Some observations on sickness

[Mookie (original) 799]

Further to my necro'd post, some thoughts on sickness in 1.05 below:

1. It's possibly randomly assigned. I threw away the canteen I thought I was getting sick from, after healing with tetra. In the meantime I wasn't in any Z strikes, or even encounters. I did not get cold or wet. And then I got sick, again. Took more tetra. Cleared again. Then sick again. These bouts are about 20 minutes apart. Nothing happens in between that common sense would indicate are a cause of infection. 

2. The quicker you hit it with tetra, the faster it clears. 

3. I understand that taking vitamins helps to safeguard you against infection, but I can't find any evidence in recent experience to back this up. 

4. It's possible that there is more than one type of infection. But (pace point 2 above), it's not easy to tell. 

5. All this can be seriously unfair on new players. I have 12k hours ingame, and I've died more than once to sickness in this patch. I suggest it needs some thought from the devs. 

Edited October 14, 2019 by Mookie (original)

[Tarkules 153]

Find alcohol or disinfectant spray and use them to disinfect your bottle or canteen.

Eat only cooked food, it will save you the use of vitamins.

[emuthreat 2837]

Did you wash your hands?

[Mookie (original) 799]

Wearing gloves at all times. Also seems to happen to me on all servers - modded and vanilla.

[William Sternritter 449]

Interesting. 

So far, I certainly got sick from random canteen, even sipping off the well at one time and from eating uncooked food. As for cleaning canteens and bottles, I just purify them and never got sick from drinking purified water. Cold and rain, I'm not sure about, so far did not get into the cold (blue) indicator and rain, as far as I know is not implemented. There is audio for rain but I never got wet from it.

However, the one time I got sick from eating uncooked food (I wanted to see the effects), the sickness lasted and kept returning for some time until it finally went away. More or less as you describe, I got the bacteria icon, took some tetra, bacteria disappeared, came back again and so on. It took quite a few pills to heal completely. But if you say you got this on multiple servers, with (presumably) different chars … that is strange. Maybe you're just cursed 😄

Edited October 15, 2019 by William Sternritter

[McWendy 675]

10 hours ago, Mookie (original) said:

Wearing gloves at all times. Also seems to happen to me on all servers - modded and vanilla.

Your gloves are dirty 😎

[EzyStriderPS4 191]

Something strange happened to me with sickness...  Exact order of events: I found a plastic water bottle, emptied it out on the ground, then discarded it because I had no room in inventory.  Climbed a ladder, way up high, glitched getting off, and fell three stories.  I thought I was dead!  I had been knocked on conscious instead and my health went into the red.  I came to, and hobbled my lucky ass down the road.  My water indicator dropped to yellow so I pounded a fresh canteen, which I know I filled at the well in town and had used before many times without any problem.  I started throwing up immediately and had the bacteria icon.  I know for fact that my stomach wasn't full.  I wonder if that water bottle interaction somehow bugged up my canteen?  Does town well water have a small percentage of infection also?  Tetra took illness away very quickly.

[William Sternritter 449]

7 hours ago, EzyStriderPS4 said:

Does town well water have a small percentage of infection also? 

Seems like it. A while back I drank from a well and got the same reaction. Recently I drank from well again as fresh spawn and nothing happened. So there either maybe a chance of infection or that some wells are like this. Would be nice to have a definitive answer.

[Mookie (original) 799]

It would be great if we had a Wobo-like figure to explain the mechanics of this to us poor plebs. Or, y'know, the devs...

[drgullen 596]

9 hours ago, Mookie (original) said:

It would be great if we had a Wobo-like figure to explain the mechanics of this to us poor plebs. Or, y'know, the devs...

Nah, it's more fun to guess.  😋

[Parazight 1599]

One thing, it seems, is that if you add chlorine to your water but don't leave the pond, you'll get sick sometimes anyway.  So, from now on I fill the bottle and then go back on dry land, purify, and then chug.

Basically, don't leave home without tetracycline.

Aside, I'd love to see antibiotics become a rare item.  That might force people into having to boil water, or eat prepared mushrooms, or something else magical.   Needs to come down to more than "do I have tetra tabs or not?'

[William Sternritter 449]

18 minutes ago, Parazight said:

One thing, it seems, is that if you add chlorine to your water but don't leave the pond, you'll get sick sometimes anyway.  So, from now on I fill the bottle and then go back on dry land, purify, and then chug.

Wait, that's how you do it regardless 😄 You don't really want to linger near the water stuck in animation any longer than you have to. At least get behind some trees or whatever and purify it there. 

[DayZNightStalker 1]

I wish the sickness system had more UI explanation.  Like "you got sick from tainted water" or "you got sick from uncooked food".  That would at least tell you what to do to mitigate it in the future.

[William Sternritter 449]

Yes, certain status messages, basically the symptoms, that help you identify the cause of your sickness should return. 

[RyanS1994 110]

there's only 2 things that get you sick, dirty water or raw meat, why would we need any status messages?

[Mookie (original) 799]

2 hours ago, RyanS1994 said:

there's only 2 things that get you sick, dirty water or raw meat, why would we need any status messages?

I'm pretty sure Z hits can make you sick too - especially if they draw blood. 

In any case, while there may be only two or three means of acquisition, there may be more than one type of infection (eg cholera, as we used to have, 'flu, all kinds of different bacteria, etc) which may have differing symptoms and differing treatments.  

I think the point is that the in the later .5x patches there were a slightly wider variety of types of sickness and especially of symptoms. 

[RyanS1994 110]

Z hits don't do anything currently, don't know if that will change. I still think the status messages would be a complete crutch, ifyou get ill you know what you've done wrong.

I wouldn't argue with them if they introduced much more complex diseases maybe, as the game is, illness isn't an issue as after getting ill maybe twice you know exactly what caused it and there's only around 3 or 4 medical items so it doesn't take long to figure out which ones help.

[VVarhead 185]

I'm having some serious issues with the sickness system. Been playing since the first day standalone came out and I'm absolutely puzzled about the sickness system - can't imagine how frustrated new players must be. 

I strongly feel that if you equip a water bottle with tainted (dirty) water, and then use your normal canteen with purified and clean water to drink you will sometimes get sick. Has to be a bug. 

[RyanS1994 110]

@VVarhead you positive your not accidentally drinking the tainted water? Not had this happen to me or heard of it happen.