This mod causes your character to need food and sleep. However, the underlying goal is to make the passage of time feel meaningful, adding a sense of urgency otherwise lacking from Oblivion. The concepts of hunger and exhaustion are a familiar and immersive way to achieve that goal, but Bare Necessities focuses on game mechanics, not simulation.

Here's a brief summary of how it works:

NEEDS
- Hunger and exhaustion add up over time, measured in game hours.
- A lesser power allows you to check your hunger and exhaustion levels.
- You'll receive notifications when you're particularly hungry or tired.
- Sleeping reduces exhaustion and slows the increase of hunger.
- Eating food reduces hunger, based on how much the food weighs.

PENALTIES
- Hunger and exhaustion are combined into a single "needs" value.
- If your needs total gets too high, you begin to suffer Fatigue damage.
- Initially the rate of damage is very low, and only slows regeneration.
- Let it go too long, and Fatigue will actually start falling.
- Once you're reduced to 1 Fatigue, Magicka is damaged... then Health!
- This mod won't actually kill you. ;)

If you use Cobl and would like to make use of the Cobl Dinner Plate, download the separate BN Cobl Glue archive. Merge its contents with your Data\ folder and activate or merge Bare Necessities Cobl Glue.esp. You may adjust the food values of different types of food in BareNecessities - Cobl.ini.