So i think it would be awesome if players were able to experiment with ingredients to create custom medicine!
It could either be:

Minecraft potions format:

There should be a lab somewhere in the next update and in the lab you will find lots of different equipment (I hope) maybe players will be able to find something like the brewing stand and add ingredients 1 by 1 into the mixture.

Minecraft brewing page on wiki : http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Brewing (for people who didn't play minecraft and don't know how it works)

Skyrim format

Same as above but players will be able to mix 2 ingredients together and get a potion then mix the potion with another potion or ingredient.

Skyrim potions page on wiki : http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Potions_(Skyrim) (again for people who didn't play the game and don't know how it works)

Leave feedback and think of different formats if you like the idea!

Hmmmm yes, but in the way it would work in real life. PZ, zombies aside, is emulating the real world as close as possible in the setting of a game. So yeah, you could use chemistry to concuct various things, but only to the extent you can IRL. Although, what could actually make?

I dont know...
Maybe Painkillers with better efficiency?
Pills that temporarily increase skill?
Maybe even a cure (probably not)?
Lets see how creative people can be

(expecting someone to say Viagra )

Do you, or any other average person know how to make any of them?
I am for simple remedies and knowledge of plants with say, pain killer effects, but against full on chemistry and stuff, that shit is complicated.

Google it?

Doubt the Internet would be up during the zombie apocalypse, especially since the Government is trying to cover it up and allowing the people to use the internet would totally destroy that. Imagine the Facebook updates.

Or maybe a profession , reading lab notes and books or like in skyrim eating ingredients and finding out what they do.

I do agree that reading books or having intense knowledge in the field should give you the ability to make certain things, but things like painkillers seem almost impossible to make for a civilian (thanks google). You would have a much better time finding herbs and stuff.

That's why there should be a profession or even a "skill tree" for it and proper equipment.

Bob is playing: Zombie Lane

Can someone suggest different chemistry formats?

Maybe infected blood can be an ingredient?

Pretty sure consuming infected anything in anyway makes your a zombie.

It's probably easier to make meth during the zombie apocalypse than anything that's actually useful. Organic chemistry is, as far as I know, a tad tricky. People have to go to university and such to get good at it. It's definitely not 'combine these two ingredients and drink the resulting healing potion'. I just looked up how to synthesise aspirin, for example - I don't think I could actually do it without quite a lot of practice and experience, even with a fully equipped lab.

One of the things I like most about PZ is the realism. If it would be difficult to do in real life, it should be similarly difficult to do there. And actually making complex drugs from scratch, without poisoning yourself or setting fire to your laboratory...probably shouldn't be something that Baldspot can do. Hell, if anything, I'd quite like it if drugs found in a hospital or pharmacy were labelled with 'trade' names, rather than 'Painkiller' 'Antibiotic' 'Exceptionally Toxic Goo' so that you had to experiment, or find a catalogue, to be safe taking them.

Herblore could certainly come into it. I used to do woodsman and survival stuff at my old school (it was rather... liberal, shall we say?), and there's a tree in England whose bark actually acts as a natural painkiller. Don't ask me the name of the tree, because evidently I didn't pay enough attention. However, it is there. It could be medicine to that extent perhaps?

No tree like that exists in Kentucky.

That aside, those kinds of remedies that the average joe can create/use/know about are the kind medicine things I'd (and I think Lucarian) like to see in the game. Most people can't create anything complicated via chemistry. I can't even begin to imagine what I would need to obtain/use to synthesize something like Tylenol or Robotussin.

It's a survival game where you try to survive in a cruel world where everything we've once taken for granted is gone. I feel anyone with survival knowledge/experience would most definitely have a leg up on individuals who don't, because they could get by on all the same tactics as other less "wilderness" experienced survivors, and they are better equipped because they can extract resources from nature itself.

Considering he's probably describing willow trees, yeah, they're actually all over the place in the south. In addition to acting as a (very) minor painkiller, willow bark is also really useful in treating fever.



Agreed. Herblore should probably be a skill, and the plants you could find should probably never be as effective as synthesized medicine (because they're not).

Also actual chemical synthesis is really really complicated, and requires a lot of sophisticated equipment. I saw somebody mention meth, and even that's a lot more complicated than most people realize.

since this post is now essentially 'how would they implement chemistry?' how about a simple chemist profession or maybe doctor?

Because Chemists and Doctors know what drugs do what and not how to make them. Would be interesting for one of them to be like "I have a fever, I should take -Insert pills here-" so you don't have to guess.

Chemisty? No.
Botany? Yes.

You are more of a farmer than a scientist.
You are more of a engineer than a architect.

Botany is a different form of using plants, and as such you would have full knowledge of the poisons and healing effect of herbs and mushrooms and fungus.

It's not about chemistry or alchemy like skyrim and minecraft, where it takes a magical part of things. This is more 'natural' kind of combination and use.

With Botany, you can learn what effect each plants can give and how they are helpful when ingested.

Ginseng for example, have various effects, and is commonly sold in Chinese/Asian pharmacy and drug stores, it's actually very commonplace in some places. I'm not sure about the USA, but it's very very common to find Botany based materials in Canada because there are a TON of Chinese stores that sells herbs and roots and stuff (even preserved tortoises and the likes).

Sure we can have 'drugs' that function like painkillers, and all... But there are natural ingredients you can use that provides the same effect, just not easily attained if the location is very rural and not many Asian or European goods are found there.

The plus side? Unlike drugs, these ingredients can be grown! As for medicine, pharmacists are usually very knowledgable about the number of effects a ingredient has so they can grind or ground these ingredients in mortar and pestle and use the powdered form in various ways... Like medicinal soups, liquids, and such...

Also your 'drugs' are made in similar way, just not with the whole industry related chemicals mixed in...