Arthritis: Bug or feature?

I just found this amazing game last week and I’ve hardly stopped playing. It’s incredible how detailed it is. Scratches the same itch as the Unreal World but has a much bigger fun element. I had finally got over the hump of the first couple days (found a death truck at a military roadblock and just cheesed over every zombie in my way) when the new version hit. Somehow things seemed much harder…maybe because I got no free tanks.

Well after many dead Bionic Assassins with wool allergies, I was going strong, found a FARM with metal winch operated doors, what a heavenly place to store my junk, and I can sleep in piles of hay! It’s the first day of summer, I have guns, bows, welders and all types of crap in my rat’s nest, when I get interrupted while crafting. “Your joints ache.” No big deal, I figured it was a penalty from running miles with 100 lbs of gear. But it won’t go away. I’m constantly at 35-50 pain, I can’t sleep for more than five minutes, my speed is interrupted, and I have to constantly click “N” when crafting or cooking. Aspirin doesn’t help and I’m not sick or feverish. I don’t have the bad knees trait.

What’s going on? Is there a cure?

First of all, welcome! I hope you have a good staying in our warm, cozy forums! :slight_smile:

Hmm, sorry if i kind of insult with this silly question, (but i never had this problem so it’s the only thing i can think of) are you overhauled and carrying way too much stuff? Maybe it’s that.

Been climbing through broken windows, hmm sneak thief?

I think you have contracted a feature.

Tetanus

Dunno what this is. Maybe do a blood analysis?

Thanks for the welcome! No I am not too heavily laden, 30/120 lbs, not much encumbrance.

I am usually very diligent about clearing out window debris before climbing through, but sometimes you don’t want to give that zombie brute any moment to catch up to you…so yeah. Also I ran over a bunch of a rubble tiles during travel.

Not sure if that’s the explanation deadmerits, because there’s no indicator in the status window. I had a cold and that showed up. Also the wiki says that should cause spasms and stun? I just get pain.

Still, I will try to find some antibiotics and report on that! Never done a blood analysis, can it be done without the CBM? I suppose i can just get the CBM with the debug mode.

I might be wrong about that. Royal jelly would be worth trying if the antibiotics don’t.

Blood analysis it’s with the cbm and i thiiink you may find a way to do it in hospitals! It’s an sneaky state, nothing appears in the status window.

I got tetanus ingame, and that’s not tetanus. It makes your muscles spasm occasionally and you fall over.

Whelp, that was easy. Intramuscular parasites!

Seems like a newer feature. I will work on field testing a cure! Will probably die in the search though, this guy is awfully slow with pain 50 combined with the depression of his first murder…(I don’t really feel like it was murder because some crazy woman came to my farm, pointed a gun at me, and told me it was her farm now)

Oh its so obvious now. Anyways good luck on the hunt for the cure. I feel better now knowing what it was.

You need anti-parasitic drugs (or royal jelly) to get rid of those suckers. You can find in in pharmacy/hospital/lab or craft it with a cooking skill of 6 and the right ingredients. You can maybe also find it in house bathroom or basement random spawn, and I’ve also found some on a random zombie, but it’s a very low drop rate. I had to suffer through 4 to 5 ingame days and like 9 pharmacies and lots of caffeine and opiates just to cope with the pain and lack of sleep. Once I found the anti-parasitic it only took one dose, then about another day and a half to come down from the opiate addiction. I don’t know if they’re fatale, but you won’t be able to sleep until you get rid of those muscle parasites.

Bark tea can also work, if you’ve got one of the books that teach you how to make it.

Personally I think this should have an indicator in the effects window. Everything else does, and all it serves to do is confuse people. They shouldn’t have to be asking on the forums what a particular message means, it’s hard enough just finding the right stuff to cure it and the message is extremely vague for a potentially game-ruining condition.

As far as I know bark tea is “anti-parasitic lite”, it will only help with gastro-intestinal parasites, and not with the muscle or brain ones. For those you need the drugs/royal jelly.

The respective code doesn’t differentiate. Bark tea is as good as any other antiparasitic agent.

I agree. At the very least put something on the status window to indicate you aren’t feeling 100%. Maybe not ‘you have such and such exact infection/parasite’ but something more generic like ‘something is wrong, but you aren’t sure what.’ to at least let them know they have something as opposed to it being some outside thing like cold weather, carrying too much, etc.

The respective code doesn’t differentiate. Bark tea is as good as any other antiparasitic agent.[/quote]

Ok, I stand corrected then, because I was going by the description from the Cataclysm Item Brower website.

~ bark tea
craft

Volume: 2 Weight: 0.55 lbs/0.25 kg
Bash: 0 Cut: 0 To-hit bonus: +0
Moves per attack: 77
Damage per move: 0.00
Materials: Unknown
Flags: EATEN_HOT

Phase: liquid
Nutrition: 0
Quench: -35
Enjoyability: -5
Charges: 1
Healthy: 0
Stimulant: 0 mins
Addiction: 0

Often regarded as folk medicine in some countries, bark tea tastes awful and tends to dry you out, but >can help flush out stomach or other gut bugs.

If the code doesn’t differentiate, that’s fine, but I think that it should. It makes sense that the tea would be good against Gastro-Intestinal bugs, but how does it help against muscle or brain bugs?

First aid skill should help in diagnosing the hidden effects.

Hm… perhaps you should be able to diagnose yourself, or ask others to do it for you.

It should, but it’s probably a somewhat low-priority tweak. In the meantime, it’s standard-issue video-game weirdness.