Broken Limb Healing Time?

Game Talk The Bunker
1

My current survivor has a broken arm that has been healing for ten days, and is currently only at “Started Recovery.” I’ve been taking multivitamins regularly, and staying inside, although I did get a bit too close to a fire at one point which might have undone some of the healing. I should mention that this character is obese (started with XL weight, lost a little) which probably affects my health stat, but I can’t really burn calories with my arm broken. Does anyone know how long it’ll take to heal? If the answer is three weeks or something, I suppose that’s fine; I’ve been spending my time studying spells and leveling up my skills, I’d just like to know. I can’t view my health stat directly, unfortunately. Any answers are appreciated.

Edit: Ahhh, I just realized I have -32 warmth on the arm, which probably explains part of it- I’ve crafted a loom and shed stick, and am currently weaving cotton sheets to make arm warmers, which should help. How big of an impact does warmth have on healing?

2

Unless you literally stood in the flames and have taken damage, heat should not have any influence.

To answer this question I’d like to know a bit more. What do you consider “healed”? At full health? Or just mended? The “Started recovery” throws me a bit off, since that’s pretty much the message you get once the body part is “usable” again, but at 1 hitpoint.

None whatsoever on mending (unless you get into damaging ranges). Not sure about healing after it’s mended, but I can check if you want.

3

If you’re really impatient I suppose you can look for a auto doc, they’re easily found in hospitals. Only problem is that they’re overrun with the dead.

I recommend a rifle and lots and lots of ammo.

4

With a 50% or so chance that the undead will have wrecked all autodocs by the time you’ve cleared the hospital (with your broken limb…).

I’ve used a vehicle to mow down the first 100 or so zombies outside the hospitals before going in to encounter the last 1-2 dozen (plus rests after each melee fight to recover the stamina, during which time I guess the zombies can have enjoyed themselves with further wrecking of things, which you should be able to prevent partially by resting up further than 2½ tiles away from the sensitive equipment).

I don’t know how magic will affect the difficulty, though.

I’d wait it out unless I knew of a working autodoc that had already been secured.

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5

I can’t tell you how many times an NPC has given me a quest for analyzing zombie blood in a hospital only for me to find that all the autoclaves are busted but the auto docs are perfectly fine.

Or me looking for an auto doc to install CBM’s and all the autoclaves are fine but the auto docs are busted up by zombies.

I personally would recommend raiding a military outpost (take care of the turrets with ranged weapons) and nabbing the ammo and training your rifles skill, THEN going for the hospital. With the amount of zombies there are there’s no way you’re gonna melee them all to death, even with my Demi-god character I’d run out of breath and get mauled.

6

I personally have only ever seen one non-trashed autodoc in a hospital, which I have cleared at the very beginning of the run. OTOH, zombies’ desire for smashing was reduced since then so maybe it is 50%? Wouldn’t bet on it, though.
Science lab would be much better chance for autodoc than hospitals. Or military bunker, if you’re lucky to draw a configuration which includes it and have a couple of mil.ID cards.

7

To clarify, I’m considering “healed” mended, since I already know about how long it will take to get it back to full health after that. I debugged in Self-Aware for a turn, because I was curious- the limb says that it’s 0% mended? That’s a bit strange. It’s good to know that there’s no impact on mending, but in that case it’s a bit worrisome, if this is the normal time to heal.

8

Alright. The question would be: Do you wear a splint? A splint (on the body part that is actually broken) is mandatory for it to start healing (unless you have a specific regeneration mutation).
An autodoc, as others mentioned, might splint it for you, but that depends on the game version you’re playing on (I’d need to check, but I think stable 0.E did not have that function).

Other than that, from what I see, the effect_mending takes 10 days (assuming normal mending rates) until its mended enough to heal the limb back to 1 hp, from where you can treat it normally to get it back to full health.

9

Yes, I’ve been wearing a splint from spring day 62 (day 73 currently), and it doesn’t seem to have made much progress… At least originally, it simply showed as “disabled”, now it’s “started mending”, which seems like an improvement.

10

Again, it’s a bit hard to find out what’s actually happening. What was the exact message?
Was it “Your [BODYPART] has started to mend!”, seen in the message log (at this point, the limb should be at 1 hitpoint, based on the code)?
Or was/is it “Started recovery” in the [@] Player info menu, which - when selected - describes it as “This damaged limb is slowly regaining its functions.” (code, identical for 0.E stable and experimental)?

11

could you maybe have the splint on the wrong limb? It being on your left arm, when it’s the right that is broken?

12

a broken limb takes about 1-3 weeks (depending on how quickly your character’s healing speed is and how often you sleep) of uninterrupted healing, as each time you take damage on the broken limb it will reset or set back the progress. Due to poor blood circulation a broken limb it will be significantly colder than the rest of the body, and the damage from freezing will prevent it from healing.

13

Well, I went ahead and tested it.
Since you did not name the version you’re playing on, I’ve picked a random one I just happend to have (experimental 2021-06-13-0522).

This is how it went:

Spring, Day 81, a little before 17:00 (no splint):
My broken limb shows as ~~%~~ (color: red) in the sidebar.
The player info menu lists it as “Disabled”.

Day 81, 17:00 (with splint):
Sidebar: ----- (color: blue)
Info: “Disabled”, as well as “Started recovery”

... more progress

Day 82, 14:00 (with splint):
Sidebar: #---- (color: blue)
Info: “Disabled” + “Started recovery”

Day 83, ~23:00 (with splint):
Sidebar: ##--- (color: blue)
Info: “Disabled” + “Recovering”

Day 84, ~10:30 (with splint):
Sidebar: ###-- (color: blue)
Info: “Disabled” + “Mostly recovered”

Day 85, ~18:00 (with splint):
Sidebar: ####- (color: blue)
Info: “Disabled” + “Mostly recovered”

Day 87, 13:00 (with splint):
Sidebar: :.... (color: red)
Messages in the log: Your [BODYPART] has started to mend! (color: green) & The broken limb has mended. (color: green)
Info: [Nothing]

To make my test as accurate as possible, I took off my clothes to stay as cool as possible (I did the same thing for the character :grin: ). The temperature of the limb bounced between 2 and -43 and stayed at -20 to -30 for the most time, so your -32 should not have had any influence on the healing process (unless you dip into damaging ranges).
As shown, it took around a week to mend the limb, and whatever time it takes to fully heal from :.... to |||||.
I did have some factors that did benefit the healing progress, like having enough to eat/drink and I let my character sleep alot (I’d like to do that too, at some point).
I did walk around, and chased and killed some birds as well with no problems. I’ve taken care that my broken limb did not take any more damage though, as that could/will throw you back quite a bit in the recovery process.

So, it seems to work as stated; it takes around 10 days to mend. So, the question remains; what message did you see? Or even easier; what symbols are shown in the sidebar?

For the sake of completion, the following affects the healing rates (in the current versions):

Mending factors

Negative:

  • Smoking and Alcohol, and their addictions.
  • Being radioactive (unless you’ve mutated the Radiogenic trait).
  • Being Dead tired or worse.
  • Being Very hungry and Very thirsty or worse.
  • Having a low health stat.
  • Some mutations.
  • Taking damage on the broken limb (actually reverses progress).

Positive:

  • Sleeping/Resting.
  • Enough stored fat & water.
  • Having a high health stat.
  • Some mutations.
14

Sorry I couldn’t get back to you earlier. There were no “limb has started to mend” messages; the status is simply “started recovery” and the limb is still broken. Debugging in self-aware shows 0% recovery.

15

Then, based on my experience, the source code and experiments (as described above) and without more information (like your game version), I have to assume that your limb took damage during recovery, which set you back to 0%; as it should take around 10 days to mend (give or take a few days).

16

Not unreasonable; during the previously mentioned incident with a fire, I’m fairly sure my limbs did take a bit of damage. I haven’t been eating much (mostly just drinking water) because (a.) my only food supply is two sealed MREs that I’ve been reluctant to open, and (b.) my character’s still Obese and I’ve been trying to lose weight. Is it worth opening the MREs, or risking looting a house?

17

Day 74 and my limb is at #====! Hopefully it goes faster from here. I also wanted to say that I appreciate @Valase putting in the effort to test it- thanks everyone!

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18

In my opinion; no.
If you plan on lose weight anyway, I wouldn’t bother to eat long lasting food.
As for looting houses, it depends on how much you’ve cleared out the city (or the area around the house specifically). With a broken limb, it’s better to stay put and let it regain its function and heal a bit.

If you in dare need of food (just in case) or out of anything else to do, I’d suggest you go into the forest and forage through some underbrushes, as this is probably the safest way to have a chance to get something to eat. But I’d still suggest to avoid any fights and carry a (single hand) gun & some zombie pheromones if you have any.

Looks like some progress has been made, great!
I’m glad this is working now :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: .

19

Thanks for the advice. I do have a Glock 19 with ~50 rounds of ammo, although I should mention that due to the fact I’m using Magiclysm, am a mage and haven’t had much to do in the refugee center other than study spells, Magic Missile actually does more damage, not to mention being armor-piercing and having perfect accuracy- with my current mana storage, I effectively have 54 castings or “rounds of ammunition” per day. I did take a trip to the outskirts of the city, clearing out a block which consisted of six soldier zombies plus a few regular while taking minimal damage. Currently I’m still running back and forth lugging all the military gear back to the refugee center (Safe Place start- There were about thirteen MREs, seven M4A1 with ~40 rounds total, one UMP45, and quite a bit of military armor, about half of which I’ve gotten back so far). As I mentioned, I did take a few hits, but luckily nothing on my left arm- things seem to be looking up.
Judging from this, I can safely do a bit of exploration while my arm heals- almost nothing can actually make it to melee range.

Edit: Ooooops. I can only take one rifle per trip due to the length, and there were seven… on one of the trips, a zombie hunter went after me and dealt damage to my arm- it was pretty hard to stay out of range given how fast they move. Back to =====… All the rifles were too good an opportunity to pass up, though- they’re worth ~$200 each for barter. Looks like my arm’s going to be healing for another 10 days. On the plus side, I think it should go faster this time- I noticed that the #==== happened after I finished the arm warmers, which makes me wonder if it does have an impact. At least I won’t be short of crafting supplies with all this military gear to trade.

20

I mean, they’d still be good to trade after your arm is mended… This isn’t Rimworld where items deteriorate by staying outside in the rain (at least not yet), nor do they ever despawn… :smiley:

Based on the code I’ve checked, they don’t.