Infection is a percentage that keeps rising until it kills you at 100%, and you cure it by taking something that pushes it back down: Honey takes off 5 points, Herbal Antibiotics 10 and Antibiotics 25. Those are the amounts the game prints, and at the default settings they are what you get; the Healing Factor perk adds a little. Treat it early. From 14% your stamina regeneration drops by a quarter, and from 57% every attribute is down one point. Untreated, a fresh infection takes about 7 real hours to kill you. Every value here is read from the V3.3.0 game files, build 25661908, the stable build since 5 October 2026.
TL;DR
Cures: Honey and Honey Tea 5 points, Herbal Antibiotics 10, Antibiotics 25. Cures stack, and each one works over time, not instantly.
Stages: Mild below 14%, Infection from 14% (stamina regen -25%), Severe from 57% (all attributes -1, stamina regen -35%), death at 100%.
You catch it from critical hits by zombies and animals. Each new critical hit while infected adds about one more point.
Prevention: Vitamins and Chicken Wings stop you catching it while they last; Fortitude Mastery rank 2 gives 2 hours of immunity after a cure or recovery.
On servers with a non-default Infection Rate the cures scale with it, a bug The Fun Pimps verified in September 2026.
Under the hood infection is a counter. It climbs every second, slowed slightly by your natural healing, and the stage you are in depends only on how far it has got:
| Stage | Range | Penalty | Penalty while a cure is working | Reached after, untreated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mild Infection (orange icon) | 0% to 14% | None | None | From the first hit |
| Infection (red icon) | 14% to 57% | Stamina regen -25% | -12.5% | About 1 hour |
| Severe infection (blinking red) | 57% to 100% | All attributes -1, stamina regen -35% | Attributes -1, stamina regen -17% | About 4 hours |
| Death | 100% | "You have died from an infection." | About 7 hours |
The times assume a new infection, default settings and no Healing Factor perk. Healing Factor speeds natural healing, and at rank 5 it stretches the 7 hours to about 9.3. The attribute penalty is the dangerous one: losing a point of an attribute can switch off perks that require it until you are back under 57%.
| Cure | Points removed | How to make it | Where else to get it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jar of Honey | 5 | An apiary fueled with chrysanthemum, goldenrod or cotton, or a small chance from chopping trees once you have read Wasteland Treasures Vol 1 | Can turn up in any trader's medicine stock; Rekt stocks 1 to 3 every restock |
| Honey Tea | 5, plus 20% of any dysentery | Campfire and cooking pot: goldenrod, honey and a jar of Water | |
| Herbal Antibiotics | 10 | Campfire and cooking pot: 5 blueberries, 3 mushrooms, 3 chrysanthemum, 3 Nitrate Powder and a jar of Water. Medical skill 30 | |
| Antibiotics | 25 | Campfire and beaker: 4 Old Sham Sandwiches, 3 Nitrate Powder and a jar of Water. Medical skill 60 | On every trader's general stock list; Jen, the medical trader, carries the most medicine |
A cure does not reset the counter. It loads a cure timer, and while that timer runs the infection falls instead of rising: Honey's 5 points come off over about 10 and a half minutes. Taking a second cure adds to the timer, which is why the in-game text says you can stack antibiotic medicines to increase the duration. If you are at 20%, one Honey will not finish the job; an Antibiotics will.
The Medical crafting skill is raised by Medical Journal magazines. The beaker for Antibiotics is a separate campfire tool from the cooking pot. Once you have a Chemistry Station, both antibiotics are far cheaper to make there: Herbal Antibiotics from 2 blueberries, 1 mushroom, 1 chrysanthemum, 1 Nitrate Powder and a jar of Water, and Antibiotics from 1 Old Sham Sandwich, 1 Nitrate Powder and a jar of Water.
Infection can start when a zombie or a hostile animal lands a critical injury on you, such as an abrasion or a sprain. The first catch starts the counter at 0.1%; every further critical hit while you are infected adds about 1 point more, which is why the in-game description warns that getting hit makes it worse. Two less obvious rules:
Infection Rate is a sandbox option, "Adjusts how quickly infections progress", from 0% (off) to 300%. In V3.3 it also changes how strong the cures are. A player reported on the official forum that a 300% rate made Honey far stronger, and The Fun Pimps staff verified it as a bug on 8 September 2026. The game code shows why: it multiplies both the infection's growth and the cure's effect by the setting, so a higher rate makes cures stronger and a lower one makes them weaker.
| Infection Rate | Untreated, 0% to death | Honey | Herbal Antibiotics | Antibiotics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25% | about 112 hours | 1.7 points | 3.4 | 8.6 |
| 50% | about 19 hours | 2.8 | 5.6 | 14.1 |
| 100% (default) | about 7 hours | 5.0 | 10.0 | 25.0 |
| 150% | about 4.3 hours | 7.2 | 14.4 | 35.9 |
| 200% | about 3.1 hours | 9.4 | 18.8 | 46.9 |
| 300% | about 2 hours | 13.8 | 27.5 | 68.8 |
These figures follow from the values in the files, assuming no Healing Factor: the points are the net drop over each cure's duration. They are why Honey seems to do almost nothing on a slow-infection world: at 25% it removes about 1.7 points, not 5. If you run a server with a slow Infection Rate, tell your players to bring more medicine than the item cards suggest.
Dying of the infection itself clears it. Dying of something else while infected depends on the Death Penalty sandbox option. On the default, XP Only, you respawn clean. On Injured, whose description says some debuffs persist and food and water reset to 50%, the respawn routine gives you a new infection if you died with one.
Eat Honey (5 points) or Honey Tea (5), or take Herbal Antibiotics (10) or Antibiotics (25). Stack them if the infection is above what one cure removes.
About 7 real hours from a fresh infection at the default Infection Rate with no Healing Factor, less if you keep taking critical hits.
Either you took another critical hit while it worked, or the world's Infection Rate is below 100%, which also weakens cures. At 50% Honey removes about 2.8 points.
Temporarily: Vitamins, Chicken Wings and Fortitude Mastery rank 2 all block it for a while. A full quality 6 Preacher set stops critical hits from infecting you for as long as you wear it.
You reach Severe infection: all attributes drop by one and stamina regeneration by 35% until a cure brings you back below 57%.
buffs.xml (the infection counter, stages, cure timer, immunity and the critical-hit roll), items.xml (cure amounts), recipes.xml, progression.xml (Medical skill, Fortitude Mastery, The Brawler), traders.xml, gameevents.xml (respawn), entityclasses.xml and Localization.csv, plus the sandbox option values in the server's game code.