Draft:Disease

Omega 0.90.4

Disease suppresses the player's ordinary periodic HP recovery until it expires or is cured. It does not itself inflict the repeating HP damage caused by poison, and it does not prevent every healing effect. Infection immunity blocks ordinary disease applications but does not cure a disease already present.

Effects

Disease is an accumulating count. At each ten-minute-status check, one count is removed. The subsequent ordinary recovery of up to player level + 1 HP happens only when disease is gone. A count that reaches zero at that check no longer blocks its following recovery.

On local maps, these checks normally occur every ten game minutes; countryside hourly advances run one such check per hour. City and village movement can advance extra game minutes, and services that jump the clock need not simulate all intermediate checks. A disease count is therefore neither one player action nor invariably ten minutes of every kind of travel. Even a disease count above 1000 continues to decrease; it is not automatically permanent.

Recovery method	While diseased
Ordinary periodic HP recovery	Blocked while the disease count remains positive
Healing effect	Can still restore HP; does not itself remove disease
Regeneration	Can still exchange one mana for one HP at its minute-status check
Curing	Clears disease, but does not itself restore lost HP
Services that explicitly clear disease or set HP	Follow their own rules; a clock jump alone proves neither recovery nor a cure

Disease is especially dangerous alongside poison or while waiting for ordinary recovery between fights. A healing potion can prevent immediate death while leaving that longer-term limitation intact.

Sources

Ordinary disease of positive strength A adds 1 through 2A counts unless infection immunity prevents it. Repeated applications add to the current count.

Source	Result and conditions
Disease melee: sewer rat, Denebian slime devil, rodent of unusual size	After a landed attack, random 0–9 must be below monster level; then applies disease of that level
Shared monster disease spell	Adds 1–24 counts, regardless of caster level, after the casting and resistance checks
Cursed potion of curing	Adds 1–24 counts; a deeper curse does not increase this range
Circle blackballing at a blessing request	Adds 100 counts unless infection immunity prevents it, along with the encounter's other penalties
Green result from a village stone	Sets disease to 1100, HP to 1 and reduces Dexterity by 5; does not check infection immunity

The stone result is a direct assignment, so it is an exception to both the ordinary immunity check and ordinary additive disease. Its accompanying HP and Dexterity losses are not the usual effect of disease itself. The village and guild pages explain where these interactions occur.

Eating Denebian slime produces a threat about an incurable wasting death, but that corpse branch does not actually add disease or inflict the threatened death. Its creature's disease melee is real; the meal's message is not a second disease mechanism.

Prevention and recovery

Victrix grants infection immunity while used. Shadow form also grants it as one of its protections, with removal tied to that form's duration or cancellation. Neither source clears an existing disease. A positively blessed immunotab both grants infection immunity and performs curing; an unblessed or cursed immunotab does neither.

Remedy	Disease result	Other consequence
Noncursed potion of curing or cure spell	Clears all disease counts	Also clears blindness and reduces poison; no direct HP recovery
Healers disease service	Clears disease for 250 Au	Does not treat poison or restore HP
Tullimore Dew	Clears disease and poison for 10 Au when available	No direct HP recovery
Returning eligible Order member	Clears disease and poison	Also restores HP and supplies a meal
Lembas or successful religious cleansing	Clears disease and poison	Any HP recovery depends on the particular source
Health wish	Clears disease and poison	Restores HP to at least the normal maximum

The tavern's bed and breakfast and an overnight Eclipse visit also explicitly clear disease and poison. The tavern bed does not itself restore HP, whereas the Eclipse visit does. Other cleansing routes include beneficial Azoth, successful holy-symbol use, religious benefices and specific pool, altar or chaos-storm rewards; use their individual conditions rather than treating any temple or long rest as a guaranteed cure.

A week at the Arms directly clears status counts only when they are below 1000. A fresh 1100-count stone disease therefore survives that reset, despite the week's passage and HP restoration. A noncursed curing potion clears it outright. A village void stone clears all statuses but also drains mana and strips carried items of their special powers and enchantments, making it a costly substitute for ordinary treatment.

Strategy

If you need HP immediately, distinguish healing from curing. Curing reopens ordinary recovery, but it does not refill your HP on drinking. Healing can keep you alive without solving the disease. When poison is also present, the Dew or a sufficiently strong general cure addresses both problems; a weak cure can end disease while leaving some poison.

Carry a known remedy before experimenting with village stones. The green result bypasses ordinary infection protection and leaves only one HP. Travelling to a healer afterward can be much riskier than treating the condition immediately, and a disease cure does not repair the stone's separate Dexterity loss.