your game must be borked because there are clearly listed negative buffs... dirty...then grimy...then minor infectio
Nothing wrong with his game.
Infection is a hidden stat. Various things make it go up. Getting hit by zombies is an obvious one but it also goes up over time. It goes up FASTER the more dirty you are, but even when nice and clean it seems to go up slowly.
As far as I can tell there are only two things that make the infection stat go down. The first is the recovering buff, which is tuned to remove minor infection over the duration of one minor buff (vitamin pills or honey) so long as you remain pretty clean. The other is resting in bed, the better the bed the faster it goes down.
When this hidden stat "infection" passes certain thresholds you get debuffed with first minor infection, then infection and finally major infection.
So you can be out and about and accrue nearly enough infection for a minor infection debuff then wash, getting "nice and clean" and dramatically slowing the rate at which you get it... but the total is still there, waiting... and later you are in your base but havent been to bed and removed the total when "nice and clean" falls off. You get a few more points of infection in the next minute or 2 and suddenly you have enough infection stat to trigger the minor infection debuff.
To fix this you have to keep using your bed, just stand on it any time you can. Also, minor infections are pretty easy to fix, like I said. Stay clean and just carry some vitamins. Take one when you get infected and forget about it. The additional hunger actually makes stacking wellness easier because you can cram in farmed food every minute while infected, and almost all farmed food heals.
A far bigger problem is that I am nearly at the stage of unlocking steel tools... but dont have a hacksaw. It is depressing to be using stone tools when my talents are about to let me unlock steel ones... but I cant make them... fkn 250 stone pickaxe... I hates you! Mining is like 76 and all i can use are stone tools!
I think that it would be far better if you were rewarded a hacksaw for completing the blacksmith training quest, when you make your first axe head.