Let's Talk About Tainted Water...

[BayCon]

Okay so...tainted water... I think it's a great addition and all, but it's a little too tedious. For those of you who don't know, this feature, added in Build 31, made it dangerous to drink from certain water sources, and these sources produce "tainted water" which, allegedly will make you sick if consumed. I say allegedly because I drank from it many times after the update before I remembered the feature, and nothing happened to my character.  I understand you shouldn't drink from toilets or rivers and ponds safely, but I think it's ridiculously time-consuming that you have to boil every drop of water from your rain barrels before drinking it. Not only is this very heavy on resources in campfires (as that's the only way to cook things after the electricity goes out), but it takes a lot of the day's time, unless you stockpile boiled water and pour it into a bunch of bottles. 

         

In case any of you haven't survived long enough to have rain barrels and to have seen this addition in action, I've added a screenshot. 

 

Because this is such a tedious, time-consuming thing, I think some rebalancing is in order. 

 

What do you think about this new addition?

Do you like it?

Is there anything about it that you think should be changed?

 

For me, I think it would be better if instead there was only a chance of water from various sources being tainted. From sinks, I think it should be 0%, moving up to around 30 to about 60 or 70% as it sits when the water goes off. Toilets should be about 70 - 100% (maybe let's just stick to 100), considering, well, it's a toilet. Rivers have lots of bacteria so the chance there should be high too, but for the barrels, since they will usually be our primary source of water after the running water shuts off, I think something more complex should be done here. Like, for example, fresh rainwater should have a higher and higher chance of being tainted the longer it's left in the barrel, as nature blows leaves, plants, grass, and mold spores into the barrels, and as air pollution has an effect on it too. Maybe rainwater that has just fallen should be almost 80% pure, and become contaminated the longer it sits. What do you think?

[Blasted_Taco]

I like it, i like to think ahead like you said and stockpile boiled water.

 

Also you can cook food while boiling water too i think, but you just could leave the water boiling while you go and do something else.

For fuel? Just use the clothes of the dead zombies outside your base, take their shoes, fancy pants and sweaters and add it to the fire, put the pot there and just go and do something else, after that just pour it on bottles and you should be fine.

 

As for the rain barrel, maybe you are right but you can think that the garbage bag is like dirty or something.

[zombo]

What about building up resistance as time goes on and your body gets used to drinking less clean water?

[WolfeClaw]

I'm a fan of it since it really helps push the idea that you have to prepare for the future.

[wanderinbilly]

I was pretty bummed out when a buddy warned me about our rainbarrel water being tainted. It's kind of a pain in the ass *for now* but only because I always start out stockpiling clean water so we have a pretty good reserve.  (Part of it down in Muldraugh..bah.)

 

I understand the rationale, and it makes sense but I hope that there's some rebalancing. As stated, rainwater should be OK for a decent amount of time but I think it should be 100% pure when it falls. Now the age/upkeep of the rain collectors themselves seems like it could be a major variable. What about the ability to build a rain collector w/ a lid to make it last a bit longer, i.e keep leaves and bugs out of it?

 

I understand that the game must get more difficult as it's further developed and becomes more realistic, but I could see this making it a hair less fun.  I really do a "hair"-I have dealt with teleporting crops, invisible fire, and zeds spawning on my balcony and still had an F'in blast. I do think that this is already one of the best games ever made. Srsly.

[sleepyz]

Maybe the devs could add a water filter upgrade to the rain collectors to lower the chance of contaminated water. Can use charcoal, sand and something else to make it.

[Jsnazz]

 

As for the rain barrel, maybe you are right but you can think that the garbage bag is like dirty or something.

As I read some of your concerns, I have this urge to sprung up some idea to sooth ya'll concerns, particuarlly the OP one.

 

How about this

 

Rain Barrel is tainted for the first time of use but after you clean the dirty bag, it should stay clean and similar to food deterioration, the water level will slowly go tainted after a week.

 

To extend it more than a week (for those carefree procrastinators out there) you could build a water filter system but that's other story hehe.

[ChatNoir]

Well I think its a realistic feature. Cause in any kind of catastrophe and especially in a zombie apocalypse I would first stock up on water.

I have survived 3 months and 3 days now (with water shut down from the beginning) and never run out of water. I just refill my waterbottle constantly while looting. Bathtabs still provide a lot of water (each square!) after water shut down.

I think this might be more a problem if you settle far away from town in the woods. But In this case, you should be able to get a lot of campfire supplies by foraging.

Tainted water adds a nice challenge to the survival aspect of the game and I like it.

 

Maybe the devs could add a water filter upgrade to the rain collectors to lower the chance of contaminated water. Can use charcoal, sand and something else to make it.

The problem of such filters is that the water needs a lot of time to pass through the filter. You can only filter a small amount of water at once. I doubt that self-made charcoal filters work for a whole rain barrel properly. Boiling the water is much more more efficient and takes less time.

[Clayman]

Do you drink automatically out of a tainted water bottle?

[explorator]

I think it is fine how it is.  It does not take long to boil a pot of water and that can refill your water bottle a few times.  Honestly, I think rain-barrel water would be gross, not so much from the rain itself, but because the wind blows dirt, debris, and trash all over and some of it would have course settle in your barrel.

 

I think it might be nice in the future to have a larger storage option for clean water, like a sealed barrel so you could boil a bunch of water for one day, and then drink it for a couple of weeks.  As it is now, if I want to stockpile clean water I need to fill a bunch of pots.

[EnigmaGrey]

Rainwater isn't considered potable in reality, for a number of reasons . . . http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/rainwater-collection.html

[BayCon]

I was pretty bummed out when a buddy warned me about our rainbarrel water being tainted. It's kind of a pain in the ass *for now* but only because I always start out stockpiling clean water so we have a pretty good reserve.  (Part of it down in Muldraugh..bah.)

 

I understand the rationale, and it makes sense but I hope that there's some rebalancing. As stated, rainwater should be OK for a decent amount of time but I think it should be 100% pure when it falls. Now the age/upkeep of the rain collectors themselves seems like it could be a major variable. What about the ability to build a rain collector w/ a lid to make it last a bit longer, i.e keep leaves and bugs out of it?

 

I understand that the game must get more difficult as it's further developed and becomes more realistic, but I could see this making it a hair less fun.  I really do a "hair"-I have dealt with teleporting crops, invisible fire, and zeds spawning on my balcony and still had an F'in blast. I do think that this is already one of the best games ever made. Srsly.

 

I agree. For me, it's not the fact that it's in there and makes it harder, it's that it's 100% happening all the time in rain barrels, which does take away a little bit of the fun for me. If I am running low on my bottle of water and I wanna go out for a loot, I can't just walk out the front door like I used to, grab water and leave, I gotta get my pot, put it on the campfire, make sure I have some fuel or something nearby, light it with the few lighters I have left, wait for it to boil, pour it in a cup, and go. It's just kind of annoying how there's no way to avoid it. Like with a barrel with a lid, as some of you said. I just think there should just be some way, no matter how difficult it is, to avoid it, either by a chance of taint, rather than 100% or by crafting some sort of filter, or lidded barrel as some of you suggested. Anything is better than being forced to do it every. single. time. 

 

I wanna be bummed when my water gets tainted and excited when it comes out fresh, not bummed every time, because the same feeling over and over gets boring.

[BayCon]

Rainwater isn't considered potable in reality, for a number of reasons . . . http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/rainwater-collection.html

 

Oh here goes Enigma being all realistic again...     gg man, gg... 

 

Although for the sake of it still being a game, and not real life, and for the sake of it being fun, I think it should be a little less of a burden. It should have a PZ type balance. Enough realism and saltiness to make the game difficult, but not so annoying that I can be just as bored and frustrated as I would be doing it irl.

[Invader Jim]

For me, I think it would be better if instead there was only a chance of water from various sources being tainted. From sinks, I think it should be 0%, moving up to around 30 to about 60 or 70% as it sits when the water goes off. Toilets should be about 70 - 100% (maybe let's just stick to 100), considering, well, it's a toilet.

 

Water from the toilet tank is going to be OK.  Water from the toilet bowl is more likely to be tainted. If it were me, I would freely drink from toilet tanks if I ever found myself in a survival situation.

[Josko]

May I suggest grabbing all the pots you can find and then fill them up either from the sinks that still works or those water containers you have in offices.

That's what I do with my character right now and also grab every water bottle you find, you can have like 10 water bottles in your inventory so even with high thirst it will take some time to consume all of it and then just run to a water container and fill them up! Same with pots.


What would be great is if they added a new bigger water bottle that can contain like almost a small rain barrel so you can stockpile it for later use!

[Mikhail Reign]

 

For me, I think it would be better if instead there was only a chance of water from various sources being tainted. From sinks, I think it should be 0%, moving up to around 30 to about 60 or 70% as it sits when the water goes off. Toilets should be about 70 - 100% (maybe let's just stick to 100), considering, well, it's a toilet.

 

Water from the toilet tank is going to be OK.  Water from the toilet bowl is more likely to be tainted. If it were me, I would freely drink from toilet tanks if I ever found myself in a survival situation.

 

 

This. I was going to say it, but someone else beat me to it. If you are getting water from a toilet, its coming from the tank which, other then being apart of a toilet, is just a water storage container - hell its ever better then most because its a covered, somewhat sealed container.

[teapot156]

Its easy to boil your water in the game. Just collect around 5 cooking pots and youre all set

[Evilwuun]

The problem with the rain collectors isn't so much that the collectors are dirty and taint the water.

For starters, rain water carries all sorts of microorganisms that can cause mild to serious digestive problems. It's fine to drink in small amounts (open your mouth to the sky and enjoy!) but your wouldn't want to survive by drinking solely rainwater.

The second problem is that it sits. Unless you store water in an air tight container rather hastily, it becomes a breeding ground for all sorts of nasty little unseeables.

I would suggest that rain water be drinkable, unboiled, for about 24 hours after its collected, then becomes tainted. While, in real life, you would want to boil it immediately anyways, this would lighten the amount of water micromanagement and work to appease players not so heavy into total realism (which, I believe, are the majority).

Are there water purification tablets anywhere in the loot tables? If there aren't, there should be.

As a side note, it's already fairly realistic. Sure, you can set a glass outside during a rainstorm and drink what collects in real life. Go for it. You might be perfectly ok, you might get horribly ill...which is th system in place in the game.

[GoodEyeKlosed]

The obvious solution is to use bleach to sanitzie the water. Make it so...

[deprav]

I think it's fine as it is now, and not only for the "realistic" aspect but also for gameplay balance. Clean water needs to be a serious concern, as much as food and sleep, if not more.
If rain water were to be safe to drink during the first 24h, players would just collect all the water they have in their rain barrels as soon as it stopped raining, making the whole purpose of the feature useless. Rain collectors were completely overpowered before, and imo they might still be.

If it was that easy to solely rely on rain to survive, civilizations wouldn't have grown near natural streams and rivers ^^

 

The obvious solution is to use bleach to sanitzie the water. Make it so...

I'm not sure as I didn't try myself yet, but I'm pretty sure you can already use bleach to treat water in the game.
 

 

 

 

For me, I think it would be better if instead there was only a chance of water from various sources being tainted. From sinks, I think it should be 0%, moving up to around 30 to about 60 or 70% as it sits when the water goes off. Toilets should be about 70 - 100% (maybe let's just stick to 100), considering, well, it's a toilet.

 

Water from the toilet tank is going to be OK.  Water from the toilet bowl is more likely to be tainted. If it were me, I would freely drink from toilet tanks if I ever found myself in a survival situation.

 

 

This. I was going to say it, but someone else beat me to it. If you are getting water from a toilet, its coming from the tank which, other then being apart of a toilet, is just a water storage container - hell its ever better then most because its a covered, somewhat sealed container.

 

Toilet tanks wouldn't be my first pick tbh, if the toilets haven't been freshly flushed and the water stood there for a few hours, with all the nasty sidements inside those tanks, I'm pretty sure it would taste funny ;o It's a closed container, but that's a container people probably never bother to clean, I sure wouldn't.

Edit :

Forgot, you can also drink a certain amount of tainted water before you get sick I think, you don't have to bother boiling or treating it if you're on the verge of death on your way back home.

[Morgan2020]

Perhaps the answer is for water management to have a 'realism' slider for sandbox mode at least, going between hardcore (where even boiled water goes stale and tainted if not stored in sealed containers), through the current setting all the way to the suggestions of a deterioration period on the water in your rain barrels (though that could still bite you if you didn't empty the barrel completely).

 

I don't mind the current system personally, I generally have 3-4 pots which I fill with tainted water whenever they're emptied, then I boil any tainted ones whenever I need to cook and if it doesn't rain for a while I tend to be okay as I generally hoard water bottles. Plus I only boil water for drinking/cooking, farming water goes on tainted.

 

Edit: Just had a thought with regards an auto-filtration system. If you can set up a water collector that feeds through a physical filter (no real need for charcoal, fine mesh fabric will do) into a still of some sort, it's a slow burn pure water source that for optimal efficiency you'd never want to let go out.

 

You don't get much cleaner than distilled water, though I wouldn't particularly want the job of cleaning the filter or the bottom of the distillation tank

[BayCon]

I think it's fine as it is now, and not only for the "realistic" aspect but also for gameplay balance. Clean water needs to be a serious concern, as much as food and sleep, if not more.

If rain water were to be safe to drink during the first 24h, players would just collect all the water they have in their rain barrels as soon as it stopped raining, making the whole purpose of the feature useless. Rain collectors were completely overpowered before, and imo they might still be.

If it was that easy to solely rely on rain to survive, civilizations wouldn't have grown near natural streams and rivers ^^

 

The obvious solution is to use bleach to sanitzie the water. Make it so...

I'm not sure as I didn't try myself yet, but I'm pretty sure you can already use bleach to treat water in the game.

 

 

 

 

For me, I think it would be better if instead there was only a chance of water from various sources being tainted. From sinks, I think it should be 0%, moving up to around 30 to about 60 or 70% as it sits when the water goes off. Toilets should be about 70 - 100% (maybe let's just stick to 100), considering, well, it's a toilet.

 

Water from the toilet tank is going to be OK.  Water from the toilet bowl is more likely to be tainted. If it were me, I would freely drink from toilet tanks if I ever found myself in a survival situation.

 

 

This. I was going to say it, but someone else beat me to it. If you are getting water from a toilet, its coming from the tank which, other then being apart of a toilet, is just a water storage container - hell its ever better then most because its a covered, somewhat sealed container.

 

Toilet tanks wouldn't be my first pick tbh, if the toilets haven't been freshly flushed and the water stood there for a few hours, with all the nasty sidements inside those tanks, I'm pretty sure it would taste funny ;o It's a closed container, but that's a container people probably never bother to clean, I sure wouldn't.

Edit :

Forgot, you can also drink a certain amount of tainted water before you get sick I think, you don't have to bother boiling or treating it if you're on the verge of death on your way back home.

 

That is true, basically after you had rain barrels (before this build, at least), you were completely set on pretty much unlimited safe water. I see your point. It was deceptively easy to get fresh water with just my two rain barrels.

 

Its easy to boil your water in the game. Just collect around 5 cooking pots and youre all set

 

True, except I have this problem in Project Zomboid. I tend to freak out when searching indoors (lol don't h8). I always freak out when I open a door and I freak out when I'm in any building except for my completely barricaded and walled-in West-Point church because I'm always worried something could ambush me in small spaces. I was bit by a door-banger once with an old character. I call those the zombies that spawn in rooms behind where the door would open, hitting you without you being able to hit them. I tend to take sandbox games pretty seriously when I've invested a lot into a save, so I pretty much never search buildings anymore since the electricity went out. 

 

May I suggest grabbing all the pots you can find and then fill them up either from the sinks that still works or those water containers you have in offices.

That's what I do with my character right now and also grab every water bottle you find, you can have like 10 water bottles in your inventory so even with high thirst it will take some time to consume all of it and then just run to a water container and fill them up! Same with pots.

What would be great is if they added a new bigger water bottle that can contain like almost a small rain barrel so you can stockpile it for later use!

 

Good idea. I should have done this early-game though. Everything was all running waters and burning electricity, and there weren't a thousand broken windows in a silent and empty West Point back then. I started my save with my girlfriend and one day I went out to shoot some of the zoms cuz we had too much ammo, and it ended up attracting about 300 zombies to me (which is what I expected/wanted) so I led them up towards Giga Mart and Spiffo's and shot them up and down that whole street, so everything near me is a mess of broken glass/doors, blood, and dead corpses (I call that Death Street) and it's even more disturbing with the cracks and vines and such all over the buildings. Too scared lol. It would have been a great idea when everything was still fresh looking and I wasn't worried that a horde of zombies was hiding in the buildings behind the broken inside doors.

[BayCon]

Perhaps the answer is for water management to have a 'realism' slider for sandbox mode at least, going between hardcore (where even boiled water goes stale and tainted if not stored in sealed containers), through the current setting all the way to the suggestions of a deterioration period on the water in your rain barrels (though that could still bite you if you didn't empty the barrel completely).

 

I don't mind the current system personally, I generally have 3-4 pots which I fill with tainted water whenever they're emptied, then I boil any tainted ones whenever I need to cook and if it doesn't rain for a while I tend to be okay as I generally hoard water bottles. Plus I only boil water for drinking/cooking, farming water goes on tainted.

 

Edit: Just had a thought with regards an auto-filtration system. If you can set up a water collector that feeds through a physical filter (no real need for charcoal, fine mesh fabric will do) into a still of some sort, it's a slow burn pure water source that for optimal efficiency you'd never want to let go out.

 

You don't get much cleaner than distilled water, though I wouldn't particularly want the job of cleaning the filter or the bottom of the distillation tank

 

"Realism Slider": Great idea! I'm glad the devs haven't removed the ability to water with tainted water yet >.>

[anotherRLF]

Rainwater isn't considered potable in reality, for a number of reasons . . . http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/rainwater-collection.html

"Some States consider rainwater the property of the state and prohibit its collection"

 

Government plz

[Jsnazz]

 

I wanna be bummed when my water gets tainted and excited when it comes out fresh, not bummed every time, because the same feeling over and over gets boring.

 

I feel ya pain.

 

Where I live, everyone have those big purified water jug. It last for over a month without turning bad. I think PZ need to add more water jugs in home and office for people who hate to boil their own water xD

 

I like to live next to a water plant / spring water resivor