Character condition



Character condition refers to the condition of a character in the Fallout series.

The most common character conditions are poisons from chems or from the environment, and damage from combat. Fallout 4 is currently the only installment to include illnesses.

Poisoned

 * Addicted
 * Drunk
 * Overdose
 * Poisoned
 * Radiated
 * Withdrawal

Other

 * Encumbered
 * Well Rested

Illness
In Fallout 4, the Sole Survivor can become ill in Survival mode.

All illness can be cured with antibiotics, resting for several days, or by paying for the Cure Health service from any doctor. The risk of contracting specific illnesses can be reduced by taking the appropriate herbal remedy prior to the disease check.

Untreated Illness generally persists for 2–7 days (preferably while remaining well fed, hydrated and rested, eating low-risk food and drink, otherwise further diseases are likely). See disease durations for more information.

Illness chance, in general, is increased by all forms of Fatigue but does not directly impact Action Points. Regardless of risk exposures, the bed slept in and the duration of sleep, there is always a slight chance of contracting illness when going to sleep (but announced upon waking); sleeping for short periods of time (to save the game, for example) may increase this chance overall, due to an increased number of (shorter) sleep sessions, although all sleep sessions after the first will be at the minimum probability, assuming no further risk disease exposures between sleep.

Checks
An immediate check for contracting a disease is made 30 real-time seconds after high-risk exposure. A check is also made when going to sleep. Apart from these two situations, risk exposure simply increases the probability (disease risk pool) of getting a disease at the next check. Checks are not "rolled for" unless the chance is 25%+.

All checks resulting in a new disease, clear the risk pool down to its minimum value (which depends on current Fatigue level). All checks that don't produce a new disease cause a small drain down of the risk pool. All checks upon sleeping also clear the risk pool down to the minimum, after the check.

Risk factors
In addition to poor sleep quality, causes of disease risk include: using chems, eating anything (but especially bad or uncooked meat), cannibalism, drinking or swimming in irradiated water, being in rain, drinking Nuka-Cola, and taking damage from feral ghouls, bugs or other infected creatures. Each event puts the player character at an increased risk of contracting an illness. High-risk events trigger a near-immediate disease check. Even if a single event doesn't trigger illness to start, each event will increase the probability of contracting an illness with each event, up until the character sleeps (when the final check is made and the disease risk pool is cleared) or gets a new disease (which also clears down the risk pool).

List of diseases

 * Fatigue - Require more frequent sleep to avoid debuffs.
 * Infection - Periodic damage that will not kill the character. It inflicts 20 damage every 90 seconds (real-time). Similar to Severely Dehydrated and Starving.
 * Insomnia - Sleep provides half as much reduction in tiredness.
 * Lethargy - 50% slower AP regeneration.
 * Parasites - Must eat twice as much food to avoid hunger or to eliminate any given hunger level.
 * Weakness - Take +20% more damage.

Herbal remedies
Various herbal remedies become available for crafting, purchase and as a loot in Survival mode:
 * Herbal stimulant
 * Herbal antimicrobial
 * Herbal anodyne

Each type of remedy will act (one time only per dose) to reduce the risks of any of the two specific diseases that it resists against, but only if the herbal remedy is taken before the disease check. This means taking the herbal remedy prior to sleeping, or within 30 seconds (real-time) of a high-risk event.