Epidemics guide

This "guide" is to share all current knowledge with the playerbase regarding epidemics, and to combat some misinformation. Do note, that as with all of my "guides", I reserve the right to be wrong and if I am, I will try and correct the info later on.

NOTE: This guide was written before Ezenya ascended to wizardhood, and all the information is produced by mortal-level guessing and trial-and-error.

Some changes for epidemics have occurred:

Elixir of Life was not working properly before, it is now fixed.
Medication now works twice as fast (30min/tick -> 15min/tick).

Althaon <news>: Epidemics related changes: Mastery of epidemics is now a general mastery. Alchemists can become a patients.
doctor after they have enough levels in School of Alchemy, and Air priests can still become doctors like before. Mastery of epidemics now helps the 
patient to recover, but only if they have a doctor set (via diagnosis), and the effect is based on the doctors mastery. In addition to this, for Air 
Priests only, said mastery also gives the spell Purification of blood a chance to reduce the medicine levels of the patient if they have overdosed. 
The chance and strength of this effect will be improved with said mastery. Effective immediately.
Althaon <news>: Epidemics changes: Once you have been cured from a disease, your immune system gets a small boost, improving your constitution and chances of getting cured of any other disease by a small amount. 

NEW alchemist vial containers properly save medical liquids (you can exchange old ones to new ones at Alchemist guild). New ones have a line saying something along the lines of "...is safe to use with medical liquids"

Panic! Halp!

No. You dont need to reinc if you get sick currently epidemics do not cause permanent damage to your character. This rumor is more likely related to "help hazards". NOTE that hazards are NOT in game atm.

How epidemics work

So this seems to need some clarification.

Epidemics and the diseases you get, work on "drops". If you accumulate 10 drops of some bacteria, you will get sick and start showing symptoms. The stage 0, "dormant stage", is where you accumulate these drops, and once you go over 10 drops (or * in the diagnose-report) you enter stage 1, active stage.

If you have left the inn's safe room after the epidemics were introduced, chances are you are in stage 0. This is completely safe, and assuming you wont get more drops to your bloodstream (food/drink/contact), you will be just fine idling in the inn. Note that all PASSIVE transmissions methods of diseases do not function in safe rooms!

This means that if you are at 8 drops of infection (stage 0), and you don't leave the safe room and only drink and eat "safely", your infection level will not rise. You won't get more infection if a diseased person comes and hangs out and vomits on the floor (in SAFE rooms).

But, if you are at 10 drops, you enter the active stage (stage 1) even if you don't gain any more drops via food/drink. This means you will slowly get more sick and start showing symptoms, and your infection level keeps rising. This is the stage where you should medicate asap! You want to stay in stage 0!

Medicines and diagnosing

Never use medicine which has strength of over 10.
20% skill for diagnose is enough to give accurate infection level reading (survivalists gives you this)
Pill/potion/elixir strength is measured in numbers (0-100).
Measure medicine is used in 2 ways: to measure medicine's current potency, and to alter it (Alcemists).
Currently there is a bug that resets the new potions (theriac etc.) when you put in vial container and take out! DO NOT TRUST PRE-MEASURED POTIONS LIKE THIS, UNTILL THIS GETS FIXED, RE-MEASURE BEFORE USE OR ONLY USE FRESHLY-CREATED POTIONS.
Maximum amount of ANY one medicine (pill x, salve x, potion x, elixir x) is 10! Any more than this, and you get overdosed.
You will not be overdosed if you take 10 antifever and 10 painkiller, assuming you have matching symptoms (pain, fever). But if you take 12 painkiller or 12 antifever or 12 pill strong potion of Theriac, you will be overdosed because you exceeded the limit of 10 for one type.
Safest way is to measure medicine at -1 of your target level (if you want 10, measure it to 9 to be safe).
Medicine levels in your blood drop by 1 * every 15 min or so.
Getting cured takes some time (15 min - 1h), and if you are at stage 2 or 3 you might need multiple cures taken over a long period of time to avoid overdose.

How to read a diagnosis report:

In the image above (non-air priest diagnosis) you can see the patient is in stage 0 (dormant stage) with 8 drops of bacteria in his bloodstream (infection level), and is closing to stage 1. This means that he should start to diagnose himself or ask getting diagnosed bit more often. He is completely symptom-free and safe until he hits the magic mark of 10 drops, after which he moves onto stage 1.

Stage 1 means he should now start getting medicine if possible. Since currently there is only 1 disease around, it is safe to assume he has that one (minor disease) and he will want a cure for that disease. Depending on how far he is in stage 1, is how you want to measure your medicine. If he is at 14 drops total, he does not need very strong medicine, but if he is at 20 drops, he might want max (10, or to be safe, 9) strength potion of theriac (or one of the other cures mentioned in "help epidemics", Known diseases-section, listed cures for "minor disease").

If he drinks the potion, and it was indeed a minor disease, his infection level will start to go down within the hour. If by some chance it does not, it probably means he has a other type of disease! If this is the case, you will need to wait for symptoms before you can find a match to the symptoms in "help epidemics" and then medicate accordingly.

You can use the "Active medicine in bloodstream" section to help make sure you don't overdose in case patient needs more medicine: If he has 5 drops in his bloodstream, maximum amount you can give more is 5 drops, or he overdoses.

I do not know how accurate this section is for non-air priests with low skill!

Air priests also see more than what non-air priests see with diagnose.

Do not medicate until you are at stage 1. Afaik doing so will either cause problems or do nothing.

Im sick!

Ok! You've been drinking from puddles and eating random bread from the npcs you kill. Don't do that! It's not hygienic. You are now in (or above) stage 1. Based on your symptoms (found in "help epidemics") you want to make a potion/elixir that is listed as a cure in said file, for the disease you suspect you got. Currently we have only seen "minor disease", so the cures/treatments for that are: Relief of symptoms, Elixir of Life, Elixir of Death, Elixir of Truth, Theriac.

Let's break this down:

Relief of symptoms means that you want painkiller pills for pain, antifever pills for fever in this case.
The other treatments mentioned (Elixirs, Theriac) means you can either try with one of them, or all (excluding things mentioned in help epidemics, such as taking elixir of death and elixir of life at the same time).

To get the best chance of getting cured, combine all the medications listed.

Now, either you make the cure yourself, or ask someone to make it for you. The strength of the potion should depend on how far along your infection is, if it is at the first few "1's" of stage 1, you might settle for strength of 5 to be safe. Alchemists can make the potions and measure them. If you have low %, give more leeway on your cures, meaning always make the strength bit lower to be sure you don't accidentally overdose.

If you are vomiting or other bodily fluids leak out from you, avoid public places and other people so you don't make them sick.

Creating medicines

Alchemists can create medicines, such as salves and pills, and cures, such as potion of theriacs and elixirs of life, and also measure their strength in order to avoid overdosing.

Thigs you need:

set of alchemist's equipment (for potions/elixirs)
Black small compact recipe book (for potions/elixirs)
Empty vials for potions (for potions/elixirs)
White wooden bowl for mixing (salves/pills)
The correct recipes for potions/elixirs/spirit of x in your recipe book (need to be a new recipe book, very old ones might not work).

You can learn recipes from Yaudric in Alchemists guild. The vendor there sells the recipe book and alchemy set and vials.

Next you need to gather the materials needed to make a pill/salve/potion/elixir. For pots/elixirs the recipe should tell you what you need, and for salves/pills you find the requirements in "help epidemics" helpfile.

NOTE: putting materials for multiple pills in bowl, and using mixing will ONLY produce ONE pill, and you lose the rest of the materials. so make only one pill/salve at a time!

Creating a painkiller/antifever pill or salves

put required herb in bowl
use mixing

Creating a cure

use potion brewing at potion of theriac/elixir of x/spirit of x

After you have created pill/pot/elixir/salve, you want to do one or both of the following, to make sure the strength does not exceed 10, and/or is appropriate for your purposes.

Use measure medicine at <potion/elixir/pill/salve>
Use measure medicine at <potion/elixir/pill/salve> to <strength number>

Pills and salves should persist in your sacks/inventory over boot. However, potions, elixirs and spirits need a vial container.

NOTE that there is a bug that resets these potions/elixirs/spirits and their strength might change after you put it in a container, so always re-measure before use!

Example of curing a stage 2 patient

Aralus at start of stage 2.

Aralus roughly 10min after medication.

Aralus has minor disease (discoloration, fever, cough).

To see discoloration, just look at the patient (i need to comfirm this). Coughing you can see as an emote. "Touch aralus" to see if he has fever. Pale face is probably just a common thing when you get sick, and not related to discolouring.

In the first image I first diagnose him, and see his infection level. It is clear its totally safe to give him a Potion of Theriac of strength 10, and whatever painkillers and antifever I got on me (max strength of 10, ofc). The second image is taken maybe 10 minutes after medication, you can see the infection level already going down. The potion that I gave him, is not strong enough to completely cure him to stage 0, so he will need more medication LATER.

Please note, that he still has 10 drops of the potion in his bloodstream, even if I cant see it in my diagnosis (non-AP)! To wait until ALL the potion has gone from his bloodstream, I need to wait roughly 2.5 hours. I can, however, wait for 1 hour, and then give him a potion of theriac with the strength of 4.

This is unlikely to overdose him (his combined total potion of theriac-level in bloodstream would be back to 10 at this point, from 6) (medication loses 1 drop per 15min, roughly, from bloodstream), and even if an overdose occurs, it will be minor and last only 15min or so most likely. I will need to microdose him like this until he is cured (he can naturally do it himself, if he has alchemists and the diagnosis skill).

Note that there might be some randomness on how quickly medicine starts to work!

Update

We finally managed to cure Aralus. We tried too many things to be sure, but I assume that the last try did the trick. Problem was that his disease was too far gone, and giving him max dose of theriac was not enough to bring it down to safe numbers, and while we waited the medicine to run its course (to avoid overdosing), his infection levels slowly creeped up again.

This is what we tried:

Giving max dose of one cure. Not efficient enough. 
Micro-dosing also too slow (but a major issue here was difference in our timezones, and because of this accurate dosing became more or less impossible).
Giving max doses of 3 cures for minor disease (theriac, elixir of truth, elixir of life). 

The last one appears to have cured him.

Also note that this level of overdosing (13 drops over the safe limit) will last almost 3.5 hours, if it works like I think it does (15min/drop).

Aralus finally cured after a long period of testing cures.

Uh-oh, I overdosed

Well, sucks to be you. Now you got nice symptoms such as

Discomfort
Pains
Pains and aches
Ep-drain
Stomach cramps

and the duration and severity of these depend on how badly you overdosed. If you overdosed only worth 1-2 drops (*) then these will last from 15 to 30mins, more or less. Don't try and cure these with more medicines, it just makes it worse.

Consume nutritions safely

Fountains in cities are free of bacteria. Waybread from treasure maps is safe to eat. Assumably bread from city vendors is safe as well. So fill you flasks in cities and carry fresh bread with you.

Carnivorous digestion makes it safe to drink anything and eat anything, as far as I know.

Special mentions

Bandar and his guinea pigs for figuring out the basics and sharing the info!

Aralus for being an understanding patient and a willing guinea pig, as well as suffering for rl days of not being able to play without complaining.

Ezenya for being a super nice dude and generally awesome.