How am I supposed to survive a bite?

[Sayie]

My only 3 attempts to play the game I was killed by getting hurt and then having to tend to the would over multiple days and eventually just dying from it within a few days. I think my main problem is that sleep usually just straight up kills me or I end up getting sick and that just slowly kills me.

[Nesano]

There's a sandbox setting called Infection Mortality you can set to Never and you'll never die of the zombie infection.

[Stabby]

Unless you changed the settings for it, you're guaranteed to die from the zombie disease from a bite. A laceration has a moderate chance to give you the fatal disease and a scratch has a lower chance. You'll survive those if you're lucky.

[Sayie]

Does it say if I have the zombie disease or is it just a case of 1 mistake and I most likely die?

[Nesano]

If you start feeling sick it could either be the zombie infection or a "human infection" which is a nasty infection you get from a human bite. Not the zombie infection, but still very lethal.

I've heard it's a 98% chance to get infected from a bite, but it's more or less guaranteed death if you're bitten unless you turn off Infection Mortality.

[Twisticle]

Welcome to the real world. You are not the hero. Everyone dies if they made one stupid mistake. That's what make Zomboid so challenging.

[Nesano]

The real world with zombies.

[JohnRando]

Scratch is like 25% infection ? Not the kind of gamble you want to take anyways.
Bite is 100%, any less was a bug and became urban legend.

[ZeroReady]

You've got to find alcohol and clean the wound every time you change the bandage. It's the only chance you have. But a bite is always pretty tough to survive.

[Nesano]

You can get zombie infection after the injury if you don't clean it? That doesn't make any sense unless zombies are jizzing on the wound.

[Riot]

scratch is 7% infection in build 41. laceration is 25%, and bite is 100%. Zombie infection = dead. always.

[Sayie]

Damn that sucks, but thanks for sharing. I definitely wasn't thinking the game would be as unforgiving but hopefully I can adjust. The thing that gets me most is when I'm sitting in a house that I cleared out and a zombie literally comes out of nowhere and bites me or something.

[Arcanum Elite]

Originally posted by Sayie:

Damn that sucks, but thanks for sharing. I definitely wasn't thinking the game would be as unforgiving but hopefully I can adjust. The thing that gets me most is when I'm sitting in a house that I cleared out and a zombie literally comes out of nowhere and bites me or something.

if you want to be safe take keen hearing trait when making a character... this will allow you to see a radius all around you so no zombie would ever be able to sneak up on you ever again... either that or get used to constantly turning around to watch your back.

[Mr. Unethical.]

A thing to do I think would be to choose the "instant zombification if infected" option, too. So you're not left wondering if that scratch will kill you in a few days.

[Acd009]

Just turn on infection mortality to instant, that way you dont have to wait to know if your infected. If you get the zombie infection their is nothing u can do to stop it yet.

[Zhikura Kishard]

As mentioned, you could also set it to never, so that if this type of concept bothers you, you can still play the game without consistently dying by getting attacked.

If you're curious, bites take about three days to heal (normally), but of course will not kill you outright if you turn the infection off.