Health system: What I could figure out.

[LouisK 85]

Well, after playing a lot of hours with my pals, reading the forums and experimenting in the game I have found some concrete explanation on the current medical system and how it works. This could either be all incorrect or correct information but the plan is to improve it so we can all agree in a common explanation for the health system.
 
The following is more like a homemade version of this http://dayzdb.com/guide/11-standalone-status-effects ; I had no knowledge that this existed before I made this post, and by comparing both you can see this is actually pretty accurate.
 
Nutrition
 Your character has energy. Energy is recovered by ingesting the nutrients, proteins and vitamins needed according your life style, weight, age, etcetera. You waste off a lot of energy by moving around in chernarus when it comes about jogging, running, jumping, etcetera.
 As soon as you spawn your energy, food and liquid levels will be really low, and the liquids (known as thirst) will be near to a critical point.
 
Current known character modifiers:
Energy;  This measures the amount of energy your character has. It might decrease by doing excersise and moving, and it will increase by eating, drinking and resting. Seems you will go unconcious if your energy is very low.
Food (Hunger);  This measures the amount of food your character has. It will decrease over time and wasting energy accelerates the process. It will also be reduced by certain diseases or vomiting. Increased by eating. Each food increases the hunger differently. Soda cans currently increase the food levels by a bit.
Htdratation (Thirst);   This measures the amount of hydratation your character has. It will decrease over time and wasting energy accelerates the process. It will also be reduced by certain diseases or vomiting. Increased by drinking water or soda cans.
Blood;    This measures your current "life". It can be decreased directly by external sources (such as an impact, a bullet hit, a bleeding) or internally (diseases). It can be increased by a blood transfusion or a saline transfusion.
Stomach*;   This measures how full you are.
 
*Read on the dayzdb.com guide.
 

Your thirst and hunger levels will appear on your inventory if they reach a certain point where you need to eat or drink, indicated as     hungry   ,     hungry    or     hungry    and     thirsty   ,     thirsty    or     thirsty     depending how bad is your condition.

 

There will be text notifications on three levels:

 

Level 1: "I am hungry; I could use a drink" and similar.

Level 2: "I am starving; I really need a drink" and similar.

Level 3: "I am starving; I really need a drink" and similar.

 

Once you get a red notification it begins to drain blood.

 

Tips on nutrition
As soon as you spawn you should head to a water source. So far we can assume with a high certanety that the water from well ponds is completely clean. There for your first objective should be drinking about 20x of this source until you get a message that affirms that you're full. You have then satisfied completely your thirst as you begin around a 20% level of thirst.
So far everyone that drank from the wells did not get water intoxicated. Most of the people who drinks from water ponds (including the swamps, lakes, rivers, etcetera) are intoxicated.
 
Food is another matter. You should keep eating as much as you can while always having a reserve in case of emergency. Do not over eat as that might cause you food poisoning. Eat until you get the "I am full" message or something along those lines. Use common sense. Hunger is not a problem if you wait until it starts warning you about hunger and you eat two cans of anything then. Hunting is not yet implemented so the only source of food are the cans and others. I believe when cooking is implemented, a well cooked meat or rice will provide really high amounts of energy and food level.

Athletes tend to need more calories: While there are no vehicles, every survivor is an athlete. This means sprinting, running, jogging and walking consume energy. You will get hungry and thirsty faster if you spend your complete time sprinting (full speed running). You will get tired more often and your accuracy will be extremly affected by the tiredness. If you don't like eating every five minutes then avoid sprinting more than short lapses of time. Use sprinting only when really needed or you see it fit as the situation over goes. If you sprint from the coast to zelenogorsk to meet your friend without drinking you will most likely die before getting there. If you fill your stomach with water you might make it, yet the energy gained from that water will be heavily consumed and you will find yourself thirsty again at half of the way, most of the times.
 
Following these tips it is garantized that you will not receive those annoying messages unless you waste your energy incredibly fast by sprinting for over 1km non stop. Many people believe the hunger and thirsty consumes really fast but It doesn't.
 
What to avoid
- Over eating past full.
- Eating rotten stuff.
- Drinking from ponds without purifying.
- Eating stuff in bad state - (Starting from damaged) I believe this has no effect YET.
- Dehydratation: You will go unconcious if you reach critical states. You should have around a few minutes when the red messages start popping in.
- Starvation: Same as above.
 
 
Health System
Health, just like the mod is measured by the amount of blood on your body. It is currently unknown the exact amount of blood we have, and how exactly it increases or decreases over time. Rather than that we have lots of visual indicators.
 
How to measure your state
When you spawn, you have full blood regenerated on you. You'll notice your blood level is degraded when your screen colors begin to desaturate and you will see less and less colors until you reach black and white. You can measure how bad by the amount of colors you perceive. It is highly noticable but hard to explain on text.
 
 
Different Health States
There are different health states that will affect your character's blood, and these are hunger, thirst, blood loss,  sickness & instant, healing, healthy. There are other stats which will not affect your blood and may happen while all or any of the mentioned states are in effect, these are: unconciousness, shock, pain, broken legs.
 
How to lose blood
There are two ways to lose blood: either externally or internally. On the first one, any external source will directly take blood from you via the damage, and these sources could be either a bullet, an impact, a zombie bit, etcetera, and your blood levels could reach critical instantly. On the other one, your blood will most likely degenerate over time and will be caused by things such diseases, vomiting, blood loss, etcetera.
Your clothes will give you increased protection to external sources of damage.
 
How to gain blood
Two ways that I discovered so far: Nutrition & Medicines. Your blood naturally regenerates if you reach the healing or healthy status, that means, if you are very well fed, hydratated and rested (high energy). Otherwise there are two medicinal ways to recover blood and both requiere another person to administer them to you: Blood and Saline. Both are intravenous, there for need someone else to administer them. Saline will work as a replacment for blood when needed, and there are no restrictions to it yet. Blood, instead, has the type restriction.
 
   Blood Types
   You will spawn with a blood type every time you die. It will be different and it will really affect the way blood transfusions work. Just like real life there are compatibility issues. The blood types are 0+ 0-, A+ A-, B+ B- & AB+ AB-. Google up the blood transfusion compatibility to know whether you can receive blood from another donor. You can find your blood type with a blood testing kit.
 
MEDICAL SUPPLIES
In your trips you might find different medical supplies, these are:
 
Antibiotics                   These cover most of bacterial infections and are of moderate time of effect.
Injection Vial               These have inyectable antibiotics inside. Time of effect should be really fast.
Syringe                       These are used to collect blood samples OR inyect antibiotics from the vial.
Bandages                   Both the green one and the ones in first aid kids are sterile.
Rags                           Rags are non sterile improvised bandages made with shirts.
Painkillers                   Used to aliviate the pain in a moderate-low effect.
Charcoal Tabs            Used to absorb poisonous substances in your stomach.
Saline                         Saline is used to boost your current blood level. Often works with unconciousness.
Morphine                    Used to aliviate great amounts of pain. Instantly.
Epipherine                  Increases hearth beats, should work for most of unconciousness cases.
IV Kit                           Used to create an intravenous kit along with saline.
Blood Test Kit              Used to know your current blood type.
Blood Bag                    It is always empty unless filled with your own or somebody's else blood.
Splints                         Used to heal broken bones. Made with wooden sticks and a bandage.
 
First Aid Kit                Contains all the elements to provide first aid: two bandages, syringe, IV kit, empty blood bag.
Defribilator                 Used to wake up someone from unconciousness. Not tested. Can't be used to revive.
 
Some could be missing.
 
 
 
Diseases
 These are a great addition to the Standalone which implements a great amount of ways to get sick, rather than the old hit & infected-antibiotics part of the mod.
Nobody is completely certain of how it works yet so the following chunk is mostly assumptions and experiments... but sound logical.
 
So far people has gotten sick from: Eating bad stuff, drinking bad stuff, getting fed or drink bad stuff, getting hit, etcetera.. This can be translated to the different diseases: Water Intoxication, Food Intoxication, Poisoning, Bacterial infection, Saturation.
 
Other effects, cures and diseases might exist, the following were tested by experience.
 
Water intoxication
Origin: Intoxicated Water (Sea Water, Ponds, Lakes, Rivers, dirty containers)
Effect: Vomiting when the disease begins. Great loss of blood while it's in effect. Increased Hunger. Dizziness.
Cure: It goes away by itself if you keep well fed and hydratated with clean water. Vitamins help to get rid of it faster.
How to Avoid: Drink from wells, or purify the water you're going to take if you don't know it's origin.

Notes: There are no messages previous to the disease and it is an instant contagious.
 
Food Intoxication
Origin: Rotten fruits.
Effect: Vomiting when the disease begins. Great loss of blood while it's in effect. Increased thirst. Dizziness.
Cure: It goes away by itself if you eat sane food and keep well hydratated when it demands for water. Vitamins help to get rid of it faster.
How to Avoid: Don't eat food in bad state. Get Charcoal Tabs before you get into sickness status.

Notes: Unknown notifications.
 
Aliment Poisoning
Origin: Eating anything not edible normally. Drinking anything not drinkable normally.
Effect: Vomiting. Nausea. Dizziness. Funny or weird tastes in your mouth. At last periodic loss of blood.
Cure: It might seem strange but antibiotics help on this one. Don't know if it goes away by itself.
How to Avoid: Eat charcoal tabs immediatelly after eating or drinking the unknown substance. Don't drink such substances.

Notes: After consuming such substances you will receive messages such as "My mouth feels funny" or "I feel something funny in my mouth". You can cure by applying charcoal tabs on this phase. After this passes you will get the dizzyness passive status and will proceed in the disease.
 
Bacterial Infection
Origin: Dirty wounds.
Effect: Great periodic loss of blood. Pain status.
Cure: Antibiotics.
How to Avoid: Clean wounds with alcohol when your wounds are itchy.

Notes: Before achieving this you'll see notifications such as "My wounds are itchy" and "My wounds hurt".
 
Oversaturation
Origin: Over eating or drinking too much.
Effect: Loss of blood. Vomiting resulting in losing some percentage on your hunger and thirst.
Cure: No known cure.
How to avoid: Don't eat / drink past the "I'm feeling full" or similar messages.

Notes: You will receive messages such as "I feel over saturated" and similar.

 

Cleaning wounds

Origin: cleaning your wounds with alcohol.

Effect: no negative effect.

Cure: no cure.

How to avoid: can't be avoided.

Notes: This happens when you clean your wounds, you will receive messages such as "My wounds look cleaner" until you get a "My wounds are completely clean" or something along those lines. This is most likely a place holder status for the system to clean wounds and is most likely to be changed in the future. This shows up as a disease.
 
Any of the previous mentioned diseases will show up on the inventory as    sick   ,     sick     or     sick    , depending how advanced the disease it and on what stage it is.
 
Player States
These are passive player states that might occur during playing. These can or can not be caused by a disease and have different causes. These can stack up with each other and do not directly affect your blood level (except for bleeding). Most of these are caused by external causes.
 
Bleeding (   bleeding   )
Origin: Penetration of damage. (Ballistic/Impact).
Effect: Blood dripping off your clothes.
Cure: Bandage
How to Avoid: Being well clothed reduces chance of bleeding on zombie attacks. Ballistic penetration can be stopped by vests and helmets. You can't avoid this from sharp stuff such axes, knives, etcetera.

Notes: you will see messages such as "I can feel blood dripping off my body" and you will see the blood coming out of your wounds.
 
Unconciousness
Origin: Dehydratation, Starvation, High amounts of damage.
Effect: You go unconcious. Unable to move or see.
Cure: You can be hit with an epi-pen. You can be fed and be given water. You can be administrated with saline.
How to Avoid: Don't go into critical levels of hunger or thirst. Don't get shot (Sounds easy, eh?). You can use ballistic vests and helmets to prevent incoming bullet damage. Impact damage might not be stopped so easily.

Notes: Completely black screen. Unable to do anything. Can respawn.
 
Shock
Origin: Highs amounts of damage. (Impact/Ballistic)
Effect: Blurry screen. Different levels of blurryness depending amount of damage taken.
Cure: Morphine (?); Waiting.
How to avoid: You can't, really, given most of the times by an axe swing. Might happen if shot but not killed.

Pain
Origin: Any amount of damage.
Effect: Character screams constantly.
Cure: Several painkillers. Morphine (Instant). Cleaning wounds with alcohol.
How to avoid: It seems to be random on the damage. If your clothes stop any bullet it will give you pain but not bleeding or blood loss.

Notes: no notification on this, maybe in the future the "Your wounds hurt less" messages will apply if the pain effect is applied and somehow a cure is paplied.
 
Broken Legs
Origin: Being shot in the legs (Not happening now); falling from high places.
Effect: Unable to move legs. There for unable to stand or walk.
Cure: Splints.
How to avoid: Don't fall off that cliff.

 

Dizzyness

Origin: Any disease; over eating/drinking.

Effect: Increased reaction to food/water. You want to vomit.
Cure: vomiting.

How to avoid: cure your sickness, don't eat bad stuff.

Notes: you will get messages such as "I feel dizzy" or "I want to vomit"
 
Healing  (healing)
Origin: Being well fed, drunk and rested.
Effect: Regeneration of blood over time.
 
Healthy  (healthy)
Origin: Being well fed, drunk and rested and full blood.
Effect: Increased regeneration of health.

Notes: you will get a "Completely healthy" message.
 

 

 

 
General Information
- There is no instant cure for sickness status. Most of the diseases will go away an interval after taking it's correct cure. Applying the wrong cure might get you even sickier.
- Always sterilize if you use rags.
- Do not eat or drink anything stupid. I almost died for drinking the alcohol (thinking it was vodkah!).
- Purify or boil (not implemented) water with the tablets if you don't know where it came from.
- Always purify pond water. Do not drink directly from it. Except it is really needed. In such case only drink a few sips.
- Wells are a safe source of water and can be found in almost every city or town. Some cities have more than one.
- Always have extra supplies. If you get sick, the disease might consume your food and/or thirst levels very fastly.
- Don't use anyone's blood unless you're sure of their types and yours and if you're compatible.
- You can be force fed with anything if you're not moving. You can be killed by anyone who feds you the wrong things such as desinfectant.
- Your blood can be stolen if you're not moving. You might also get blood injected in hopes that you're not compatible.
- Taking blood from yourself or somebody else when their levels are low can kill them.
- Clothes do affect the chance of bleeding and they actually stop bullets if the equipment is suited to do so.
- You have a short lapse of time on which the charcoal tabs will heal you instead of killing you.
- You can desinfect almost anything with a desinfectant liquid. You shouldn't desinfect food.
- If your character is complaining about pain, refeer to the painkillers or morphine (instant solution).
- Saline replinishes your blood safely. So does blood but is way more dangerous.
- You're not a tank if fully geared either. The ballistic gear might stop one bullet or two. It will defenitely NOT stop an axe either.

Edited December 27, 2013 by LouisK

[atreyiu 3]

Good job on that post, i just learn somthing that i dont know. very helpfull

[EndEffeKt 87]

Hmm so I got a question regarding the injection vials: Are they always containing some antibiotics? Because both the text and the etiquette dont state that. According to the etiquette i am carrying Sodiumbicarbonate, which wont help me much as long as I am not developing some kind of Diabetes with ketoacidosis :P

[LouisK 85]

Hmm so I got a question regarding the injection vials: Are they always containing some antibiotics? Because both the text and the etiquette dont state that. According to the etiquette i am carrying Sodiumbicarbonate, which wont help me much as long as I am not developing some kind of Diabetes with ketoacidosis :P

 

That's why i said most of the times :P Every one I found had ABs inside

[professorchaos 20]

This looks great, how many times you and your pals died of sickness? :P

Something to add concerning broken legs: You can craft a splint out of wooden sticks and Badages to cure broken legs ;-)
(Source: Dean Halls Twitter-post)

[LouisK 85]

This looks great, how many times you and your pals died of sickness? :P

Something to add concerning broken legs: You can craft a splint out of wooden sticks and Badages to cure broken legs ;-)

(Source: Dean Halls Twitter-post)

 

I think that's not live yet. And we haven't died many times if any, we always found a cure before!

[Agrefits 70]

add: you can get sick from wet clothings, usually after sweating (sprinting quite a while) or being in the water (haven't checked it on rain yet, cause i hardly saw any rain so far) .. You can check if you clothings are wet in the inventory. They'll state "damp" beneath their condition status when they are wet.

[LouisK 85]

add: you can get sick from wet clothings, usually after sweating (sprinting quite a while) or being in the water (haven't checked it on rain yet, cause i hardly saw any rain so far) .. You can check if you clothings are wet in the inventory. They'll state "damp" beneath their condition status when they are wet.

 

I got my whole equipment wet multiple times and I never got sick, any step to reproduce?

[venkman302 6]

Great topic.  Something unique just happened to me.

 

I was healthy and fine except for a zombie fight an hour ago where I had no choice but to bandage with my shirt (no alcohol to clean rages or first aid kit bandages avail.).  Anyway, my guy is moaning and I have like every gear in the world EXCEPT for anti biotics.  I put some alcohol on my wounds to "clean wounds with alcohol" and instantly my status when you press TAB shows me as sick.  So, shouldn't I be better?  Any ideas here?  Perhaps just an alpha bug?

 

Thanks!

[LouisK 85]

Great topic.  Something unique just happened to me.

 

I was healthy and fine except for a zombie fight an hour ago where I had no choice but to bandage with my shirt (no alcohol to clean rages or first aid kit bandages avail.).  Anyway, my guy is moaning and I have like every gear in the world EXCEPT for anti biotics.  I put some alcohol on my wounds to "clean wounds with alcohol" and instantly my status when you press TAB shows me as sick.  So, shouldn't I be better?  Any ideas here?  Perhaps just an alpha bug?

 

Thanks!

 

We believe this is like this because you get sort of an "imaginary" state of dirty wounds and the game believes it's a disease. You will not lose blood and we believe this is just an state added to indicate that your wounds are dirty and being cleaned. Might be a bug or changed in the future.

[Dog_Fighter 1]

Good job, very helpful :thumbsup:

 

Question

What do I need for Injection Vial?

How to use

[LouisK 85]

 

Good job, very helpful :thumbsup:

 

Question

What do I need for Injection Vial?

How to use

 

 

You need a syringe. First aid kits come with one. With the syringe you can take a sample of blood (I believe it is non functional, will have to test or at least it serves no porpuse) or load it with anything that is inside the injection vials.

Edited December 22, 2013 by LouisK

[Dog_Fighter 1]

You need a syringe. First aid kits come with one. With the syringe you can take a sample of blood (I believe it is non functional, will have to test or at least it serves no porpuse) or load it with anything that is inside the injection vials.

Thanks

[etherfreeze 34]

Thanks for the post, very informative! My friend just broke his leg. Can anyone confirm if the splint thing works or if morphine is currently required (or if it ever heals on its own)? 

[LouisK 85]

Thanks for the post, very informative! My friend just broke his leg. Can anyone confirm if the splint thing works or if morphine is currently required (or if it ever heals on its own)? 

 

I don't even know if the splint is added or it was a planned feature that Mr. R twitted. I can't confirm as broken legs are really rare right now considering you only obtain them from falling heights.

[SquirrelX (DayZ) 8]

I can confirm that you can in fact craft a splint with sticks and a bandage .... I have not had to use it, yet.

[LouisK 85]

I can confirm that you can in fact craft a splint with sticks and a bandage .... I have not had to use it, yet.

 

Added to the list of medical equipment and cure for broken legs.

[monolith1985 109]

i had a similar problem with medicine, i decided to clean my wounds shortly after being hit by a zombie and bandaging with rags.  once i used the alcohol on my wounds i got sick, like mentioned above.  it was in a green/yellow state, so i tried taking some charcoal tablets, which put me in a red state of sickness.  the next day i kept well fed and watered and survived it.

[Steak and Potatoes 13480]

Great post Louis :beans:

[korpisoturi (DayZ) 127]

Great post, thought actually making similar as well. Rocket should make this whole health system somehow "knowable" to all players, new and old. I mean probably half the people in the forums don't understand you need to eat 20 cans of food and drink 30 times to start generating health AFTER you don't have hunger or thirst icons in inventory which is absolutely stupid. What was wrong with the old Mod system where you could easily see if you were little hungry or starving? That was the most userfriendliest UI in SA or mod compined. Rocket is alienating new players from the game which is financially retarded.

 

Don't get me wrong here, I love the mod and love the SA and I'm all for this new health system, but there should be some kind of ingame tips or manual so even people who are not in the forums can know this stuff.

 

PS. And don't start that "realism" bullshit on me, I facepalm every time someone pulls that realism-card on the table.

Edited December 23, 2013 by korpisoturi

[CrunchyBacon 29]

I see so many people saying they are getting sick after cleaning they're wounds. Reason for this is your wounds were never infected. Your character will say random messages like "my wounds itch" or "my wounds hurt" or "my wounds are infected" when you need to apply alcohol tincture.

Same goes for all medicinal items like antibiotics and charcoal tabs. If you use them and don't have the symptoms you will make yourself sick.

[LouisK 85]

I see so many people saying they are getting sick after cleaning they're wounds. Reason for this is your wounds were never infected. Your character will say random messages like "my wounds itch" or "my wounds hurt" or "my wounds are infected" when you need to apply alcohol tincture.

Same goes for all medicinal items like antibiotics and charcoal tabs. If you use them and don't have the symptoms you will make yourself sick.

 

I think this might be a bug, I don't think you can get any single disease by cleaning wounds with an appropiate bacterial killer. Dirty or not at most you'll suffer a bit of pain while you apply the alcohol into them. By cleaning every single wound you would just be preventing a disease.

 

Everyone just assumed you get into that fake state of sickness so the game recognizes it has to clean your wounds.

Edited December 23, 2013 by LouisK

[nickholder85@gmail.com 19]

Nice, thank you :)

[Zogvarn 118]

I think this might be a bug, I don't think you can get any single disease by cleaning wounds with an appropiate bacterial killer. Dirty or not at most you'll suffer a bit of pain while you apply the alcohol into them. By cleaning every single wound you would just be preventing a disease.

 

Everyone just assumed you get into that fake state of sickness so the game recognizes it has to clean your wounds.

Some evidence concerning cleaning wounds and game messages:

 

Three time now I have gotten in fights with zombies, been hit 1-2 times, been bleeding, and bandaged my wounds with rags. All three times I would get to a safe place, eat till full, drink till full, take some vitamins. No healthy state appeared and I did not have the "Healing" message, remember though I had been hit so had some blood loss. All three times I had the "healthy" status prior to the fights, but not after.

 

I cleaned my wounds with alcohol tincture and got the sick status, but I also received the "My wounds hurt less/ My wounds are healed" messages.

After the "my wounds are healed" message popped up, the "healing" status showed up in my inventory and I started regening blood/health. When that stopped I got the "healthy" message.

 

I never received any messages stating that my wounds hurt/itched/were infected.

[blfonsworth 32]

It would be nice to have a small "progress bar" of sorts on the screen.. like in most every single other game ever made, you can see your health right in front of you. it doesn't need to be big.. have a small blue bar for thirst, a small green bar for food, a small red bar for overall health/blood and maybe a yellow bar for energy. They don't have to be big, but something would be nice other than the "Hunger" and "Thrist" icon that resembles a check engine light on a car.