How to Cure Queasy in Project Zomboid
The Queasy moodle is the second-tier sickness state, between Nauseous and full Sick. It reduces stamina, slows healing, and is the first warning sign of several different conditions. The cure depends on which condition caused it.
Step 1: Identify the Cause
| Cause | How You Got It | Curable? |
|---|---|---|
| Food poisoning | Ate rotten food, raw meat, undercooked food, or used poisonous mushrooms/berries. | Yes |
| Corpse sickness | Spent too long near dead bodies. Risk scales with corpse count. | Yes |
| Cold/flu | Got wet or chilled, especially while exhausted. | Yes |
| Smoking | Smoked a cigarette as a non-smoker. | Yes - passes once nicotine clears |
| Knox Virus | Bitten or lacerated by a zombie within the last ~24 hours. | No - fatal in vanilla settings |
Step 2: Apply the Right Cure
Food Poisoning & Corpse Sickness
- Stay Well-Fed (dark green hunger moodle) - boosts passive healing.
- Stay Rested - sleep regularly, avoid the Tired/Exhausted moodles.
- Stay Warm and Dry - the cold moodle stacks on sickness and can push you into death.
- Eat Lemongrass - significantly speeds up food-poisoning recovery. Foraged in forests and grassy areas.
- Burn or move corpses to break the corpse-decay penalty. See cleanup blood for hygiene around bases.
Cold/Flu
- Get inside, dry off, get warm.
- Eat Common Mallow - directly reduces Cold/Flu illness level. Foraged in grassland.
- Sleep - flu severity decays during sleep.
Smoking-induced Queasy
Stop smoking and wait. The moodle clears in a few in-game hours. If you have the Smoker trait, your character won't get queasy from cigarettes.
What Build 42 Changed About Medicine
We run both branches, so we compared the shipped files of Build 41 (build 24928750) against Build 42 Stable (build 24909836) attribute by attribute. These are the medical changes that actually affect what you carry. If you are following a guide written for Build 41, this is where it will be wrong.
| Item | What changed | Build 41 | Build 42 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disinfectant | Weight dropped | 0.3 | 0.2 |
| Common Mallow | Spoils now. It had no shelf life at all in 41. | never rots | fresh 6 days, rotten at 10 |
| Ginseng | Spoils now, but slowly | never rots | fresh 14 days, rotten at 28 |
| Black Sage, Comfrey, Plantain | Spoil now | never rot | fresh 6 days, rotten at 10 |
| Common Mallow | Cooking uses cut back | 12 recipes | 6 recipes |
| Ginseng | Cooking uses cut back | 7 recipes | hot drink only |
| Black Sage | Cooking uses cut back | 5 recipes | hot drink only |
The practical change is spoilage. In Build 41 a herb stash was permanent and you could hoard it. In Build 42 your foraged Common Mallow is garbage after ten days. Dry it, or grow it and pick when you need it. Ginseng is the one herb still worth stockpiling, at 28 days to rot.
Antibiotics were not weakened: ReduceInfectionPower is 50 in both builds.
Bandages were not weakened either, at bandage power 4 in both. Anyone telling you
Build 42 nerfed medicine is talking about shelf life, not potency.
Bandage Strength, Every Option Ranked
When you are queasy from an infected wound, the bandage matters. Read from Build 42:
| Bandage | Power | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Bandage, or Sterilized Bandage | 4.0 | 0.1 |
| Ripped Sheets, Denim Strips, Leather Strips, Sterilized Sheets | 2.0 | 0.1 to 0.2 |
| Bandaid | 1.5 | 0.05 |
| Any of the above once dirty | 0.5 | same |
A dirty bandage is worth one eighth of a clean one, and leather strips weigh double ripped sheets for the same power. Carry proper bandages; improvise only when you must.
Step 3: When You Can't Cure It
If the queasy moodle followed a confirmed zombie laceration or bite within the last 24 hours, you are in the Knox Virus incubation window. There is no cure in standard settings - moodles will worsen until death. Make peace with your survivors, transfer your loot, and prepare a successor.
Prevention Tips
- Always cook meat - raw meat is a guaranteed queasy.
- Don't eat past the spoil date. Inspect food in your inventory; fresh = green text, fresh-but-aging = yellow, rotten = red.
- Boil water from rivers and rain barrels before drinking.
- Bury or burn zombies regularly around your base.
- Pack rain ponchos and dry clothes for long expeditions.
Stay alive. Host a Project Zomboid server with Supercraft and outlast Knox Country with friends.