Getting Sick
Illness is a full system, separate from injuries. You can be perfectly uninjured and still be very ill.
🤧 How you catch something
| Way | |
|---|---|
| Randomly | Every 15 minutes there is a small roll. Only a few diseases can be caught this way, and new players are protected for their first hour of play time. |
| From other players | Contagious diseases spread to anyone standing within a couple of metres. |
| From your injuries | A neglected infected wound becomes sepsis. Too many painkillers become an overdose. |
| From the environment | Standing in the cold too long gives you hypothermia; too long in the heat gives you dehydration. |
| From a medic or admin | Chronic conditions like diabetes and asthma are diagnosed or assigned, never caught at random. |
You can have 2 diseases at once by default.
📈 Stages
Diseases get worse in stages. Each stage adds symptoms.
For example, influenza:
| Stage | After | Symptoms |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | immediately | Sneezing, fatigue |
| 2 | 10 minutes | Coughing, fever, fatigue |
| 3 | 30 minutes | Coughing, high fever, badly reduced stamina, dizziness |
Some diseases fade away on their own if you wait long enough. Most do not.
😷 What symptoms actually do
Symptoms are not text, your character genuinely behaves differently.
| Symptom | Effect |
|---|---|
| Coughing / Sneezing | Your character coughs or sneezes out loud, in a male or female voice. People nearby hear it too |
| Fever | Sweating, raised temperature and heart rate |
| High fever | Blurred vision on top of a much higher temperature |
| Fatigue / Reduced stamina | You run out of breath far sooner |
| Blurred vision | The screen blurs periodically |
| Dizziness / Shaking | Camera shake |
| Passing out | You collapse unconscious for a few seconds |
| Nausea | Your character vomits |
| Confusion | The screen goes drunk-blurred |
| Panic | Pounding heartbeat, racing pulse |
| Chest pain | You clutch your chest |
| Difficulty breathing | Oxygen saturation drops, a medic hears wheezing |
| Getting weaker | You steadily lose health |
| Low / high blood sugar | Shaking, or drained stamina |
| Shivering / Severe cold | Body temperature falling, the hypothermia path |
💊 The cure list
Every disease is cured by giving the right number of doses of a medication that treats it. Some also need the diagnosis confirmed by a test first.
| Disease | What cures it | Doses |
|---|---|---|
| Common Cold | Cough syrup or antiviral | 1 |
| Influenza | Antiviral | 2 |
| Pneumonia | Antibiotics | 3 |
| Food Poisoning | Antiemetic | 1 |
| Dehydration | Saline IV, small saline, or an electrolyte drink | 1 |
| Sepsis | Antibiotics | 3 |
| Anaphylaxis | Epinephrine or antihistamine | 1 |
| Low blood sugar | Glucose gel | 1 |
| High blood sugar | Insulin | 1 |
| Panic Attack | Anxiolytic | 1 |
| Migraine | Ibuprofen or paracetamol | 1 |
| Transfusion Reaction | Antihistamine or epinephrine | 1 |
| Insomnia | Melatonin | 2 |
| Hypothermia | Thermal blanket | 1 |
| Opioid Overdose | Naloxone | 1 |
Doses do not have to come from the same medic or the same visit. Any medication whose treats list matches the disease counts.
🧬 Chronic conditions
Four conditions are never cured, only controlled.
| Condition | Controlled with | Course |
|---|---|---|
| Diabetes | Insulin | Every 12 hours |
| Asthma | Cough syrup | Every 24 hours |
| Epilepsy | Anxiolytic | Every 24 hours |
| High Blood Pressure | Ibuprofen | Every 24 hours |
Each dose resets the course timer and calms the condition back to stage 1. Miss your course and it flares up one stage at a time until you are in real trouble.
These are not caught randomly. A medic diagnoses them, or an admin adds one through the wound editor, so your character can be written as a diabetic from day one.
☠️ The two dangerous ones
Sepsis
Comes from an infected wound that nobody cleaned. Fever, collapsing blood pressure, confusion, and steady health loss that will eventually put you down. Needs 3 doses of antibiotics.
Opioid Overdose
Too much morphine, fentanyl, tramadol or vicodin in a short window.
An untreated opioid overdose drops you into last stand after 4 minutes. One dose of naloxone reverses it instantly, and naloxone can be self-administered.
See Addictions & Overdoses for how dependence works.
🩺 Getting diagnosed
You cannot see the name of your illness. A medic finds it in two steps:
- Field diagnosis: using the right tools on you (a thermometer and stethoscope for flu, a glucometer for diabetes, a penlight for an overdose) makes the illness suspected.
- Confirmation: a blood test at a hospital laboratory confirms it by name.
Some acute conditions, anaphylaxis, low blood sugar, panic attacks, do not need a lab test. Field diagnosis is enough, because in real life you do not wait for lab results on those.
🛑 Turning it off
Server owners can disable the whole disease system, or just parts of it:
| Setting | Turns off |
|---|---|
enabled = false | Everything, symptoms, sepsis, overdoses, hypothermia, illness callouts, addictions |
contagion = false | Diseases never spread between players |
randomCatch = false | Players never catch anything at random (injuries, overdoses and admin-given illnesses still work) |
addictions = false | Medications never cause dependence |