Dysentery is almost never a problem at the moment

[Asinus]

Currently I never drink unsafe water, because the only way to obtain it is the same way how you can turn it into safe water.

As a result you usually either have safe water or no water at all.

As a result, dysentery is an affliction that never occured for me and also water purification tablets I usually ignore completly. You could use them to safe some fuel and time, but I rarely do.

I have a few suggestions how this could be changed, because I think this is how it is for most players:

1)Make toilet water unsafe. This feels much more natural anyway and especially in the early game I often spend days in CH or Milton without making a fire, because I have enough water from the toilets. If this water would be unsafe, the players would be forced to make a fire or to use the purification tablets or to take the risk.

2) Make it possible to eat snow. Eating snow should have the same or even higher chance for dysentery as drinking unsafe water and in addition it should increase the hypothermia risk. The amount of hypothermia risk should then be dependent on the amount of snow you used. Alternatively you could add a "Cooling down" affliction opposing the "warming up" from hot food.

3)Water could slowly lose condition, if it reaches 0% it will turn into unsafe water. It might make the inventory more confusing if you have several bottles of water with different conditions, this would make things more complicated.

To keep it simple, you could add a mixing mechanic, so if you have 1l of 100% in your inventory and you pick up 1l of 50% water, you would mix it together to get 2l of 75% water.

Degradation should be slow anyway, maybe something like 1% per 10 days or even less, then the main problem would be if you want to store it somewhere in a base and you come back a hundred days later. It could be also combined with number 1), so that the water in the toilets starts with a certain amount of condition and also degrades over time.

 

[Leeanda]

Sounds good.😊, 

I've tried to get dysentery on one of my runs and after drinking at least ten cans worth of water I gave up!😁.   I've yet to see anyone else getting it either so a revamp might be a good idea. 

And welcome to the forum😊

Edited February 6, 2023 by Leeanda

[Kranium]

It has always bothered me how you can't simply collect water from the streams/waterfalls & ice fishing holes. I really don't get it at all. If it's a balance thing, then just make dysentery harsher & more likely if you haven't boiled the water first. 🤷‍♂️

[Razum]

Addition: You should be able to put snow in a bottle and melt it with your own body warmth. You won't get Hypothermia from it (assuming, you're not stupid), because you don't put it directly on your body, but rather over the second clothing layer or something. Obviously this should only work, if you already have a jacket or something warm.

Also snow in bottles should melt in buildings when it's over 0°C or near fires (so you don't need to put it directly on the rare cooking places).

All this would make it more usual to just have melted snow but not boiled/safe water.

[javijungle]

I think that the treatment of liquids and in particular water in the game has many impediments at the programming level to obtain a realistic result according to the laws of physics.

For example:
- Our character is practically a plastic bottle factory, we are supposed to find containers to conserve and carry water and release it when we don't want to carry it.
- We can't pour kerosene from a small drum to a big one.
- We have an empty can, we are next to a waterfall that if we get close we get wet, but in the can we can not collect the water.

In short, the gameplay is sometimes at odds with reality.

 

[Lexilogo]

Toilet water being unsafe is a common sense feature I'm definitely behind.

On a smaller note, it occurs to me that it's a bit weird the simple act of melting snow down has the same time investment value as boiling the snow into safe water. Maybe melting snow should take half the time it currently does and move that extra time to boiling water?

[hozz1235]

On 2/6/2023 at 8:35 PM, Kranium said:

It has always bothered me how you can't simply collect water from the streams/waterfalls & ice fishing holes. I really don't get it at all. If it's a balance thing, then just make dysentery harsher & more likely if you haven't boiled the water first. 🤷‍♂️

I think there are countless ways the game could be more "realistic" (chopping down trees, harvested cloth from car seats, etc.).  HL had to make choices on what to implement and what not to.  Keep in mind, it is a game, and all games have limitations.  That's what this wishlist is for.

[Kranium]

wat

[hozz1235]

dat

[Kranium]

No.

[Willy Pete]

I've also never run into the problem of getting dysentery (which I can't spell for the life of me without Google's help, lol) but that's not necessarily a problem in my eyes. The Long Dark is all about making sound choices and planning ahead and I've never had unsafe water in my inventory for longer than a few minutes because I always plan my fire duration.

The matter of safe water from toilets, so I've been told in other threads, is to assist folks just starting runs with scarce firestarting equipment and whatnot. You can very easily survive starvation, but dehydration is another matter entirely and safe water is there for game balance.

I could see a mod adding this feature, but the base game is fine as is.

[Razum]

Making toilet water unsafe, doesn't stand against the game balance in my opinion. Unsafe water isn't like raw meat, that certainly cause heavy illness, it's more like if you are very unlucky you may become ill. And when you eventually get it, you should be in a state of the game, where you can treat it and have access to clean water. You could make it only for Stalker/Interloper and let the other difficulties drink as much toilet water as they want.

I agree with it not being a problem, that some afflictions don't occur often/ever. The funniest stuff with the human body happens in extreme situations. And those are, as the name implies, rare and to be avoided. So, dysentery is fine as an edge case.

The base game is fine. I think, everyone agrees, that TLD is a great game. Most threads in wishlist are not meant to criticize the game for faults and problems. The goal I think is, to point out, where potential lies, to making the game even better. And the proposed changes would do exactly that, without there being a problem or the game not being fine.