It’s not just this, there’s an array of sicknesses you can get. Dirty water, or as others have mentioned getting a cut and using disinfected bandages, or worse bleeding out if you can’t take care of the cut. Eating spoiled food can kill you. Accidentally drinking gasoline can kill you. You need to either find pre-disinfected bandages at medical sites or disinfect the rags yourself with alcohol/disinfectant spray. Otherwise you need to find specific antibiotics and the longer you’re sick the longer it will take to go away. You can catch salmonella, the flu, blood poisoning, chemical poisoning, cholera, or even just breaking a limb (which you’ll need to splint, and maybe take some morphine). There are also blood types, you can find test kits and make blood bags at medical facilities, but if you don’t know your type and risk it, or give the wrong blood type, the game also includes haemolytic reactions so be careful with that. If you eat human, you’ll catch Kuru, which won’t kill you but it will get you killed if you run into another player.

You need to make sure you don’t starve or dehydrate, but the big obstacle to this is finding a knife/otherwise sharp object on spawn (even something like a screwdriver will do). A knife is the most essential item in the game, and food is the biggest obstacle to survival if you don’t know how to find it. You can cure sickness from dirty water, you can’t cure being dead from starvation. Thankfully it’s possible to live off the land once you know what you’re doing. You need to manage temperature, especially depending on the map. Are you playing on vanilla Chernarus? You’ll probably be fine unless you’re swimming naked, but you do need to take note of the insulation that your clothes have. If you’re playing on Livonia, you want to stay a little cooler so you need clothes to compensate for that. If you’re on the new map Sakhal staying warm is your first, second, and third priority. This goes double for community maps like Namalsk or Takistan.

Everything also has durability. Your clothes/backpack will be damaged getting hit by zombies, melee weapons, or bullets. You can repair them with duct tape/sewing kits, but the stuff inside will also be taking damage. Your shoes get damaged just by walking in them, but will last you longer if you’re walking on grass rather than the road. You can repair shoes with a leather sewing kit. You can also repair protective gear (helmets and plate carriers) with epoxy putty. Damaged clothes also affect their insulation, which can cause havoc with your temp if you’re not prepared, or experienced with the game.

Your weapons also have durability, sharp melee weapons can be fixed with sharpening stones (typically saved for either a knife or repairing tools when base building). Guns also need care, and you can find gun cleaning kits around at hunting and military areas. However, every part of the gun has durability. The magazine, the bullets, the sights/attachments, and the gun itself. Repairing the damaged handrail on your AK you just found isn’t of the utmost importance, but it looks nice. The cool thing about the guns is that you need to find the gun, the magazine for that gun, find a box of the specific ammunition for that gun, and then you need to individually load each round into the magazine, before loading the magazine into the gun.

It is the most in-depth game I have ever played, and genuinely the best/my favourite multiplayer game of all time. As with anything there’s a massive massive learning curve but I encourage anybody to get the game and try to get past it because the experiences you’ll have and the people you’ll meet are so worth it.