Willowbark, tea, and primitive medicine

[AnnaC]

Ok this post is basically about options to recover HHP, in a lower-tech way than Gauze bandages. I am aware of the benefits of leeches.

Gauze is a fairly specialized technology, and humans had other options for bandages and medical recovery before it was invented. I've been looking for ways to recover my HHP, and I got the First Aid skill but then noticed it was worthless early in the game because it requires Gauze to use, and to make Gauze you need quite a bit of infrastructure established. This makes sense though, but it's not very balancing for wilderness / barbarian type characters.

Anyway I was exploring and came into a broadleaf forest and spotted a Willow tree. I thought that'd help as I picked the bark but it was just the generic tree bark item. (Oh willow bark can be a natural analgesic (painkiller)). With birch having it's own unique bark, I suggest Willowbark be a unique item too for medical reasons. How it would be used I'm not sure, but I was thinking of other gameplay mechanics, like tea and leatherworking.

I haven't made tea yet in-game but was reading about it, the things I dislike is they are entirely reliant on pottery to use tea. Gameplay wise this makes sense because it's easier to just have unflammable containers to simulate boiling water, but why can't you serve tea in a kuksa? Well with a Willowbark item, what about making a medicinal tea to recover HHP? You drink it and it gradually recovers a little HHP?

With leather, cured animal skins can be used as bandages as well, so maybe instead of curing with the generic tree bark item, you use a Willowbark item instead and get a hide bandage item instead of leather? And this would work like a crude less-efficient Gauze?

Another idea for primitive medical tools, would be splints. For example you can craft leg splint with: 4 Branch 2 Willowbark 6 String, when equipped heals HHP like bandages, but it caps you to crawl speed. Or Arm Splint: 2 branch 1 Willowbark 3 String, equips on an arm and prevents you from holding tools in that hand. Just some ideas.


Now I don't want to undermine the value of Gauze or do anything to make that item less important as a trade good and medical tool, I just think there should be some more options about health recovery in game, and atleast something low-tech that is more sensible than just leeches (quick question can leeches be combined with gauze? I'd assume so). So these are some ideas which I think would fit in with the theme of this game, and give some options for the wild barbarian people.

[ThirdEmperor]

+1.

[Orpheus]

Even though I do not agree on it healing HHP like gauze, I have to say it's quite an interesting idea: Willow -> Salicylic acid -> Analgesic!
So if it's a painkiller, it's temporary, and as such the effects should also be temporary. How about this: making tea out of willow bark and drinking it will recover some of your SHP temporarily (regardless of your hunger status and as an immediate effect), this in turn will help protect your HHP until you are capable of finding a place to heal/rest.
Or perhaps it could recover some HHP temporarily and act as a buffer: say you have 70 HHP when you drink it and it boosts your HHP to 85. You find a boar and it hits you, you lose 4 HHP so now you have 81 HHP. After the effects of the tea are over, your HHP returns to its real value: 70 HHP. So, even though you were attacked before, your real HHP didn't suffer because the boosted HHP acted as a buffer.

[bitza]

anyone complaining that leeches suck isn't using them properly; save the leeches in a cupboard when they get bloated, once they unbloat use them again. the quality will increase each time you use them. my cupboard of q60+ leeches blows gauze out of the water

[Dondy]

Poppy buds could be collected like the hemp buds and used to make laudanum/opium as a healing item. I would propose though that it be combined with sleep to heal since laudanum doesn't actually heal anything, it just gets you through a period of hurting by taking the pain away.

[Coriander]

Removing pain (or pain management as it is termed) speeds up the healing process.

[Guacamole]

anyone complaining that leeches suck isn't using them properly; save the leeches in a cupboard when they get bloated, once they unbloat use them again. the quality will increase each time you use them. my cupboard of q60+ leeches blows gauze out of the water

The only problem with leeches is you need SHP to actually heal. So if you need health urgently and only have 1SHP and 4HHP (my real stats atm) you can't heal with a leech, it would knock you out and slowly steal HHP. The only form of emergency healing in this case would be a gauze. Willow bark would be a great substitution for a gauze if one could not obtain one.

[AnnaC]

anyone complaining that leeches suck isn't using them properly; save the leeches in a cupboard when they get bloated, once they unbloat use them again. the quality will increase each time you use them. my cupboard of q60+ leeches blows gauze out of the water

Nobody is complaining about using leeches, I'm just offering ideas for other options that can help immersion and and variety to the gameplay.

Even though I do not agree on it healing HHP like gauze, I have to say it's quite an interesting idea: Willow -> Salicylic acid -> Analgesic!
So if it's a painkiller, it's temporary, and as such the effects should also be temporary. How about this: making tea out of willow bark and drinking it will recover some of your SHP temporarily (regardless of your hunger status and as an immediate effect), this in turn will help protect your HHP until you are capable of finding a place to heal/rest.
Or perhaps it could recover some HHP temporarily and act as a buffer: say you have 70 HHP when you drink it and it boosts your HHP to 85. You find a boar and it hits you, you lose 4 HHP so now you have 81 HHP. After the effects of the tea are over, your HHP returns to its real value: 70 HHP. So, even though you were attacked before, your real HHP didn't suffer because the boosted HHP acted as a buffer.

I can see that for the tea, sure. Also it could just be a low-capacity heal-over-time effect, where you gain maybe 1 HHP a minute for 10 minutes. Or something that coincides with how medicine and tea work in game currently.

Poppy buds could be collected like the hemp buds and used to make laudanum/opium as a healing item. I would propose though that it be combined with sleep to heal since laudanum doesn't actually heal anything, it just gets you through a period of hurting by taking the pain away.

Yeah that's a possibility as well. About HHP recovery, does sleeping do this? If not then it should; walking around with a bandage doesn't do anymore help to you than just sleeping. If you don't have red hunger you should heal gradually (stress gradually) while sleeping.

Willow bark would be a great substitution for a gauze if one could not obtain one.

This.

I'm just thinking about a low technology substitute, not a replacement. Any effects would be minimal to the healing effects of Gauze, but it'd be nice to have other options for reason of immersion, different play styles, and to help newbies out a little bit.

[Azkanan]

I'm in love with the idea of a splint and the crawl setback.

I want to see people limping around after a bear attack! When I went to a village and found everybody bandaged up, it was an amazing little thing that I could tell these people were suffering, just by looking at them - how many 2D games have that ability?

Also, dolike the temporary HHP boost with medicinal tea. Don't the chinese do that?

[DatOneGuy]

anyone complaining that leeches suck isn't using them properly; save the leeches in a cupboard when they get bloated, once they unbloat use them again. the quality will increase each time you use them. my cupboard of q60+ leeches blows gauze out of the water

The only problem with leeches is you need SHP to actually heal. So if you need health urgently and only have 1SHP and 4HHP (my real stats atm) you can't heal with a leech, it would knock you out and slowly steal HHP. The only form of emergency healing in this case would be a gauze. Willow bark would be a great substitution for a gauze if one could not obtain one.

I'm sorry but that's not a problem in the slightest. Not everything in a game should be free, there should indeed be negative sides to things, and there isn't much if anything wrong with how leeches work.