Hey. To avoid this, make sure that - You have sufficient rat catcher coverage, you have people collecting waste in to compost, your foragers gather medicinal roots and herbs that are then made in to medicine, you have a doctor/ tier two hospital etc. Hope this helps.
I think the speed of outbreak largely depends on the difficulty setting you’re on. Vanquisher has seen my fair share of small to large outbreaks, as opposed to one or two people getting sick with a max of five on trailblazer.
I got hit pretty hard with the bubonic plague the other day. It went as high as 350-ish before it started to level off and recover. I think I lost about 30 to 40 pop from it at the end. It actually started right during a raid too. Luckily I had 4 Hospitals to handle it and so people were getting cured at a pretty decent rate.
I have all the above, and still get so many messages of gloom and doom of disease and injury. Sometimes with all the broken bones and other injuries (wounded in the foot, for example) it’s like the whole village is full of klutzes!
Instead of rat catchers, we should have cats! Cats don’t need to go restock their homes, they won’t need food (they eat their catches; handy, that). And they don’t get drunk and into fights . . . well, they could, if there was catnip growing . . . We need cats!
"DarkenedSpear: Another question, are things like pets or animal companions a thing that could happen, either in the game’s current state or in the future?
Zantai: I think it would be pretty cool to have dogs and cats running around town. It’s not currently a feature. And that might be something to consider in the future though. Maybe, we’ll see.
Medierra: WHAT?! you totally shot down my cat system
Zantai: I did totally shoot down your cat system, but that was a mistake. I did tell you that. I was wrong. I was wrong to shoot down the cat system."
I’ve had an outbreak of bubonic plague before I knew what ratcatchers did and an outbreak of smallpox for no apparent reason other than the villagers aren’t smart enough to find the soap. Terrified the living daylights out of me but it was over fast and very few people died. I lose more people to old age once I hit tier 3 (before then the leading cause is usually animals or raiders).
I would like to see a handy list of what the various factors are that influence how severe an epidemic is. In my game they are generally very mild, but I wonder whether that’s because of the low difficulty setting (Idyllic Valley) or whether it’s influenced by me leaving two tiles of room between each house.
I have only had 2 or 3 that were “bad” and I am on year 153. the 2 I remember for sure (because they are both in this thread) were both smallpox. Other than these I never see more than 2 or 3 are a time.
Never had those, I always have plenty of shit pickers, rat catchers and plenty of soap (don’t drop it!). It’s like having 21st century knowledge helps!
Also plague spread through wells and rats and rats+wells. I’m glad that wells can’t get infected (yet).
GRRRRRRRRRR
50 people sick in ten seconds and 140 soap sitting in storage. Rat catchers covering every storage and market, and a lot of the houses. Just won a raid, maybe the raiders lobbed dead rats over the walls.
Just another example of slightly unintuitive sickness events. Maybe they are triggered by time.
I feel like they are getting more and more frequent. Even though I have had a low mortality rate (3%), they are a nuisance, especially when you have the holes covered that are supposed to be the causes. They do seem to fall on raid years.
Back to this. My raids are getting more frequent with 0.7.6, more like every 2-3 years. One time I had them back-to-back years, that was rough. THE PAST 4 TIMES I have had an outbreak of bubonic plague following the raid. Maybe the raiders brought their fleas with them. It’s pretty consistent though. Ugh.