Social skills will be very helpful in later stages of the game, you can also try to soothe the NPCs (who I'm going to collectively refer to as the castaways from here on). Once a day you can use a diplomacy check to improve their thoughts of you and each one has something important about them. I highly suggest keeping them alive<br/><br/>Anyway, to the knowledge check besides some poison ivy there isn't anything you need to outright avoid in this area of smugglers shiv. Pretty much all the plants are edible but they don't provide much nutritional value besides berries and roots which are relatively easy to find