Healing questions

I've noticed some truly funky behavior with wounds and healing (haha) over the last few days and am unsure if everything is working as intended!

The first being my overall HP has done some funny wobblies I can't qqqquite explain. I was at 0% HP and dropped to -24% - that appears to have been the 'clinging to life' condition going away, as best I can tell. But then after healing back up to -4% last night, I logged on today to find myself at -13%. No infection, bleeding, etc. that I could see. Can't say if my wounds had gotten worse somehow, as unfortunately I'm unsure what their numbers were before. I've healed back up to -9% so I'm not too worried, but I'm curious if there's a known reason that might happen, vs. just some bug with my odd situation. 

The second's... a bit more complicated. 

I started looking into wounds more because some of the numbers seemed odd around broken bones and max HP, and in playing around with the arena I think I figured them out. So if you take a big bashing-type wound you have a chance for it to break a bone, and if it does, boy howdy you are in trouble. A 1000-damage attack would be 50% of your HP if it doesn't break a bone, but if it does you drop to -66% instantly. The wound turns into a 2000-damage broken bone and a 1000-damage bruise, plus an extra 320 or so damage that sneaks in there in terms of your overall HP% that I can't quite explain.

I'm not sure if this duplication of the wound damage into the broken limb is an intentional system or a bug. I could see an argument for intentional because a broken bone shouldn't heal fast, but it creates a funny issue where a single broken limb will make you bedridden for a super long time due to maxing out your trauma. Maybe the 'level broken' damage of a broken bone shouldn't count toward trauma/overall HP, only for the time for the wound itself to heal, since the attack's original damage is already counted in the bruise? Or maybe the bruise should disappear when it converts to a broken bone so you only have to heal the one wound? And I'm VERY not sure about the extra apparent HP loss tacked on, where or why that happens. It was consistently about 320 damage around a 1000-damage bruise, 300 for a 1500-damage, and 260 for a 2000-damage.

Another thing that came up was some suggestion that you might heal faster if you have MORE wounds, curiously, but I wasn't able to really practically test that without sitting in the arena for a suuuuper long time.

A lot of that is because HP% isn't a flat number like in most games, it's kind of like a readout of how you're feeling based on a huge variety of factors. Like, maybe you're thirsty? Maybe painkillers wore off? Maybe you're having adverse affects from addiction to painkillers? Breaking a bone isn't going to make you immediately die but it sure is going to make it a lot more difficult to fight. In a fight, something like poise or fatigue will even contribute to your "HP" %.

It's tough to expect it to really stay stable, but theoretically it should go up over time with the wobbles unless you're really not taking care of yourself.

While it is definitely prone to wobble, there might be some funkiness in how it's calculated, so definitely keep an eye on it and keep posting weirdnesses here.

Also a large amount of smaller wounds will definitely heal faster than a small amount of deeper wounds. Closer to the end of a deeper wound healing, the rate of healing slows, too. We had a PC early on who really explored the system in depth (he kept breaking bones and sustaining lethal injuries, but was hardcore down to roleplay out the healing process, got addicted to opium, and all sorts of cool stuff). A lot of how the system works was informed by this player's input and interest (kudos Ariziya). For the story, we want the wound to stick around for a realistic healing period but not to be handicap-level crippling for that whole period, so that's why it works how it works. 

Very interesting stuff! That probably explains the extra ~13-16% lost to the broken bones beyond the x3 damage, a general surcharge for being Absolutely Messed Up. It miiiight explain my case as well, but I'm less sure there. I'm eating, drinking, and taking willowbark quite regularly, no warnings on being hungry or thirsty or other general changes in my health readout that I can see. I HAVE managed to pass out a few times per day as I keep accidentally discovering new ways to mess up, so maybe that's had a cumulative effect. No big though, if it doesn't dip again. 

Yeah there's like a "shock" factor from having a bone broken initially that really destroys a PC's general health level. If you're taking a closer look at things to track for potential wonkiness I recommend looking at the COMBAT readout.

Yeah, when I say 'health' I mean 'combat', I'm just used to typing the former command because it makes more sense in my brain!

The trauma meter is definitely the most obscure one to me - I've never figured out if there's a way to reduce it beyond just eating/drinking/sleeping/letting time take its course.

For broken bones: I'm guessing that shock factor is either the source of the initial added 13-16% loss, or it's why it looks like the broken bone injury is "double counted" into overall HP, right? Is it supposed to wear off after a short time?

ETA: My wounds are healing on a nice logical trajectory, with the bigger ones going a lot slower than the smaller ones. Interestingly when I calculate my "objective" HP percent down, it's -11% instead of the -3% it shows as! So likely that extra 8% of grace is from the eating/drinking/sleeping/willowbark, which is neat. I like a lot that the HP readout is more overall health than actual hit points lost, as that's so much more realistic and nuanced a portrait of how a person should 'feel'. 

Re: the 'more wounds heal more' the suggestion I heard was that adding smaller wounds on TOP of your bigger ones would make the bigger ones also heal faster, but with the variability between healing ticks I don't think anybody could be sure of that without some vigorous testing that ... probably isn't worth it. If I set up a proper client which I might do instead of playing on the web client (to help curtail my attention/distraction issues),  I might give it a go in the arena.

Hm, is there any way to reliably stop infections? I keep seeing wounds re-infect repeatedly. I've tried honey and moss so far with unpredictable results, but haven't done bandages, if that helps. Fine if it's just a luck of the draw thing, but I didn't want it to turn out I was just doing something wrong.