What is "The Spores" and why do I keep getting it?

[SpliFF]

Since QoL 3 I've started 4 new games and weirdly enough in every game one, and only one, of my dupes gets something called "The Spores".

There is no ingame help for "The Spores" and I can't find a single thing online.

It may be what people are calling "zombie spores" BUT I am getting it as early as cycle 3 and I'm nowhere near an oil biome and I haven't seen a "sporechid".

The symtoms of "The Spores" is that the affected dupe quickly goes to stress 100% and starts binge eating (I think they do that even if that isn't their normal stress reaction but I'm not certain - my current victim is Ugly Crying).

I lost a base on turn 4 because an affected dupe ate all the nutrient bars in a single cycle.

I'm playing on survival, I've tried changing the world seed manually but it still happens.

I haven't been able to cure it yet because (I assume) I need a disease curing pod, a level 3 carer and tungsten.

It's such a major impact and happens so frequently I'm amazed it's so common yet so hard to find out what it is.

[fox_kirya]

I may be wrong, but spores are bad only for allergic dups. On another side it's one of the best ways to prevent green germs' invasion to your base - just plant spore-ish plants next to an entrance and wait a little bit until spores occupy some room.

[WanderingKid]

Allergies from plants. Early game Bristle Blossoms cause it.

[Lacost]

Check if your Dupe has allergies as a negative trait. If yes, then restart the game and pick your starting Dupes to not have allergies and you should be fine. Alternatively, you should uproot any bristle blossom asap so it doesn't start blooming.

 

[SpliFF]

Thank you both. Makes sense. My current affected dupe has allergies, the others may have since I haven't excluded allergies in my dupes.

It seems like allergies are not well balanced. I can accept the sneezing but "The Spores", apart from being confusing, is completely unbalanced. It's pretty unrealistic to expect a dupe to avoid bristle blossoms and the penalty of 50% morale loss - per cycle -  is ridiculous. I've had dupes almost roasted alive with less morale loss than that.

On top of that there is already a specific debuff for allegies called "Allergic Reaction". I'm not sure why "The Spores" needs to be added to that.

[Lacost]

5 minutes ago, SpliFF said:

Thank you both. Makes sense. My current affected dupe has allergies, the others may have since I haven't excluded allergies in my dupes.

It seems like allergies are not well balanced. I can accept the sneezing but "The Spores", apart from being confusing, is completely unbalanced. It's pretty unrealistic to expect a dupe to avoid bristle blossoms and the penalty of 50% morale loss is ridiculous.

Allergies are an instant-reject-trait for your Dupes. Like anemic, noodle arms, etc. that are just too horrible to even consider. The smelled flower stress reduction is massive considering how easy it is to get and pollen also kill off slimelung germs. There is absolutely no reason why you should pass up stress reduction and air decontamination for your whole colony because of one Dupe with allergies.

[SpliFF]

Thanks Lacost. I don't disagree with your reasoning but this seems like a bug to me. I'm only 10 cycles in so restarting is fine but I'm really hoping Klei will rebalance allergies. To be honest I suspect this is a bug and "The Spores" is supposed to be a late-game disease. As it stands it's a game-breaking issue because you can't expect new players to be aware of this. You can't say "here's a dupe with allergies' and expect players to understand that dupe is completely useless.

A whole lot of effort was put into making sure the starting biome is "safe-ish". It's nearly impossible to die unless you dump a bunch of sand on your dupes. This change makes the starting biome deadly to a particular class of dupe.

[chemie]

The spores is supposed to come from the spores plant which is in the oil biome.  it is usually be ignored since you have exosuits on for that anyway.

Allergies are not supposed to give dups the spores AFAIK

[Sasza22]

Might be some sort of tooltip error showing the spores in th bio tab. Pretty confusing.

As for allergies it gives +200% stress/cycle for enough time to get 20% stress per exposure. You can easily get a dupe to 100% in under a cycle. It`s pretty bad. The allergy medicine helps slightly but it needs so many seeds it`s almost impossible to keep up with just one dupe. It definetly needs some balancing.

[Gurgel]

7 hours ago, WanderingKid said:

Allergies from plants. Early game Bristle Blossoms cause it.

Yeah. Flares up fast and harshly, so I do not currently take allergic dupes.

[Daxterr]

It's kind of weird for klei to make an entire gameplay element that only works if you pick a bad duplicant lol

[Thamior]

Well, let's think about it this way: it's an added challenge. Especially if you want to reap its benefits and avoid its drawbacks.Also maybe they will add antihistamine medicine or something.

[Rogue Witch]

7 hours ago, Daxterr said:

It's kind of weird for klei to make an entire gameplay element that only works if you pick a bad duplicant lol

New plants have both positive and negative quirks. Allergic dupes will have a negative reaction to all of them.

1. Buddy Bud plant gives off Floral Scents which is a morale booster for non allergic dupes.

2. Bristle Blossom also gives off Floral Scents when it blooms.

3. Sporechids are plants found in the Oil Biome only that give off The Spores which negatively affects dupes.

[Sasza22]

2 hours ago, Thamior said:

Also maybe they will add antihistamine medicine or something.

It`s already in. The allergy medicine gives an "antihistamine" effect lasting for 1 cycle. Too bad it requires dirt and bristle seeds to craft. Unless you get a lot of farmhands early on there`s no way to keep up with seeds.

[Gurgel]

10 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

It`s already in. The allergy medicine gives an "antihistamine" effect lasting for 1 cycle. Too bad it requires dirt and bristle seeds to craft. Unless you get a lot of farmhands early on there`s no way to keep up with seeds.

Definitely requires far too much material, agreed. 

[watermelen671]

Was about to reply but then I realized that I'd just be contributing to the echo chamber.

Was about to reply but then I realized that I'd just be contributing to the echo chamber.

Was about to reply but then I realized that I'd just be contributing to the echo chamber.

Spoiler

Wait what?

 

[chemie]

6 hours ago, Sasza22 said:

It`s already in. The allergy medicine gives an "antihistamine" effect lasting for 1 cycle. Too bad it requires dirt and bristle seeds to craft. Unless you get a lot of farmhands early on there`s no way to keep up with seeds.

I am at 500 cycles and have 39 seeds.  I was farming berries for the first couple hundred (farms are idle now from wild wheat).  But still, 39 seeds would treat a single dup for just 39/500 cycles.

[Sasza22]

4 hours ago, chemie said:

I am at 500 cycles and have 39 seeds.  I was farming berries for the first couple hundred (farms are idle now from wild wheat).  But still, 39 seeds would treat a single dup for just 39/500 cycles.

On one hand it`s nice to have a use for seeds later but on the other the demand is way too high. If you could create like 5-10 pills from one seed it would be more reasonable.

[KieraGreywolf]

51 minutes ago, Sasza22 said:

On one hand it`s nice to have a use for seeds later but on the other the demand is way too high. If you could create like 5-10 pills from one seed it would be more reasonable.

Agreed. They should make a batch of pills and even then I feel like the allergy debuff should still be tweaked. Even with meds always on hand it feels a little excessive in terms of punishment, especially when floral scents is such a benefit to every other duplicant. One of those situations where it's better to just never take a dupe with allergies than bother with the medication for them and the buff of the floral scents isn't worth avoiding for one or two allergic dupes. And would much rather them have one seed make a batch of pills than increase the drop rate of seeds. Already inundated with them for every plant around cycle 300.

[Ipsquiggle]

Hey, thanks for the feedback! There are both some bugs and some balance issues with Allergies right now that we're fixing for launch. It's supposed to a organizational nuisance for you to consider, like Loud Sleeper, not a colony-killer, hahah. (Though it certainly feels that way when you have allergies, let me tell you...  )

It's useful to know how these sorts of things affect people with different play styles and at different points of the game!

[bmilohill]

 

1 hour ago, Ipsquiggle said:

It's supposed to a organizational nuisance for you to consider, like Loud Sleeper

I'd love an 'allow dupes to sleep in' button. 

An option where if an allergic dupe gets the spores they would automatically spend an addition 2-8 blocks of time in their cots, and if they do so without being woken by a red priority, they get a significant reduction in the allergy stress penalty. That way we can still choose to cure them with meds, or choose to prevent them from getting the spores in the first place with good base design (just like loud sleeper) or simply accept that these dupes will have reduced productivity but aren't a colony-killer (just like loud sleeper waking everyone up, or narcolepsy ). 

Alternatively, handkerchiefs. Craftable at the textile loom, can be carried by a dupe, 1 reed fiber gives you 20-50 uses. If a dupe sneezes and is able to wipe, the animation takes longer, but then the Spores only give the delay of sneezing rather than the extreme stress debuff. That way the player has the time to reorganize the base

[chemie]

2 hours ago, Ipsquiggle said:

Hey, thanks for the feedback! There are both some bugs and some balance issues with Allergies right now that we're fixing for launch. It's supposed to a organizational nuisance for you to consider, like Loud Sleeper, not a colony-killer, hahah. (Though it certainly feels that way when you have allergies, let me tell you...  )

It's useful to know how these sorts of things affect people with different play styles and at different points of the game!

I deal with loud sleeper with one time infrastructure build design. Even if the allergy meds cost a berry instead of berry seed it would be more than a loud sleeper due to daily dup labor in making the pills.  if it cost a few berries and a batch of 10 or 20 pills  then maybe....definitely worth a balance pass.  thanks for reading and commenting on several of these threads

[minespatch]

7 hours ago, bmilohill said:

I'd love an 'allow dupes to sleep in' button.

Would be a great stress reducer I'd love to see the devs implement.