Sickness

Version 0.13: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Sickness is a status effect that prevents characters from naturally healing HP until it wears off. Sick characters may also occasionally take temporary stat damage ("Your disease is taking its toll").

The colour of the word "Sick" gives some indication of how long it will take to wear off (red -> pink -> yellow), at which point it will go away on its own. Sickness heals slower if hungry.

Sources of Sickness

• Being hit by a monster with disease, plague or rotting attacks.
• Being near an ancient zyme.
• Casting the Haunt spell.
• Drinking a potion of blood without being a vampire or having the Carnivore mutation may cause sickness.

Dealing With Sickness

• Quaffing a potion of curing cures sickness.
• Regeneration will make sickness pass more quickly.
• The sustain abilities intrinsic will prevent all attribute loss during sickness.
• Kobolds recover from sickness more quickly than other living species.
• Rotting resistance also confers resistance to sickness. All undead species and monsters have rotting resistance, as do nonliving, insubstantial, demonic, and holy creatures. Certain demonspawn may get rotting resistance as part of their demonspawn mutations.

History

Prior to 0.13, sickness was a brand found on some needles. Also, eating contaminated chunks while suffering from nausea would occasionally cause sickness.

Nausea wasn't introduced until 0.10. Prior to that, eating contaminated chunks even while healthy could cause you to become sick.