Weights of animal meats and cooked meals have been changed, as well as quantities of meals produced from a recipe. Larger animals often drop larger cuts of meat, which can produce more meals.

Recipes are generally more complex, requiring more ingredients to make them. Just because you learned how to make the best foods doesn't mean they are easy to make. I did my best to keep them reasonable.

Soda no longer restores health, but instead fortifies your action points (in addition to restoring them). This makes soda stand out a little more in the game and gives it its own role.

Prewar food that is not preserved has a low random chance of causing extra radiation damage, simulating the idea that some packages have been more exposed to more radiation than others.


Version 2.3 update:
This mod now has my Risky Prewar Food and Soda is for AP mods merged into it. If you don't want those features, stick to version 2.2.

Conflicts and Compatibility

This will not work with anything that changes the Lead Belly perk, food or their recipes. This mod also changes the leveled list "WorkshopProduceFertilizer". I changed a few leveled lists related to food vendors as well, but likely the only mods that will touch those are other food overhaul mods. With version 2.4 anything that alters the Food Processor will prevent making the added preserved packaged foods (Manufacturing Extended does not touch that machine so there is no conflict there).

Mod Goals

The perk Lead Belly was broken and useless. Vanilla cooked foods have no
radiation and you can easily play a non survival game without ever
eating. Even so, the top tier of the perk completely removes radiation
from food, thus breaking an already crippled mechanic.

Several recipes in the game create foods with extraordinary healing properties
and magical effects. Not only that, but the recipes are rather simple.
By gating them with a perk, I can justify keeping those effects and, in
some circumstances, enhancing them.

This mod makes the ability to cook food (and consume it) a little more interesting and challenging.
It also increases potential for something many complain this game lacks;
Role Play. Is your character so inept that they can't do more than
roast a piece of meat over a flame, or have they learned hidden
properties of foods in the wasteland and learned to make amazing meals?