Latest experience of infection

Game Talk The Bunker
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Hi Guys and Gals,

Ive played cataclysm dda off and on a lot over the years. I’ve never played out having an infection before. I must have missed cleaning a bite recently because when I tried to sleep I received your body is aching spam. When I checked my status I saw I had an infected leg.

Didnt realise the body part name is coloured in relation to an infection status, I think I read blue is pre infection, green is infection has set in. My left leg was green.

Anyway discussion about cheating aside I gave myself some antibiotics, id invested a fair amount of time in this character and I wasnt prepared to let it die.

Now I’ve never really made use of antibiotics before. I figured since the infection had recently set in (still dont know how I allowed this to happen), I should be good with the anti-b’s.

So, I activated my leucacyte breeder thingy, necked some anti b’s and pain killers and attempted to get some shut eye. After several days of not really sleeping, being in a LOT of pain, my infected leg turned into “pus filled”. I examined the cheat menus for infection clearing. I started to think I was gonna lose that leg if not my life.

I figured id play it out, convinced id die/lose leg, I started cheating a lot, handing myself everything I needed to see another day out from my bed, generating tiredness to pass time (from attempting to sleep).

After approx 35 days, my pus filled leg turned into “recovering from infection”. Took another 10 days or so for the effects to mostly clear up.

Now that was pretty gruelling. I cannot imagine making it through those 45 days if I hadnt built up massively in stockpiled resources. I guess pretty much an infection setting in early game is close to a death sentence.

I read somwhere about making sure you dont overdose on anti b’s. A couple of times I necked another whilst still under the effects when I considered attempting to sleep again and knew it had been a long time since my last dose. I figured a sleight overlap would result in the fastest healing. It was difficult to know if there were any ill effects of the overdosing (?) through all the pain and pus filled limping around hoping for the best.

So, an infection that becomes pus filled is not in actuality a death sentence, infections take a long time to pass, even with antibiotics. Also prevention is WAY WAY better than cure.

Pro tip, dont get infected, especially early. Carry antiseptic.

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It’s possible that those antibiotics didn’t work, I know that they don’t always anymore. There have been a few posts about how the infections are now crazily ott and too difficult to survive but they discussed the 'recovering from infection ’ stage and the insane sleepiness which didn’t allow them enough time to boil up water before collapsing into an exhausted heap.

You took 35 days to even get to that point so unless you were taking antibiotics all that time, it might have been your own body which fought off the infection. I haven’t tested it myself - I always do carry antiseptic and I scan my body parts after fights for anything in blue. Prevention sure is better than cure.

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antibiotics do not ‘cure’ infections. they just add time to the ‘your dead’ timer (24 hours normally without antibiotics) and give your immune system a boost to help fight off the infection. there are three different strengths of antibiotics now. each dose lasts 12 hours and you are not going to have any problems by overlapping the dosages some. Something you did while ‘cheating’ must have really thrown things out of whack as there is no way you can go 35 days normally while infected, regardless of what antibiotics your taking. Usually death will occur in about 7 days if taking antibiotics regularly, assuming your immune system never ‘cures’ it.

The recovering from infection stage is what most of the current reports/issues are about. there are incredibly high levels of ‘exhaustion’ being generated while you are ‘recovering’ which make you pass out constantly and takes WEEKS of nothing but sleeping/eating/drinking to get rid of. Currently the ‘recovery’ stage of infection is about 100x worse than ACTUALLY being infected.

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Bit late to the party, but isn’t recovery suppose to be double or something the length of time you were dealing with the infection as well? Which from a realism standpoint, doesn’t actually make sense but I suppose ‘semi’ zombie infection fights for every inch of ground it loses to your body.
Its a fair thing to note that infection has always been really bad, and it seems kinda par for the course that it locks you so hard, if only a bit unfair if you can’t at least take care of yourself decently on the way out of it.

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Recovery is currently bugged.
Long story short: it applies penalties without taking antibiotics into account.
So while antibiotics slow infection itself 8-fold, recovery penalties are applied based on unmitigated duration. Known bug.

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Well, “suppose[d] to be” might be wrong phrasing, as I don’t think it’s intendet.
There are some discussion on that topic, as mentioned by @M1nks: One report about the bug(s) and one talking more indepth about the impossibility of lacking so much sleep that you’ll sleep yourself to death.

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I dislike how infection is. Antibiotics are hardly the only method of treating infections in real life. As much as they love to push realism its amazing to me that we dont have the most fundamental treatment for infections.

That would be lancing them and flushing them with peroxide or saline or both. Possibly inserting a drain. This isnt elaborate surgery its basic stuff that happens in every ER.

We need to expand first aid to include things like that and to incorporate things like lidocaine for superficial procedures like that. Make it increase success rate and have it have a failure chance like bionics. In real life you can lance them without local anesthetic too its just not pleasant.

Should also allow the player to attempt to treat and stitch wounds for a chance at faster healing (or infection and further injury) to open up speedier healing without needing to spam bandages and antiseptic.

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Its planned for 0.F IIRC

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I agree completely, we definitely need more treatment options for quite a few things.

Maybe not to the point of over-realism, but enough to where it isn’t all washed away by miracle drugs and the RNG.

I haven’t found them yet so I don’t know if they even exist, but Tourniquets, IVs, and just a general medical overhaul would probably add a lot to the survivalist feel of the game.

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I also want more injuries and illnesses, scratches, burns, cuts and sprains etc. PC should be fragile.

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Maybe not fragile perse, but there should be a wider range of ailments.
Just something to break the monotony of being snapped like a Kit Kat bar just to heal up a day later.

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You do realize that adding injuries that will take longer to heal (or just in general be more debilitating) will shift the balance massively away from melee combat, right? And melee combat isn’t exactly “in need of nerfing” right now due to being overpowered (as compared to ranged combat).

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Only if your unprepared and unprotected, armor and protective clothing would greatly lower the chances of serious wounds being inflicted to a careful survivor.
I love melee characters myself, but ranged is the safer choice. A well trained fighter who is prepared will still be able to avoid damage more often then an untrained survivor, and a large part of melee is picking your battles. A smart survivor is a is a living survivor.
Plus you can always turn the health down on monsters and have a more action centric gameplay.

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At the end of the day, it’s a question of good old risk versus reward balancing:
If we add more injuries, that clearly adds more risk to melee combat (but not ranged combat). Now the question is: what adds more reward to using melee in this scenario?

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Being able to inflict said injuries on enemies!

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So only melee attacks will injure?

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I kinda doubt zombies would care about “scratches, burns, cuts and sprains”.

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true, but i feel like bone breakages and missing limbs would definitely limit their effectiveness. I know the devs don’t want to simulate limbs etc on monsters so i would assume status effects would be okay, and I don’t think these effects would have to be tracked for long since we could rationalize a faster healing from the blob.

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Not sure if there was an update but using strong antibiotics can wipe out infections fast.

One of my very bad day survivors cleared her infection in a single day just by using destragon. Or that game could be a happy bug not sure XD

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what if we did a old school nethack type thing and had alot of diseases and medications to go with them but the medication was unknown without a high enough first aid skill and would just say pills or syrum