How to Cure Diseases & What They Do in Fallout 76
In the wasteland of Fallout 76, taking care of your health is crucial. You’ll need to be careful about what you consume or you’ll risk getting infected with a crippling disease. Here’s our guide on how to cure diseases & what they do in Fallout 76.
What are Diseases?
Diseases are a negative condition your survivor can get while wandering the wasteland. Whenever you consume unclean food or drink, sleep on a floor mattress, or get attacked by certain creatures, you can potentially obtain one. These give you a debuff over a limited period of time and you can even have multiple different types of them at once. Luckily they are not permanent and will eventually leave your character of their own accord, but some of them can have extreme penalties while active.
You can view your chance of getting a disease from items by viewing them in the Pip-Boy. The Disease Chance will be displayed in the same section as the other effects the item has such as healing or radiation gain. Typically, eating or drinking cooked items will have a lesser chance of getting you one of these debuffs, so don’t just go around eating raw opossum meat – cook it up!
You can view any conditions currently affecting your survivor by opening your Pip-Boy and going to the Effects submenu under the Stat category. There you will see any buffs or debuffs being applied to your character as well as their source.
How to Prevent and Cure Diseases
Though they are temporary, diseases can be a huge hamper on your experience in Fallout 76. As a preventative measure, keeping yourself hydrated and well-fed will reduce your chance of obtaining one by 25%. Certain perk cards, such as Iron Stomach, will also give you less disease chance from food and drink, while the Vaccinated perk gives you immunity from disease from creatures. You can read up more on perk cards by checking our guide on How to Equip Perk Cards or reference our Perk Card List.
Certain Aid items like RadAway will give you disease resistance for a limited time and some equipment items may give you a resistance buff as well. Otherwise, always make sure to sleep on a raised bed and eat cooked or canned foods whenever possible. Even if you die, your ailment will still be present when you respawn, so you’ll need to be careful.
Curing disease can only be done through the items Disease Cure or Antibiotics, which can remove one disease you are afflicted with.
How to Get Disease Cures and Antibiotics
Disease Cures and Antibiotics can be found scattered around the wasteland, with the former being found most commonly from Medical Supply Vendors. Otherwise, you’ll have to hope to stumble upon them from containers or quest rewards. You can also craft Disease Cures at a Cooking Station if you find the Recipe and it will require 1 Boiled Water, 2 Bloodleaf, 2 Firecaps, and 2 Snaptail Reeds.
You can use one of these healing items by opening your Pip-Boy and finding them under the Aid header under Items. Once you use one, it will remove a disease afflicting you, but do note that you will need one item for each infection you have.
List of Diseases in Fallout 76
The following is the list of known diseases in Fallout 76 along with their duration. More may be revealed as Bethesda updates Fallout 76.
- The Blight – All S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats -1. 30 min
- Blood Worms – Take 25% more damage, 15 min
- Bone Worms – Take 50% more limb damage, 60 min
- Dysentery – Periodic water loss, 15 min
- Glowing Pustules – Bleed radiation from wounds, Duration unknown
- Parasites – Periodic food loss, 15 min
- Rad Worms – Take 50% more radiation damage, 45 min
- Sludge Lung – Max AP -50, AP regen -50, 60 min
- Snot Ear – PER -2, Duration unknown
- Swamp Itch – AGI -2, 30 min
These afflictions can be a terrifying danger of Appalachia, but if you do what you can to take care of your survivor, you should be able to minimize the risks of getting infected by one. Just make sure to always keep a couple Disease Cures on you just in case.
That’s all for how to cure diseases & what they do in Fallout 76. For more guides to help you survive in post-apocalyptic West Virginia, head over to our Fallout 76 wiki.
- Fallout 76: How to Get More Crafting Recipes for Workbenches
- Fallout 76 Ounce of Prevention Quest Guide: How to Get Blood Samples
- Fallout 76 Fast Travel: How to Fast Travel to Locations, Friends & CAMP
About the author
