Disease

[dra6o0n]

Implement a sort of plague that attacks villages, usually in form of infected animals that villagers can bring in.
Well obviously you can tell there is something wrong with the animal if it spots you and precariously follows you.

Imagine a bear going happy-go-lucky with you, following you shyingly, whilst you run away screaming. Then the group comes back and hunts it, curious to why the animal never fought back, and carried the corpse back to the village...

They skinned and butchered, then wondered why the meat was odd looking, then cooked and ate the meat.

The next day, the ones who ate the meat gets a disease called "The Plague" which lowers the speed of which your character moves, and greatly lowers your stats and skill levels, making you unable to play as your character properly. The sick character then has to be in bed, but with no cure, the other villagers slowly gets the sickness, and the village dies off.

The plague then lingers on in organic substances, like any water barrels or food the sickly touched.

Thieves then goes in and robs the place, having no idea they just picked up the plague, and boat or wilderness warp to other areas to rob more places... Thus spreading the grim disease.

How's that?

Make intelligence and perception needed for a hearthling to be a possible doctor or a witch doctor in some cases, for a village.
Don't know if a skill set will be needed so you can craft new stuff that goes along with this.

Obvious griefers is extremely possible by the way, so with this idea, what they'll just simply do is toss items into a village or give people infected items.

[evilrich]

not so sure that this would be newb friendly ( cures on new chars would probably be abused ) but, if diseases were implemented, maybe have them start off if your wandering through swamps. especially if you are nto full HHP ( open wounds infect easy) just a quick thought..

[dra6o0n]

Well diseases needs to be severely limited in this game otherwise it'll obliterate all newbies within a set radius of a contaminated zone.

Limit them to three rules:
1) They must only linger in items, and cannot linger on corpses and hearthlings.
2) They apply a curse or debuff effect if the hearthling consume or used said item, and waited a period of time without killing the contamination somehow (cooking meat instead of eating raw for example, and avoid eating rats, avoiding walking into the swamp for prolonged period of time, using the same leeches too often).
3) They spread only from items to items, limited to containers.

The contaminated item will then have a little skull on the bottom left corner of the sprite, and only linger in consumables and items that can contain liquid.
The contamination can have different levels, and increases the more time has passes.
Worse comes to worst, you'd have to drop and decay the items, or throw em into a oven/kiln and turn them to ash.

All contamination of any sorts has a time limit until they fade away... And this means contaminated items can decay in containers.

Since this is based on a older civilization, remember, refrigeration doesn't exist yet, so storing a ton of foods in a container is bad if it's not in a cellar.
Give each food a timer, based on the food type, before it goes "BAD". This includes water in a usable container, and excludes barrels, unless of course you end up contaminating it by adding the bad water into the barrel.

[Saranic]

Since when was there a weather system?