Forty miles on foot, 97 boars killed, and not one meal.

Azeroth is a harsh place to be a hero, yet somehow nobody ever gets hungry. Your hero has done all of it on an empty stomach, and nobody has noticed. Until now...

This purely cosmetic immersion addon gives your character an appetite, a thirst and a limit to their weariness... so they get hungry, parched and tired the way a real traveler would.

Train your skills, upgrade your pack, or eat tonight - your purse can only say yes to two, and your stomach is already voting. No setup is needed if you'd like to hop right in, as the addon was designed to be used with its default settings; with that said, every single feature is completely customizable including toggling off any part. There are no actual in-game penalties or debuffs; this is purely for immersion/RP.

Note: This is my first addon, so it's currently only supported in WoW Forever. 

How it works

Sustenance tracks the time since you last ate, drank and rested. As time passes, you'll slide through tiers. Eat, drink, & rest and you'll recover. 

• Hunger: Well Fed → Slightly Hungry → Hungry → Ravenous → Mildly Starving → Starving
• Thirst: Quenched → Slightly Thirsty → Thirsty → Parched → Mildly Dehydrated → Severely Dehydrated
• Fatigue: Rested → Slightly Weary → Weary → Worn Out → Completely Exhausted

Features:

• Bars or icons: color-coded bars that count down through each tier, tinted icons, or even nothing on screen at all - you choose!
• Flavor text: dozens of lines for every tier, such as growling stomachs, dry throats & heavy eyelids. They come as chat messages, floating text in the middle of your screen, or both.
  • NEW: Race flavor lines: messages written for your character’s race, mixed right into the normal rotation. Dwarves long for ale and haggis, Orcs for roasted meat, Gnomes for a sandwich between inventions, etc. Available for all races currently except Skyborne.
  • NEW: Troll dialect: Troll characters can speak their lines in traditional Darkspear dialect ("yah mon!") or plain English.
  • NEW: Traditional Undead setting: the Forsaken don’t need ordinary food and drink; eating and drinking do nothing and your Fatigue meter switches off. Use Cannibalize on a corpse to satisfy both Hunger and Thirst. Hunger and thirst also build slower, so you aren’t scrambling for bodies. 
  • NEW: Undead Paladins: in "Traditional Undead" mode, Undead Paladins get special messages based upon their nature conflicting with their faith.
• Sounds: your stomach growls when hunger worsens, and an optional chime plays when a tier changes.
• Screen effects: at the worst tiers your vision darkens with a vignette and a gentle dim, reminding you to listen to your body!
• Emotes: your character yawns, sighs and looks hungry or thirsty on a slow timer.
• Weather & surroundings: cold and hot zones add their own messages, as well as effects on hunter & thirst: a Snowy climate means your body needs to burn more calories, and deserts mean you need to drink more often to stay hydrated! Inns, cities and campfires also slow your needs down, so you can rest properly.
• Keeping things fair: low levels start paused, then ease into the full effect by level 8. It also stops while you’re dead, in battlegrounds or dungeons, away from the keyboard, and more. Lastly, the addon detects the eating and drinking buff you get when you sit down to a meal, which means even the cheapest food & drink will count - so you won't have to spend tons of money keeping up with your bodily needs. 
• Colorblind-friendly: a dedicated palette, plus fully customizable colors.
• Light on your computer: tiny memory and CPU use, with a built-in report (/sus cpu, /sus mem).
• Your settings, your way: a full options menu with grouped pages, account-wide settings, and export and import to share your setup with your guild.

Feedback:

I'd love to hear from you! Feel free to write me a letter in-game and tell me what you do or don't like about the addon, suggestions, or just that you're enjoying it! Characters:

• Roleplay ruleset, USA | Alliance: Velaenah Oakheart
• Roleplay ruleset, USA | Horde: Gurbok Stoneskin

You can also add comments here, and I'll try to respond in a timely manner.

Notes about AI:

Sustenance began as my own idea, and I made every design decision. I've never programmed in Lua, so I used AI (Claude) to help write the Lua code. I iterated, tuned, tested, and published myself. The stomach growl & chime sounds are from "freesound_community" on Pixabay. No artists’ work was used without a license, no art or media was generated with AI, and I only selected sounds that were explicitly not AI generated. 

Possible Future Features I'm considering:

• Pre-built global modifer setting for all 3 areas (Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue) which equate to Easy, Medium, Hard/Brutal
• Pre-built modifier setting depending on race. Possible example for Tauren: they should be able to run for longer without getting fatigued, their thirst should not be affected as much in the desert versus a Human, and they made need to burn more calories in the cold (i.e. eat more often) due to being acclimated mostly to warmer climates
• More to come!