allergy mod?

[Helst_navngivet]

how viable is a mod that adds allergies? Me and some friends have joked about it, and im thinking about making one forreal. 

However, i have no idea how to integrate allergies into gameplay, let alone how to make it fun, as making something inherently "sucky" not suck is quite difficult.

which is why im asking about it here. Is there anyway to implement stuff like pollen or grass and stuff like that without it just being annoying and instead make it pose some form of challenge?

maybe have a "pollen phase" where you get some status effect? Or adding something like a plague doctor mask to mitigate pollen or other airborne allergies? Pollen could work like the realsmoke mod, using entities, however im not sure how this would affect performance.

this would mean that some greenhouses would require ventilation to vent out pollen (maybe like a chimney?)

amaranth would become functional, as it does not contain gluten and does not consume many nutrients (that is a base game addition)

(im aware rice is gluten free too, but from experience its quite hard to grow)

handling things that you are allergic to would require gloves, to avoid rashes (rashes could maybe function like when you are drunk, making it harder to smith, etc.)

any suggestions, ideas and criticism are very much welcome!

Edited Tuesday at 11:32 AM by Helst_navngivet

[Broccoli Clock]

I would like to see some sort of status effects, maybe diseases (an example would be scurvy if you don't eat any fruit/veg), maybe infections (and if you want to expand that, the plants/mushrooms could be mixed for an antibiotic poultice.

As for allergens alone? Not sure. I am lucky, I don't suffer any sort of hayfever, yet my family and partners have. I guess something like that would manifest itself in game as a blurred vision and stopping to sneeze.

[Helst_navngivet]

i think hayfever might be one of the more interesting allergies in regards to gameplay, as there is much more room for prevention of it (i have listed some of them in the original post, i am aware that they might not be the most realistic) compared to something like peanuts, which would most likely just be something akin to "you ingest/touch -> symptoms" 

im not a big fan of diseases, as i feel that they purely limit what you can do. (except scurvy, which is much more interesting, and also forces you to have a diet not just consisting of onion stew)

regarding status effects, i think what you said about hayfever pretty much sums it up. maybe slowing the player down a little bit? (stuffed nose=difficulty breathing) or breaking out in hives so its difficult to work, stuff takes more time, things like that. The only problem with making non fatal stuff is that its non fatal, and since its a video game, the player is unable to feel pain, itching and other things that would be a great annoyance in real life.

as for how you are supposed to "treat" allergies, i have no idea.

i might take some creative liberty regarding medicine, as VS does not feature the technology necessary to create complex medicines like pills, etc.

perhaps some form of weird epipen thingy for serious stuff like anaphylaxic shock? Could buy some form of vintage story opiod equivalent from a trader to grow, then grind it into powder and mix with water for some form of adrenaline solution.

right click to use, deals 0,5 hp, but its better than being dead. (illustration depicting severe allergic response and the opiodpen™)

Edited Tuesday at 01:05 PM by Helst_navngivet

[LadyWYT]

On 4/28/2026 at 6:27 AM, Helst_navngivet said:

Is there anyway to implement stuff like pollen or grass and stuff like that without it just being annoying and instead make it pose some form of challenge?

I think the short answer is "Yes, but it depends on the player preference". I don't know that anyone has taken a shot at modding allergies, but there was a disease mod(XDiseases) that was...decidedly not popular. Probably because the common cold was way overtuned, but otherwise the diseases didn't really pose any threat unless the player was deliberately sabotaging their own gameplay. 

Such things are also best handled by a status effect system, which the game doesn't have yet. Disease would make sense to add as some of the negative consequences that players could experience from certain things, but it does need to be done carefully since diseases, for the most part, aren't exactly fun. The key to making disease mechanics fun, I think, is to make sure that the player has clear options for mitigating risk of catching them/avoiding them entirely, and otherwise has good options for treating diseases they do catch(especially in the early game). I think Elder Scrolls games are a decent example of how to make a disease mechanic more fun than annoying; there are clear actions that result in diseases, like getting attacked by dirty animals/vampires or getting caught in filthy traps, and the player suffers a penalty to certain abilities until they drink a potion or visit a shrine for a cure. In the case of Vintage Story though, the player isn't necessarily going to have the correct medicine on them for treatment, and may need to gather herbs and make camp or otherwise return home to rest for a few days before they make a full recovery.