BoneCrusherx11 Posted January 21, 2025 Report Posted January 21, 2025 (edited) I just got the game & I'm still in the stone age struggling to find clay, so please take my game knowledge with a grain of salt. Im also dyslexic so I will be going back rewording and editing this to make more sense. I think a Medical/Sickness/Herbalism system based off of early Native cultures might fit the game well. You'd have to have a small GUI area added probably to the inventory for statuses and ailments Lets say you take a plunge in water around winter, or your very active during winter, your character is constantly somewhere under 2°C and soon after starts moving overall slower and starts making weird sounds every once and a while. You open your inventory & see: Ailment (100%)- Common Cold (Rhinoviruses): -5% attack speed -10% movement speed You character periodically sneezes Cause: - persistent contact with 2°C or lower environments Over time this Ailment (100%) goes down over a set number of days per type of affliction. So, Common Cold (Rhinoviruses) would go down 1% & every 3 minutes in temperatures above 2°C. So it would take somewhere around 6.3 in game days for the affliction to do down naturally. If the Character is a temperatures below 2°C the % is slower probably 1% every 4 minutes lengthening the Affliction. There are many plants that help reduce fever or help fight the cold Elderberry being one plant already in the game that Quote "the Diaphoretic flowers induce sweeting to reduce fever" - Griffin, J, PHD, (2021) Mother Nature's Herbal, Llewellyn Publications Lets say people in the stone age who are somehow in 2°C or lower weather get this Ailment Common Cold (Rhinoviruses) through a small random chance. You could use a flint knife on elderberry plants to get elderberry leaves & elderberry flowers not 100% killing the plant (like you do on cattails in-game). Using the knife on the plant again results in obtaining elderberry root & stem. Quote "Only the flowers and ripe fruit are considered edible; all other parts of the elder contain cyanogenic glycosides, which, when consumed in large amounts, can result in cyanide poisoning." - USDA. (n.d.). Common elderberry. plants.usda.gov. https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/plantguide/pdf/cs_sanic4.pdf Different levels of in game progression could also come into play with treating the ailment. Eating the leaves normally could result in only 10% being taken off the Ailment % per day. Brewing a tea via dried leaves, and a clay pot could result in 20% being taken off the Ailment % per day. Finally making a tincture via something like high proof corn alcohol and elderberry flower fermentation over 3 days could result it 35% to 40% being taken off the Ailment % per day. Repeating this process with plants that are in game could result in a new Herbalist Skill / Starter Class with increased percentages of treatments. This Idea could expand to include treatments like poultices for burns or wound infections besides just common sicknesses, systems like drying herbs, mortal in pestals, etc. Overall I think it would increase the overall usefullness and depth of the world of Vintage Story. Please post your Idea's for afflictions, sicknesses, treatments and ailments below I'd love to see them! Edited January 21, 2025 by BoneCrusherx11 Simplifying a section near the beginning of the Explanation that wasn't needed 1
ribbbbbs Posted January 21, 2025 Report Posted January 21, 2025 (edited) It seems to me what you're really asking for are diseases and status conditions, which aren't really in the game at this time. What you're describing would probably require a whole expansion fleshing out how health and healing work in the game. Also, vintage story doesn't have leveled skills, just the starter classes. Some kind of medicinally inclined class would be a logical addition, if healing mechanics were expanded. While I'm not opposed to sickness in vintage story, contagious diseases don't seem like good basis for illness and disease in vintage story, as the player hardly interacts with other players besides a few traders on occasion. Randomly getting sick (even under specific conditions) is an inferior design choice to a clear cause -> effect dynamic for VS. What I think would be a better place to start would be introducing illness and diseases as a follow-on to the existing health and nutrition mechanics. Certain combinations of empty nutrition groups should produce debuffs that significantly hinder/kill the player if left untreated (scurvy, anemia, etc). Eating partially spoiled food has a probability of causing food poisoning proportional to its spoilage. Being below half health for too long causes sepsis. Maybe some kind of special status condition for a "burn" injury. We could have medicines that cure these ailments. Some players will want to play without illness (Vintarians must customize everything) so I think it is best that medicine recipes consist only of existing ingredients. After all, if we have an elderberry bush that's only real use is to produce elderberries for medicine. It's a pointless addition for players who always disable diseases. At the very least, any new medicine ingredients should have an important non-medicinal application. Edited January 21, 2025 by ribbbbbs
BoneCrusherx11 Posted January 21, 2025 Author Report Posted January 21, 2025 (edited) 1 hour ago, ribbbbbs said: It seems to me what you're really asking for are diseases and status conditions. Herbalism by oxford definition is "the study or practice of the medicinal and therapeutic use of plants" so it make sense if im trying to add herbalism it would probably have something to do with diseases and conditions. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 hour ago, ribbbbbs said: Contagious diseases don't seem like good basis for illness and disease. .Randomly getting sick (even under specific conditions) is an inferior design choice to a clear cause I think contagious diseases while somewhat random shouldn't be absolutely ruled out especially since a cold is defined as "any one of several viruses that causes inflammation of the membranes that line the nose and throat" and is easily treatble, by that definition, with Herbalistic methods. Not only that, from a gameplay aspect I was primaraly using it as a baseline as its something that is easily treatable & hardely effects the player while inflicted (So a low level sickness essentually). There aren't many other NPC's in vintage story; however, I think it would be a waist to completely reject contagious diseases and common ailments from the list of possible Afflictions, since they are mostly well known, treatable, and might add a interesting mutiplayer mechanic. (Not to say I don't love the idea of things such as scurvy, anemia). Although I do agree that there should be more then a random cause. Perhaps adding to the probable Cause of "Common Cold (Rhinoviruses)". From - 2 hours ago, BoneCrusherx11 said: Ailment (100%)- Common Cold (Rhinoviruses): -5% attack speed -10% movement speed You character periodically sneezes Cause: - persistent contact with 2°C or lower environments To - Quote Ailment (100%)- Common Cold (Rhinoviruses): -5% attack speed -10% movement speed You character periodically sneezes Cause: - persistent contact with 2°C or lower environments without proper Winter / Warmth based Clothing. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 hour ago, ribbbbbs said: Some players will want to play without illness (Vintarians must customize everything) so I think it is best that medicine recipes consist only of existing ingredients. After all, if we have an elderberry bush that's only real use is to produce elderberries for medicine. It's a pointless addition for players who always disable diseases. At the very least, any new medicine ingredients should have an important non-medicinal application. Although I agree we shouldn't 100% add only 1 use items to the game, I could be here all day if i wanted to discribing altrenative uses to blackberrys. Blackberrys are also already semi in the game as we generally already have a "Black" berry bush variety that could simply be added onto as it is a really useful herbal remedy. Apart from just adding a herbal item for the sake of it being a herbal item there are a lot of flowers already in the game that have 0 uses but have plenty IRL applications. Even small trace amounts of poisonous flowers can be used to treat sicknesses. If someone wants to turn off sickness then slight buffs to mental fortitude via herbal tea could also come into play. What do you think? Edited January 21, 2025 by BoneCrusherx11 Added the ending question.
LadyWYT Posted January 21, 2025 Report Posted January 21, 2025 Having played with a mod that adds a disease mechanic...I've got to say no to that idea. It's annoying at best, and doesn't add much to gameplay. Most diseases a player should never, ever encounter unless they deliberately sabotage their gameplay to encounter them. Diseases like the common cold typically occur too often, so that they're a constant hindrance rather than the occasional challenge. And if it's a disease that can just happen by chance, rather than by specific actions, it's irritating to deal with because there was no chance to avoid it. There's also not much sense of accomplishment for beating a disease; it's essentially just a debuff to pull the player's attention from the stuff they'd rather be doing. The herbalism mechanic I do like though, and I think it would probably fit better into an alchemy portion of gameplay. Collect herbs and other various ingredients, and refine them into elixirs that can give different benefits...perhaps not all beneficial. The early-game poultices could be changed to require processing the horsetails with a basic mortar/pestle before they can be used as a healing item. Poisons could be crafted from certain minerals or mushrooms/plants, and applied to weapons or even mixed into food. The only real ailments I could see potentially working for the game, are perhaps more sophisticated combat injuries. Broken bones that require splints, deep wounds or serious bruises that require medical treatment to fully recover from. At that point, the injury could serve as a temporary debuff(health, movement speed, damage output, etc) that will heal on its own over time, but can heal much faster and be much less of a setback with medical treatment. Likewise, injuries are more easily prevented in several ways--avoiding big falls or wearing appropriate battle gear for the enemies you're fighting could curb most of the risk.
Chuckerton Posted January 22, 2025 Report Posted January 22, 2025 (edited) 10 hours ago, ribbbbbs said: It seems to me what you're really asking for are diseases and status conditions, which aren't really in the game at this time. What you're describing would probably require a whole expansion fleshing out how health and healing work in the game. ... Some players will want to play without illness (Vintarians must customize everything) so I think it is best that medicine recipes consist only of existing ingredients. After all, if we have an elderberry bush that's only real use is to produce elderberries for medicine. It's a pointless addition for players who always disable diseases. At the very least, any new medicine ingredients should have an important non-medicinal application. I dont think that semi-random diseases would work (feels unfair and completely unavoidable, though it would be helped by adding a description as to how you caught the disease), nor do i think poor nutrition should cause diseases (early game would be even more brutal) but i think wound infection and more interesting injuries would be good. Kind of like what LadyWYT was saying, broken bones or deep wounds. There needs to be a sense of progression when it comes to dealing with them though. Like stone age would be some medicinal plant for treating infections, poorly, then its honey+medicine plant, then it can be aqua vitae as the final tier of infection treatment. Similar treatment progression could be made for other types of ailments, like for bleeds, flax fibers, then twine as sutures. We dont have to add new ingredients or materials, we already have a lot of items in the game to work with. I think that there should be some rework to combat and enemies and just risk in general. If you play right you can basically always avoid any real injury, meaning experienced players will never interact with this system and new players will have an even harder experience in the game. The only times I ever take damage is in mine cave-ins and I generally do not survive those anyway so injuries would be pointless. Im not really sure what the solution is to the problem i mentioned in my previous paragraph, but I just want to put forward something else, which is why limit ourselves to just medicinal healing herbs? Why not drinks to make you run faster or the trippy kind of mushrooms? If combat and player injuries cant really be reworked, why dont we give ourselves some fun new effects? Edit due to me finding this ---- On the Roadmap (Roadmap - Vintage Story) they do say "comprehensive status effects system" and "herbalism" sooooo.... who knows what theyre cooking with that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Edited January 22, 2025 by Chuckerton
LadyWYT Posted January 22, 2025 Report Posted January 22, 2025 14 hours ago, Chuckerton said: trippy kind of mushrooms? If combat and player injuries cant really be reworked, why dont we give ourselves some fun new effects? Just imagine the fun you could have cooking some special 'shrooms into your friend's food, and making them think they went to the Rust world! 2 1
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