Surprise Me! And Other Infectious Additions

[Rathlord]

Inspired by my friend Kajin I wanted to post a somewhat similar but different-enough-to-merit-its-own-post group of ideas.

 

First (I think this has been mentioned in general before, but what better time to bring it up) the ability to randomize the type of infection you're having in your sandbox game. Why do we need that, you ask? Well, because when players know how the infection is going to work and when they know for sure their character is going to die they tend to entirely break immersion, carefully pack up their stuff for their next character, and commit suicide in a pointless way.

 

So I think it would be neat to have a sandbox option that randomizes the before death effects of being infected upon the character. This plays into my next suggestion, which is:

 

More options for pre-death infection! Here's a tentative list of possible "features" your infection could have:

 

• Kills infected instantly
• Kills infected after a short period of time (increased by food, rest, medicine but still inevitable)
• Kills infected after a long period of time (increased by food, rest, medicine but still inevitable)
• Can be fought off with rest, medicine, and food, otherwise kills infected after random amount of time. Always remain infected, but not sick.
• Can be fought off with rest, medicine, and food, otherwise kills infected after random amount of time. Always remain infected. Can relapse at any time.
• Causes the character to become extremely thirsty
• Causes the character to become extremely hungry
• Causes the character to be unable to sleep (except passing out from exhaustion)
• Causes the character to be sleepy constantly
• Causes upset stomach
• Causes sniffles
• Causes weakness
• Causes limited vision/hearing
• Causes hallucination
• Causes paralysis
• Causes bad mood
• Causes fever/heat
• Causes lowered body temperature
• Causes overexertion
• Infectious skin contact
• Infectious bodily fluid contact
• Airborne infection within short radius (As suggested by Kajin)

Any other suggestions? Again many thanks to Kajin as this idea is largely an adaptation of his "Ultra Hard Mode Infection" suggestion, which I also support.

[Kajin]

What about the chance for infectious lung cysts that burst and expel infected material into the air? This would effectively make the infection a short range airborne contagion that had high risk of infecting other survivors. This would make NPC survivors who know about such a condition immediately hostile to the player.

 

It could also extend itself in an after death effect that would cause the survivor to turn into a zombie whose lungs explode when it is killed, causing their chest to burst and spray infectious matter all over the area, making that area completely uninhabitable.

[Rathlord]

Added the top part. Bottom part a little too close to special infected for my liking =P Eventually corpses will pose a health risk so that could play into it, though.

[RoboMat]

I like this. That's all... for now.