Medical overhaul

[Tbone555]

On my latest stalker game I was just thinking about how much of a problem i have with this games current medical system. There are plenty of things that make no sense even in a videogame view point. So here's a small list of suggestions for the medical actions:

Why do i take painkillers for specific injuries? If I have a sprained wrist and a sprained foot, some painkillers will treat the area I choose. I'm not gonna ask for 2 weeks of healing time for a sprain, as you would need in real life. It is a videogame. But choosing which injury you treat is where I draw the line. It's as if we say "okay look here painkillers, when I eat you I need you to work real hard to treat my foot, and not my hand okay?" I suggest a dose of painkillers healing both sprains, or maybe reducing rest time for both sprains while fully healing if you have one sprain.

While we are on painkillers. That's not how they work. One night I had a little too much to drink and fell down some stairs. Wild night. I sprained my foot. It took 2 weeks before I could stop limping and I could not stop thinking "man I wish I had some of those magic painkillers like in the long dark!" As i stated above, that would be a terrible idea for the game. If I want to see what a sprain is really like again I'll get drunk like last time. But, I do want to make one suggestion. Make painkillers temporary. If you take painkillers in the field, your injury will read as "treated" but the painkillers will only last a couple hours. It's just so you can get back to base or if you need to fend off a wolf. Then you still need the appropriate amount of rest to fully heal your injury.

Antiseptic does not work 100 percent of the time every time. I was once sitting on the porch whittling on a nice fall evening. I was probably too young to be handling such a large knife, but hey, how else am I gonna learn? So I'm whittling on this piece of wood and the blade slips and nearly skins my finger. Got it right on the serrated part too, it wasn't a fun sight for such a young'un as I was. So my parents immediately get some antiseptic on this massive gash on my finger, blood all over the porch, and clean and bandage it for me. It still got infected. It was a pain to let heal naturally too, we had no insurance. I probably needed stitches but it healed anyway. Still got that scar. Anyway, story time is over, the moral was that antiseptic doesn't always work. The changces of getting infection from a wolf bite in this game after you apply antiseptic is astronomical. And that's just not how it works. There should still be a chance of infection after treated, just a lower one. And old man's beard should have a low chance of working. It's moss. Not medicine. It's improvised, not ideal.

Bandages are fine. Changing bandages would be an annoying and tedious chore for the game, so I think they're good as is

Tea. Once again you have to make a habit of telling it where to go. Unless you drink it from the treatment menu, it doesn't work. And that's extremely annoying. I made reishi tea for my infection. I drank it from the cook menu. Well now I have to go find more mushrooms because apparently the tea got confused and doesn't know what it's supposed to be treating because I didn't tell it. What.

[Boston123]

I am of agreement. Medical treatment in TLD is both too restrictive and too effective.

I have been annoyed by certain teas not working when I drank them from the food-screen instead of the treatment-screen more than once, as well. It is all going to my stomach, why be so specific?

I also agree, regarding Antiseptic. They should patent that nonsense, because an OTC bottle of antiseptic is generally *not* nearly that effective. A good rule of thumb when it comes to survival and bushcraft is : If you get an open wound, it will get dirty, and therefore have the chance for infection, to some degree. Even cleaning an open wound to the best of your ability doesn't guarantee it stays clean, and in my experience actually covering a wound with a dressing tends to make them get infected more often, since they are harder to keep clean.

Relatedly, why don't we have water and soap? Actually physically cleaning a wound is as important as disinfecting it, and in my experience cleaning a wound with hot water and soap is as effective or more at preventing infections than 'just' tossing some antiseptic on it.

Contrary to 'common knowledge', personal hygiene becomes more important in a survival situation, not less, usually for that particular reason 

[Tbone555]

5 hours ago, Boston123 said:

I am of agreement. Medical treatment in TLD is both too restrictive and too effective.

I have been annoyed by certain teas not working when I drank them from the food-screen instead of the treatment-screen more than once, as well. It is all going to my stomach, why be so specific?

I also agree, regarding Antiseptic. They should patent that nonsense, because an OTC bottle of antiseptic is generally *not* nearly that effective. A good rule of thumb when it comes to survival and bushcraft is : If you get an open wound, it will get dirty, and therefore have the chance for infection, to some degree. Even cleaning an open wound to the best of your ability doesn't guarantee it stays clean, and in my experience actually covering a wound with a dressing tends to make them get infected more often, since they are harder to keep clean.

Relatedly, why don't we have water and soap? Actually physically cleaning a wound is as important as disinfecting it, and in my experience cleaning a wound with hot water and soap is as effective or more at preventing infections than 'just' tossing some antiseptic on it.

Contrary to 'common knowledge', personal hygiene becomes more important in a survival situation, not less, usually for that particular reason 

Yessir, many people really underestimate the need for decent hygiene in a survival situation. My dad and I fancy ourselves peppers and often talk about survival kind of stuff and even he doesn't understand the importance of hygiene in the wild, even though he's spent far more time in the woods than I have, stating "hygiene is the last thing you're going to be worried about If you're stranded"

There are bars of soap in the game. The only one that comes to mind off the top of my head is in the forest lookout in ML. But it's there solely for decoration. It's like they imply that they know hygiene is an issue. But we just have to use our imagination on that one.

Which is fine. In a videogame standpoint, I'd rather not add bathing to my list of things to do every day. That would be very tedious. I just assume this is something our survivor does on his own time. But using these bars of soap to clean wounds would be an interesting, welcome addition