Damage/Wounds Overhaul Suggestion

[Darce]

I know this system won’t be implemented before a major combat overhaul (and it shouldn’t) as it would make the game too frustrating to play, but I think a more indepth health, damage and healing system would help make the game feel a bit more survival-ish, giving specific uses to things already in the game (like poultices, bandages, etc.), having to take care of wounds, the things you eat, and how you interact with nature and being a bit punished if you don’t. I should note I'm taking a lot of inspiration on Terrafirmacraft+, Project Zomboid, and The Long Dark's damage system (having played the last two myself).

Types of damage

Some of these are already in the game (blunt damage and piercing damage mentioned under throwing stones and arrows respectively).

Slashing damage

• Caused by swords, axes, bears.
• Produces exposed wounds.

Piercing damage

• Caused by arrows and wolves.
  Produces exposed wounds.

Blunt damage

• Caused by fall damage and bighorn sheep ramming.
• Produces sprains or fractures.

Starving damage

• Caused by depleting the hunger bar.
• Produces stomach ulcers and malnutrition if suffered over a long period of time.

 

Conditions

Exposed wounds

• Caused by slashing and piercing damage.
• Will decrease player’s health while exposed (not bandaged).
• Has a chance to bleed (causing more damage and extending its healing time).
• Will heal on its own after some time*.
• Bandages or stitches (deep wounds) can be used to heal it faster.
• Can become infected, after which it won’t heal until the infection is treated.

 

Infected wounds

• Caused by keeping dirty bandages on the wound.
• Will extend the wound’s healing time.
• Won’t heal on its own.
• If left exposed or kept with dirty bandages it will slowly start dealing damage.
• Disinfecting the wound, and/or using certain antibacterial herbal infusions and poultices will help it heal the infection.

 

Sprain

• Caused by a big amount of blunt damage.
• Will slightly slow players movement until healed.
• Will heal on its own after some time*.
• Splints or casts can be used to heal faster.

 

Fracture

• Caused by a huge amount of blunt damage.
• Will slow players movement or tool usage considerably.
• If present on the off-hand it will inhabilitate it.
• Will heal on its own after a long time*.
• Can be healed faster by using splints or casts.

 

Burns

• Caused by fire, lava, and by being struck by lightning.
• Will decrease player’s health while exposed (not bandaged).
• Will heal on its own after a long time*.
• Higher chance of becoming infected.
• Disinfecting the wound, and/or using certain poultices (with honey or aloe vera**) will help it heal faster.

 

Stomach ulcer

• Caused by a long time of starving damage.
• Will decrease player’s health each time food is consumed.
• Won’t heal on its own.
• Can be treated using certain herbal infusions.

 

Food poisoning

• Caused by eating rotting food, or (sometimes) bushmeat.
• Food will provide slightly less nutrition.
• Will heal on its own after a short while*.
• Can be treated using certain antibacterial and other herbal infusions.

 

Parasites

• Caused by eating rotting food, or (sometimes) bushmeat.
• Food will provide a lot less nutrition.
• Will heal on its own after a long while*.
• Can be treated using certain antiparasitic herbal infusions.

 

Malnutrition

• Caused by a habit of continuous starving damage.
• Will slightly slow players movement or tool usage.
• Won’t solve on its own.
• Can be treated by keeping the hunger bar over a threshold consistently and by sleeping.

 

Common cold

• Caused by a very long time of being exposed to rain and low temperatures.
• Will slightly slow players movement or tool usage.
• Will heal on its own after some time*.
• Can be treated using certain herbal infusions.
• Immunity can be developed after continuous exposure.

 

*The healing time might need to be tweaked to make it feel fair and not just another annoyance.

**Adding aloe vera as a plant would be nice to compliment this mechanic.

 

Medicine/Treatment

Along with this, some new items would be added to help counteract the negative traits some conditions give, or get rid of them full on, giving specific uses to bandages and herb-specific poultices (more below).

Stitching

• Can be used to help deep wounds heal faster.

Bandages

• Will stop damage and help with wound healing.
• Will stop bleeding.
• Bandages can be sterilized using aqua vitae.
• Will become dirty after a while.
  • Bleeding wounds will dirty bandages faster.
  • If dirty bandages are applied or kept on wounds for long periods of times it will become infected and take longer to heal.

Splint/Cast

• Can be used to help sprains or fractures heal faster.
• Will reduce the movement and tool usage penalty of sprains and fractures.

Herbal Infusions + Poultices

• Can be used to help with infections, stomach ulcers, food poisoning, parasites, bleeding, or the common cold depending on the type of infusion. (Some of these might not be backed by empirical evidence, just listing some of the properties I found of plants already in the game an example).

 

Spoiler

Burns

• Honey
• Aloe vera**

Wound healing

• Edelweiss
• Daisy
• Golden poppy
• Lavender

Coagulants

• Cow parsley
• Cornflower
• Heather
• Edelweiss

Antibacterial

• Cow parsley
• Cornflower
• Heather
• Edelweiss
• Woad
• Basil 
• Mint
• Sage

Antidyspepsia

• Catmint
• Cornflower
• Edelweiss
• Heather
• Chamomile
• Golden poppy
• Cow parsley
• Basil 
• Lavender
• Mint
• Sage

Antiparasitic

• Lupine
• Woad
• Basil 

Antiulcer

• Catmint
• Cornflower
• Woad

Common cold

• Edelweiss
• Orange mallow
• Daisy
• Cow parsley
• Golden poppy
• Heather
• Honey

Health Tab

Along with this mechanic, a new tab on the player UI to see current conditions and an option to treat them would be added.

This is just a post compiling mechanics I've seen in other games I've played and thought might add some depth to the game once the combat mechanic is expanded upon. If you're interested or not feel free to leave some feedback as it's always appreciated :).

Edited September 13, 2022 by Darce

[daretmavi]

It looks really interesting.

Wound could be even visible on players avatar.
Clothes/Armor would protect from some kind of damage.

On the other side Stomach ulcer seems to be a little bit too much. Common cold is questionable as well.
Parasites only if eating raw meat would be allowed.
Everything else looks fine.

[dakko]

Coagulant: Spider webs

Great ideas. I like the concept(s) very much.

[Thorfinn]

Wasn't inventory management enough of a challenge before?

[l33tmaan]

Is that just the Zomboid health system but with some more damage types tossed in? 

[Herbetussy]

Love it. A Dayz / Zomboid health system would be great.

But don't forget thirst!! We need wells and that brewing system to be more of a life and death situation.

[Lacrimarum]

This could be tied into animal behavior as well. Certain animals like wolves or big cats (if introduced) could stalk and attack wounded players. This could make predators less of a constant annoyance and more realistic. Once world generation is updated, any sort of bleeding wound (slash or puncture) could draw sharks in ocean or sea waters and piranhas in tropical fresh water.

[djvirus]

Looks realy cool!

[Tommy Tucker]

Gonna go ahead and necro this old thread. 1, because I like this idea and it is well outlined. And 2, to ask if anything like this has been released as a mod over the last 3 years? 

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Tommy Tucker said:

And 2, to ask if anything like this has been released as a mod over the last 3 years? 

Yes and no.

Bleed mechanic: https://mods.vintagestory.at/bloodystory

Disease: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/11954

I have tried both. The bleeding mechanic felt too punishing in combat and required much more micromanagement than normal, so while it might be "realistic" it wasn't fun. For diseases, it was a neat idea in theory, but I found that if one is playing the game even remotely competently at all...disease will never be an issue. The only disease that proved to be an actual problem was the common cold(which was overtuned), as there was essentially no way to avoid catching it, one could catch it constantly, and there was no real way to heal it quickly either.

1 hour ago, Tommy Tucker said:

because I like this idea and it is well outlined.

I agree that the idea is well-outlined, and it would make a good mod. I don't think it's a good idea for the base game though, as it would make pretty much every aspect more punishing, especially for new players. I also see some logic issues in the mod itself, like the stomach ulcers, in that...the player needs to eat to survive, and if they take damage every time they eat, how exactly are they supposed to recover? Likewise, malnutrition is already covered in the game, in that if you don't eat a balanced diet you will miss some health bonuses. Additionally, the game already punishes starving by killing the player.

Another issue is while treatments for the conditions have been listed, ingredients for those treatments aren't always available. Getting your adventures cut short because you have to find medicine, or getting penalties that you can't fix in the early game simply because you got unlucky isn't exactly fun.

Some of the ideas I could see getting added to the game, like broken bones, if a temporary trait system is ever actually added(it's been floated by the devs a time or two). In that case, it could be a penalty that has a clear cause(too much fall damage, suffering a hit from a large creature), with a clear solution(splints, rest), as well as being a relatively uncommon occurrence so it doesn't impede gameplay too much. 

In other words, it's fine to have challenges, but the challenges shouldn't be so difficult that the player has to spend most of their time micro-managing everything to deal with penalties instead of just playing the game.

[Krougal]

Trust me, nobody wants the dreaded sprained ankle from 7DTD!

We don't even have glass to eat in VS.

[LadyWYT]

30 minutes ago, Krougal said:

Trust me, nobody wants the dreaded sprained ankle from 7DTD!

We don't even have glass to eat in VS.

I've never played that game, so I can't say that I understand the reference, but to speak from my experience with modded Skyrim...

I did actually mod my Skyrim install to have this level of difficulty regarding diseases and injuries. While I do enjoy it, I would be lying if I said it wasn't incredibly frustrating to deal with, especially in the early game. Having the challenge of dealing with injuries sounds fun, in theory, until you get mauled by a bear and have to spend the next several days in game doing nothing but resting in bed. Granted, one learns to be very careful rather quickly, but given how easily accidents happen...not something I would recommend for baseline game.

[Krougal]

39 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I've never played that game, so I can't say that I understand the reference, but to speak from my experience with modded Skyrim...

I did actually mod my Skyrim install to have this level of difficulty regarding diseases and injuries. While I do enjoy it, I would be lying if I said it wasn't incredibly frustrating to deal with, especially in the early game. Having the challenge of dealing with injuries sounds fun, in theory, until you get mauled by a bear and have to spend the next several days in game doing nothing but resting in bed. Granted, one learns to be very careful rather quickly, but given how easily accidents happen...not something I would recommend for baseline game.

Yeah, it is a longstanding joke over there. You would rather break your leg than get a sprain, and it was very easy to do it. It was better to just off yourself if you got a sprain than to try to deal with it, since it took a long time to heal and everything you did made it worse (running, jumping, combat). A break you could at least splint and it was pretty much mitigated. Your health was just reduced by a % until then. It just was not fun. They toned it down a lot eventually, but it's something of a meme still.

 

[Darce]

Totally forgot I made this post 2 years ago lmao. But yeah I agree with the sentiment that making it too overly complicated wouldn't be fun. I was just throwing half-baked ideas for mechanics that I had been thinking of for a while. Whatever shape it ends up taking, I would just be satisfied with a way to prevent players from just spamming poultices when they take damage from hunger or from falling. Having the option to do that for me just seems very cheesy still.

[LadyWYT]

25 minutes ago, Darce said:

Whatever shape it ends up taking, I would just be satisfied with a way to prevent players from just spamming poultices when they take damage from hunger or from falling. Having the option to do that for me just seems very cheesy still.

It's getting there. I don't know if you saw the patch notes for 1.21, but healing's been changed rather significantly. Bandage application and the resulting healing is no longer instant, and can be interrupted under certain circumstances. Doesn't exactly prevent a player from using bandages to mitigate negatives from going hungry or falling too far, but it might at least make them think twice before doing something that will result in unnecessary damage.

[Krougal]

It is now sloooooow. It takes 3 seconds to apply and 10 to take effect.

So you can stand there holding down the button, but like if you use 6 of them, it will take 18 seconds (18 seconds is forever in battle) of you standing there bandaging, and then a full minute to get all the healing.

I think it's reasonable, it is no longer like health potion spam from other games.

[LadyWYT]

38 minutes ago, Krougal said:

it will take 18 seconds (18 seconds is forever in battle) of you standing there bandaging

You don't need to stand still to bandage; you can still apply bandages while walking or even running around. What you don't want to do is jump, fall, or otherwise get launched off your feet, as this will reset the bandaging timer unless you were almost done applying the current bandage.

[Diff]

Another game with similar mechanics (and more tuned to wilderness survival (which was mentioned briefly but I want to throw more spotlight on it)) is The Long Dark. Certain actions cause or risk injuries, animal attacks, walking on steep ground while overloaded, getting too cold, eating spoiled food, not eating enough fruits. Minor injuries might cause nothing but pain, and threaten to progress to a major injury if aggravated further. And major injuries often just temporarily reduce your max health, speed, carrying capacity, or stamina and unlike Zomboid often don't need any ongoing attention as long as they're treated. At least on the max health front, I think that vibes pretty well with VS's current system of balanced diets boosting max health.

Edited August 17, 2025 by Diff

[Bomboclaat]

Holy crap that UI gave me a blast from the past and reminded me of Baurotrauma (or Quasimorph) (from about 2 or 3 years ago), it has a similar healing system from what you suggested, just look up Baurotrauma healing in google images and you'll see quite a few examples. Guess those types of healing systems aren't too uncommon. Kenshi also has a neat healing system where each limb along with leg head and stomach all have their own health bars and enough damage to any of those parts results in either a loss of limb or death, but I don't think broken or losing limbs would have any place in a block game.

If it doesn't fit in the base game, these features would be super fun to deal with in a hardcore mode or as a specific game modifier (such as having cave-ins be optional) if ever implemented. These could all be in the normal base game in a suppressed state or different form such as limb damage (because I'm already dealing with enough crap in my current playthrough as it is) or entirely customizable like how the game already is.

[Entaris]

On 8/15/2025 at 6:27 PM, LadyWYT said:

For diseases, it was a neat idea in theory, but I found that if one is playing the game even remotely competently at all...disease will never be an issue. The only disease that proved to be an actual problem was the common cold(which was overtuned), as there was essentially no way to avoid catching it, one could catch it constantly, and there was no real way to heal it quickly either.

I mean, that's just life.

Know almost anything about living = avoid most disease, yet get trounced by the Common Cold or Flu every winter.

 

RE:OP 

I like this concept, but that's a DEEP transition, as you've already stated.

I think the "but muh inv!" crowd can be placated by specialized bags, much like Maltiez' new Quiver/Sheathe mod tucks away our ammo and weapons to free up some precious squares. 

Because we need to keep in mind, during this thread, OP is talking FUTURE FUTURE, so we can broad-stroke a sort of roadmap towards such a system. 

However, my two cents:

If the system became this in-depth and deleterious, I'd want some kind of "repellant" system to at least mitigate SOME of the early-game bum-rushing that happens when you're starting out. Just something to keep the onesey twosies from pinging us to death in the woods in broad daylight before we have the foundations to GET said mitigations for conditions. 

[Ryilo]

Other games have mods like the one op suggested, and they are no fun at all.

There is already a lot to do in the game: animal husbandry, farming, smithing, combat, building, exploration, mining, leathermaking, cooking, etc... we have a bit of everything to take care of and there is always a lot to do if the game is played this way (what's the "other way"? just run around, find new ruins to get items from, trade with traders to get equipment, get the food you find around, sleep in a trader wagon, you get the idea....)

I understand that there are people who might like the added complexity, but if the player had to deal even just with broken legs/arms everytime you are exploring and fall down because of sand/gravel hiding a cave, or by falling into a cave full of drifters or because an animal pushes you down a hill, it would become very frustrating very soon, even more so with the other mechanics on top of it. Then you'd have to balance it all for the start of the game and for the end game, and it gets even messier.

Then the player could just set the game to respawn without losing the inventory, let the character die and respawn and avoid all the mess of healing/patching things up, and so all the new mechanics can be thrown out the window...

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, Ryilo said:

Then the player could just set the game to respawn without losing the inventory, let the character die and respawn and avoid all the mess of healing/patching things up, and so all the new mechanics can be thrown out the window...

A really good point when it comes to balancing the negatives of mechanics like this--went through similar with a friend when working on a mod. Different concept, but same logic applies...how do you apply appropriate negatives without making it too frustrating for the player, or engineer it so all the negatives can't be erased just with a death? In our case, we just made the negatives persist even after death, but also added plenty of configuration options so the player could choose how easy/hard they wanted their experience with the mod to be. And that's one of the main advantages of making something like a mod instead of baking it into the game--the players that want that kind of challenge can have it, while leaving the base game unaffected for everyone else. Likewise, I think it's easier to pack a ton of configuration options into a single mod due to how the config files work, whereas for the base game you'd need to be concerned about cluttering the world creation options too much.

[Entaris]

2 hours ago, Ryilo said:

Then the player could just set the game to respawn without losing the inventory, let the character die and respawn and avoid all the mess of healing/patching things up, and so all the new mechanics can be thrown out the window...

Yes, but that would defeat the purpose of the player having ever SELECTED the game mode in the first place, so that's kind of a moot point. 

 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Likewise, I think it's easier to pack a ton of configuration options into a single mod due to how the config files work, whereas for the base game you'd need to be concerned about cluttering the world creation options too much.

I mean, would it though? It would simply be adding one more thing to the Game Mode dropdown, at its most basic level. 

Then, upon choosing, it would open up further options. Maybe. 

[LadyWYT]

6 minutes ago, Entaris said:

I mean, would it though? It would simply be adding one more thing to the Game Mode dropdown, at its most basic level. 

Then, upon choosing, it would open up further options. Maybe. 

Adding one option alone doesn't necessarily clutter the interface...it's when multiple options keep getting added that things can get cluttered. If one makes the case for adding a specific thing as an optional challenge in the vanilla, then the same logic could also be applied to every other suggested optional challenge.

Hence why it's not uncommon to see more veteran players default to "great as mod, maybe not so much for the base game" opinion. Mods are a great way to handle various options for players, without cluttering up the vanilla game settings.

[Entaris]

55 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Adding one option alone doesn't necessarily clutter the interface...it's when multiple options keep getting added that things can get cluttered. If one makes the case for adding a specific thing as an optional challenge in the vanilla, then the same logic could also be applied to every other suggested optional challenge.

Sure, however, those can be gated behind Mode/Challenge option panel, they are grand, sweeping change sets. Much like the "Advanced settings" buttons for many Graphics sections of games. 

Vastly simplifying the config menu landscape.