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.

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).

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 idle and don't gain any more drops. This means you will slowly get more sick and start showing symptoms. This is the stage where you should medicate asap! You want to stay in stage 0!

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 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 need ONE of them, whatever is easiest to get.

Medicines and diagnosing

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).
Never use medicine which has strength of over 10.
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 medicine type (pill, salve, potion, elixir) 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.
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 30 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.