There is a thread in gameplay like this. I was driving my motorcycle and I just died all of a sudden. No notice leadng up to it. I took 8 painkillers about 200 turns before. You need 2 poppy painkillers to lower pain by 2. I had not taken thatmany since I played. I was 18 days in. That is the only drug I had taken besides vitamins.
I was down to 0 pain and just died all of a sudden.
can something be done about this? It doesn’t makle any sense to have a random out of no where death lke this.
Painkillers take time to kick in, you only get a minor effect at first.
You died due to OD, live (die?) and let learn.
I didnt ask about pain killers kicking in. how do i tell w hen i am near an OD? I had not taken any painkillers in a while. I fought fora while. then on motorcycle.
How do you track how close you are to an OD an when you can take drugs?
Just like real life, you can’t. At least, as far as I know. The painkiller counter is a hidden stat.
Your status screen shows what level painkiller you’re on. Poppy Painkillers are “Moderate Painkiller” status. From what I can tell; Poppy Painkillers give a ~200 turn “Moderate Painkiller” status; which increases your painkiller counter over time. Overdose happens when that counter becomes too high. The painkiller counter decrements much slower than the drugs. So even without the “Moderate Painkiller” status you’ll still have a high painkiller counter.
Edit: Digging into the code shows:
Poppy Painkillers give 180 turns of moderate painkiller; which gives 2 Pkiller points every 7 turns.
You die when your Painkiller counter is 240 or higher
Your painkiller counter goes down by 2 every 5 minutes.
So, poppy painkillers give 25 points per pill; since you took 8 pills, that’s 200 points. That requires 16 in-game hours in order to decrement down to 0. Booze also increases the painkiller counter so that may be what pushed you over the threshold.
It might help if pharmacies had some indication about recommended dosages. Something like “Opioid: no more than 2 every 24 hours, do not mix with alcohol” on the examine screen, for instance.
Obviously, this wouldn’t apply to survivalcrafted stuff, but it might be a handy way to pass the general idea along.
That makes entirely too much sense and I am ashamed it is not already a thing.
TBH the only reason I haven’t overdosed yet is because I have enough experience with painkillers irl that I just took them in twos every four hours and was done with it LOL.
Understanding the game system certainly was enlightening though!
The only thing that makes sense to me is being dead drunk after the apocalypse, that’s a sure thing .:))
Mushroom people, poppy flowers… we need three leaf clovers to bust a move! 
Sorry, I just love to pierce heavy armor after a jug or two.
[quote=“youtoo, post:1, topic:1464”]There is a thread in gameplay like this. I was driving my motorcycle and I just died all of a sudden. No notice leadng up to it. I took 8 painkillers about 200 turns before. You need 2 poppy painkillers to lower pain by 2. I had not taken thatmany since I played. I was 18 days in. That is the only drug I had taken besides vitamins.
I was down to 0 pain and just died all of a sudden.
can something be done about this? It doesn’t makle any sense to have a random out of no where death lke this.[/quote]
It’s totally logic that you died suddenly after taking 8 painkillers. Only take 2 at once and let them do their thing. Painkillers irl and ingame dont kick in right away, it takes some time. Even for strong ones like oxycodone (had to take those cause of a injury once), taking too much of those can kill ya (its morphine lol). You dont get a warning when they kick in, they just do after some time and suddenly. You could feel alright a second and the other you feel terrible and faint all in a few seconds.
Yeah. What I want to work out is, how long does it take for each drug to kick in? I’m not fluent enough in code to be able to understand that should I go looking for it.
I just know irl that it takes a solid 20-25 minutes for dexedrine to kick in, which is basically like half the ingredients in adderal, but like a couple minutes for alcohol to start hitting. Hmm. Time to experiment ingame.
Overdose is actually highly noticeable. Painkiller overdose is hard to detect until its too late. Our whole body goes numb, you will move slowly and it will be harder to keep breathing, until, you become paralyzed and your breathing stops.
So I think in-game it should reflect this, with some messages and stat reductions. So it’s not an instant death. Maybe a (Take another painkiller, overdosing is kind of a bitch Y/N)? Thing?
But really paralysis is the final stage, if you don’t get help right then you will die. Basically your nerve endings stop firing, so you move slower. It becomes harder to move and breathe, and you slowly die of asphyxiation. Which people have attributed to be worse than guiliteened.
So yeah, overdosing on painkillers is bad mkay?
its not like anyone could help you in cata lol.
but yeah, dont take too much painkillers and give them some time to start kick in.
its not like you have to take care of pain as soon as you get hurt, you wont die from the pain and you might get hurt again soon and it would be a bad idea to take more painkillers after such a short time, normaly you have to wait 4-6 hours before taking more. So just deal with the pain if its not too bad, generally under 20 i take 2 aspirins.
I do think more signs of an overdosing having happened (even if you only get a couple turns to deal with it) would be appropriate.
A stimulant boost would help greatly, so downing five sodas after ODing would increase survivability chance.
Basically paralysis and breathing stopping are the things to avoid, stimulant boosts would get the nerves firing faster again allowing muscle control to be regained.
That only works if you OD’s on depressants, though. OD on stimulants would be hilariously horrible for inverse reasons. Mmm, heart-attacky jitterparties.
Wow I kind of hate when things have a proposed solution and I come in all ‘HEY SOME TANGENT LET’S COMPLICATE THE TOPIC’. Not my intention. I just… really like thinking about these things even if independently from what is to be implemented.