Some games are survival driven: their major obstacle is the constant need to find the next meal or source of water.
We went for rather realistic needs instead. A game day lasts about an hour, and you need the equivalent of two meals per day to keep your hunger at a minimum. You need to drink water a bit more often than that, but since drinking water also gives you a slight stamina recovery boost, you'll want to drink before a fight just for that little extra. However, you can usually spend 4 days without eating anything and 2 days without drinking water without passing out. So you can technically ignore your needs for two hours (but you'll be weakened).
If you kill a dear and cook some stew, that gives you three meals for hunting one animal and foraging one vegetable. You can also buy food at stores if you don't feel like doing the works yourself and that's a valid way of playing too. If you rest at an inn, it also refills you hunger and thirst meters without having to consume items (but you don't get any food bonus, which can make a difference).
What usually happens is that at first, a new player will struggle to survive outdoor, but as he progresses and gets to know the tricks, that part will become much easier. Instead of looking for food to survive, eventually you cook/buy specific food to complement your character's build, so it's more a matter of which bonus you want.
It also changes from one region to another. In the desert, water is more scarce and you must drink more often. The available ingredients aren't the same either, so you probably will find a different way to feed yourself in the Marsh than in the desert.
You also need to make food rations to travel from one region to another. In a way, food is a travel currency to switch between major regions. That means it's relatively easy to gather lots of extra food, or else you wouldn't be able to make the travel rations you need.
Food can spoil, but you slow down that process by cooking your ingredients. It takes a long time for most food items to rot, but some defeat scenarios, and traveling between regions, skips multiple days and that may cause some of your food to rot in the meantime. In that sense, it is part of the concequences of being defeated to lose food items due to the time passing from being knocked out for days.
Usually, it becomes a matter of habits. If you are heading in a direction and see a deer or a pearlbird on the way, might as well kill it and get some food in the process so you're ready when you get hungry. If you do that, you will rarely need to go out of your way to find food. Same goes for water: your waterskin can hold 5 portions of water, so if you fill up your skin in the town's well, you will be good to go for a couple of days.
Outward has stories, quests and lots of places to explore. It's an RPG with survival elements, not a Survival game with RPG elements. We've put the survival elements to add more obstacles and make you feel like a human being, not to bog you down.
