Poison & Status Effects

This page covers harmful states that affect your character and how to clear each one. Healing methods are detailed in Healing; combat-applied effects are in Combat (advanced).

Poison

Poison deals damage over time: once poisoned, you take small ticks of damage repeatedly until it is cured or wears off. Higher poison levels tick harder and resist curing.

Poison levels

Poison comes in escalating levels (weakest to strongest):

Lesser (internal level 0)
Regular (1)
Greater (2)
Deadly (3)
Lethal (4 — strongest; mostly creature/special venom)

All five are registered in the server (Server/Poison.cs / Scripts/Misc/Poison.cs), so Lethal does exist on this shard. The higher the level, the more damage per tick (poison runs on a repeating PoisonTimer that ticks damage scaled to the victim’s hit points until cured or expired) and the harder it is to cure — both the bandage cure chance and the Cure-spell chance get a penalty multiplied by the poison level.

How you get poisoned

Monsters — many creatures poison on hit or with a venom attack (see the Bestiary for which ones and at what level).
Poisoned weapons — a player who has applied venom to a blade via Poisoning can poison you when they hit.
Traps — poison-trapped chests/containers (see Remove Trap and Lockpicking).
Food/drink — eating something poisoned can poison you (food & drink).

How to cure poison

To remove poison, use any of:

Bandage — both Healing ≥ 60 and Anatomy ≥ 60 required (verified, Bandage.cs); cure chance = (Healing − 30)/50 − (PoisonLevel × 0.1) − (Slips × 0.02). Double-click bandage → target the poisoned person.
Cure spell — 2nd-circle Magery (Cure.cs); cure chance scales with Magery and is penalized by poison level: roughly (10000 + Magery×75 − (level+1)×penalty) / 100 vs a d100 roll, so higher Magery cures reliably and high poison levels can still fail.
Arch Cure — 4th-circle Magery (ArchCure.cs); cures every valid target within 2 tiles, using the same per-target chance — the area cure.
Cure potion — instant; stronger potions cure higher levels (effectiveness unverified). See potions.
Chivalry Cleanse by Fire / Mysticism Cleansing Winds — alternate cures depending on your skills (availability/specifics unverified).

Important: the lesser Heal/Greater Heal spells will not heal a poisoned target — you must cure first, then heal HP. With bandages you can keep applying them; a bandage on a poisoned patient tries the cure before healing. Full detail in Healing.

Paralysis

Paralyzed characters cannot move or act for the duration.

Sources: the Paralyze spell (Magery 5th circle), a Paralyze Field, the paralyzing blow weapon special, and some creatures’ attacks.

To break paralysis:

Take damage — any blow that deals damage clears paralysis immediately (Mobile.Damage sets Paralyzed = false whenever the amount is greater than 0).
A trapped pouch — you can still double-click a container while paralyzed, so opening a container trapped with an explosion trap (Tinkering) sets the trap off; the explosion’s self-damage then breaks the paralysis (it works because the trap damages you, per the rule above). This is the standard PvP counter.
Wait it out — the effect expires after its duration.

Resisting Spells shortens magic paralysis: in AOS the duration is (caster's damage skill − your Resisting Spells)/10 seconds, so higher Resist directly cuts the time you are held (Paralyze.cs).

Bleeding and Mortal Strike

These are weapon special-move effects (see Combat (advanced)) — exact damage/duration numbers unverified, but the bandage interactions below are confirmed in Bandage.cs:

Bleed (Bleed Attack) — inflicts a wound that deals damage over several seconds. A bandage binds the wound and stops the bleeding (“You bind the wound and stop the bleeding”) — Bandage.cs ends the bleed in the same flow it uses for poison/heal.
Mortal Strike / Mortal Wound — for its duration the victim cannot be healed by normal means. A bandage on a mortally wounded patient just reports the wound and heals nothing (Bandage.cs checks MortalStrike.IsWounded before applying any heal); wait it out or use a specific counter.

Hunger

Characters get hungry over time. If you ignore food:

Hunger reduces regeneration and can impair stats/stamina recovery (penalty specifics unverified).
To eat: double-click food in your pack — fruit, bread, cooked meat (Cooking) — until you are full (“You are simply too full to eat any more.”).

Keep some food on hand, especially on long trips or grinds, so hunger doesn’t quietly slow your recovery.

Curses and stat debuffs

Various spells/effects lower your stats or resistances temporarily:

Curse (Magery 4th circle) — lowers Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence together (Curse.cs applies a stat curse to all three). On this shard it does not lower your elemental resistances — despite the OSI-era reputation, the server code only debuffs the three stats.
Clumsy / Weaken / Feeblemind (1st circle) — each lowers a single stat.
Mass Curse — area version.
Creature auras and debuff attacks can apply similar reductions.

To remove a curse/stat debuff:

Cast Remove Curse (Chivalry) where available, or
Wait for the effect to expire (most stat debuffs are timed), or
Counter with stat-buff spells (Bless, Strength, Agility, Cunning) to offset the reduction.

(Exact durations and stacking rules are unverified — see Magery and the magic index.)

Quick reference — what removes what

Poison → bandage (Healing/Anatomy ≥ 60), Cure/Arch Cure spell, Cure potion.
Paralysis → take damage, or trapped pouch, or wait.
Bleed → bandage, or wait.
Mortal Strike → wait it out (blocks healing); specific counters only.
Hunger → eat food.
Curse / stat debuff → Remove Curse, counter-buff, or wait.