The flu. OH COME ON

system · 2014-04-22T16:40:35.000Z

This is just ridiculous. It’s now day 5 with the flu. Constant non-stop coughing and vomiting, forcing me to use up most of my HUGE stockpile of food (I’m literally going through food faster than I can cook it, so I’m having to use up stocks of canned and pickled goods to tide me over while my food cooks – which is bloody insane), and currently at “dead tired” despite constant sleeping being interrupted every half-hour. And now I’m sleeping pill dependent from trying to knock myself out.

I know this is supposed to be a crapsack world, but right now I’m feeling like the game is maliciously cheating. You know what’s fun? Fighting zombies, even if you die. You know what’s not fun? FluSim the Game where you spend a week doing nothing but cooking food and repeatedly pressing $ in between 5 hour cooking sessions while you watch your hunger, thirst, and tiredness meters rocketing up like a fucking pinball game.

This is the first time I’ve found myself annoyed with the game rather than challenged, and avoiding loading it up because I know I’m in for another hour-long session of cook-the-fruit-pancakes-while-eating-tinned-sardines-and-drinking-cough-syrup.

Arek_PL · 2014-04-22T18:14:11.000Z

well flu is just little longer and you vomit but ways to cure this are like in cold so in this thread you can see some information

system · 2014-04-22T18:53:27.000Z

Arek_PL:

well flu is just little longer and you vomit but ways to cure this are like in cold so in this thread you can see some information

I saw that thread. It’s not helpful. Basically, it’s “hope you already got royal jelly. No? Well, tough luck.” Because once the flu rollercoaster starts, there’s no way to leave the house until it’s over. I have – sorry had – an 8 strength. Now I have 3. WTF am I supposed to do with that? And of course, now I have a fever, extreme tiredness, excess heat (it’s summer and I’m in a 39 C heatwave), and poor morale, meaning I can’t fight, can’t run, and can’t carry anything. I think it is egregiously stupid that being blasted at point-blank range to the chest with a shotgun is less harmful by orders of magnitude than a bout of the flu. If I hadn’t had a ridiculously large stockpile of food, I’d probably already be dead. But more importantly, it’s not fun. If you’re going to make the flu last forever, at least give me a way to skip the gory details instead of forcing me to engage in marathon eating interspersed with hundreds of 30 minute bouts of sleep (which help nothing, despite giving myself sleeping pill dependency with the sheer volume of drugs I’m taking to try to knock myself out).

I actually started a new game rather than deal with the irritation of the flu, despite having 100 or so hours sunk into the last one. I probably won’t go back to it. A game mechanic should be irritating to the character, not the player.

FunsizeNinja123 · 2014-04-22T19:09:02.000Z

Just wait it out. Sleep. Read a book.

John_Candlebury · 2014-04-22T19:09:08.000Z

You know flu is not half that bad, you can perfectly leave your house to hunt or loot labs or if you are a ranged fighter even loot towns.

Also, take vitamins, IRC the length of the flu/cold disease is affected by your health stat.

Belteshazzar · 2014-04-22T19:14:04.000Z

I was recently surprised to read that the rough estimate is that your character can actually survive for about 20+ days without eating.

Granted, I’m not sure how much the flu/vomiting is going to alter this, but the constant sleeping, even if interrupted should slow the hunger down significantly.

So…you may have used up your food without real reason(your character believe he is starving long before this is actually the case)? Then again, it would also be nice to have a ‘wait’ command that didn’t require spamming.

FunsizeNinja123 · 2014-04-22T19:19:48.000Z

Press | .

Should be right above your enter key and you gotta press shift.

vache · 2014-04-22T19:46:44.000Z

Yeah, the flu and cold are WAY too debilitating in the game for my tastes, and more often than not I just end up debugging in royal jelly immediately upon onset. For a 14 day season, being all but crippled for 5 of those days is incredibly obnoxious, and not compelling gameplay. Coughing and increased thirst/hunger are fine, and introduce complicating mechanics for exploration/avoidance, but the broad stat drains are just awful, and essentially just force you to remain in shelter until it blows over.

i2amroy · 2014-04-22T23:32:50.000Z

Currently I’m about halfway through a health and disease rework, one effect of which will involve rebalancing the cold/flu diseases.

Blackopsman9999 · 2014-04-23T04:14:14.000Z

Ya wouldn’t get the flu if you got vaccines and vitamins…

system · 2014-04-23T04:35:04.000Z

Blackopsman9999:

Ya wouldn’t get the flu if you got vaccines and vitamins…

I’m not complaining about getting the flu. I’m complaining about the flu being double-plus unfun. Getting mauled by a bear or chased by a pack of shambling undead is fun, even if they kill you. I don’t even mind backpack management, which is good, since there’s a metric shit-tonne of it. I love crafting, scavenging, grinding out skills, and so on. This evening, I spent my night gathering virtual firefood. That’s it. It doesn’t take much to amuse me. What isn’t fun is sitting at home base typing $ $ $ $ $ $ and engaging in competitive eating between vomits while I wait day after day after day for a game mechanic to finish. I eventually just abandoned the game because I had stopped enjoying it.

Edit: Day 2 of my new game, I get the flu. Shub-RNGurath is angry and unappeased. Fuck it, I cheated royal jelly into my inventory.

ChristopherWalken · 2014-04-23T07:59:12.000Z

Craft yourself a dust mask, makes you impervious to diseases.

Jiamil · 2014-04-23T11:31:00.000Z

Hm… quite bad luck with this flu. I’m now at day 16 without a disease. What I can tell is, try to eat a variety of food and try to avoid junkfood when you don’t have vitamins on hand. Also if you want to sleep and don’t get interrupted by coughing noise cancelling gear does wonders.

AseaHeru · 2014-04-23T12:21:18.000Z

I dont think any of my people have gotten the flu…

Arek_PL · 2014-04-23T13:04:33.000Z

ChristopherWalken:

Craft yourself a dust mask, makes you impervious to diseases.

so i know why i do not get flu or cold
i wear gas mask

FunsizeNinja123 · 2014-04-23T13:12:13.000Z

Lol

Zireael · 2014-04-23T16:27:03.000Z

I was wearing a survivor mask and had Disease Resistant, yet still came down with a cold which doesn’t want to let up after 4 days.

Paquito · 2014-04-23T17:14:54.000Z

I find the mechanic entertaining, in that it’s something I need to account for, and makes stockpiling my food worth it. Also, there’s medicine like all over the place which should keep your vomiting to a manageable level. Cannibis might help with that too.

ChristopherWalken · 2014-04-23T17:25:57.000Z

Zireael:

I was wearing a survivor mask and had Disease Resistant, yet still came down with a cold which doesn’t want to let up after 4 days.

Unless they changed it all mouth items with an environmental protection above X (I forget the exact number but it’s not particularly high) should make you completely immune to disease, so either they changed it, you took it off at some point, you caught the disease before putting on the item or something not intended is happening.

Homebound · 2014-04-23T18:20:20.000Z

ChristopherWalken:

Unless they changed it all mouth items with an environmental protection above X (I forget the exact number but it’s not particularly high) should make you completely immune to disease, so either they changed it, you took it off at some point, you caught the disease before putting on the item or something not intended is happening.

I’m curious as to what that number is. I just recovered from a cold in my current game, and it wasn’t much fun.