Open Wounds: Evolving Injuries/Variation

So despite the fact that open wounds seem to be the absolute most common illness/injury on WD (and I supremely hope the chances of it go down...), I think there's lots of room for improvement and interest in how this is actually handled! Edited because Open Wound chances have been remedied, BUT I think this is still a neat idea!

VARIATION

Why is it that all open wounds seem to be on the legs of our wolves? Are they just that clumsy? Do the prey animals with chainsaws have a knee fetish? U:

 I'd love to see open wounds get much more variation! Other legs, across the chest, the flanks, the face, they can get hurt in a multitude of ways. Could only be a handful of different types, but not just the left hind leg! This would require some more art of course, but not too much and it shouldn't be hard.

EVOLUTION

Infections exist already on WD, but they don't seem to be tied to open wounds at all. This isn't entirely related to tying the two together, but is a more realistic take on how open wounds are handled!

Your wolf has ripped open their leg. However, your herbalist is either still working on an open wound salve or you need to buy one and don't have the SC. But... your wolf still needs to go hunting, so you throw a healing salve at him/her to raise the HP a bit. On the other hand paw, you have to wait until the next rollover.

Wolves don't stop moving just because they are hurt! They have to walk around, nom food, drink water, etc. All have the chance of twisting the wrong way accidentally, misstepping, or trying to play/be dominant or submissive, etc etc etc. If these open wounds are left alone for however long, perhaps there can be a chance of them getting worse! The ideas:

- hunting: relatively high chance of getting a worse injury, and even potentially being incapacitated by it until a proper open wound salve is given to them; also much lowered proficiency and chance of accidentally screwing up the hunt

- rollover: your wolf is a klutz (obviously, or we wouldn't be in this situation anyways LOL) and fell/twisted/etc and made their injury worse. could stack over time, maybe!

Now the art would need to be tweaked to show the extent of the injury - maybe bleeding, or a larger surface area covered, something like that?

TL;DR: Give Open Wounds more variation, and make it so open wounds get worse if they're not treated!

EDITED TO ADD this awesome idea by Verglas:

EDITED TO ADD this awesome idea by Lily:

Support for art variety, the current situation is silly even though honestly I never look at the wound art anyway since I just heal them immediately.

Complications - I would be up for this IF open wounds get a lot less common.  I think it would be better to have them be a rare but actually troublesome thing than a multiple-times-a-day minor nuisance - but I know a lot of people struggle with them right now, and having them get worse would be pretty awful for them.

Oh definitely!! I just got... Two more open wounds this morning, i think second hunt of the day... Argh! It really needs to be fixed xD

Thank you for the support!!

I was actually going to make a recommendation on variation but just hadn't yet so I'm going to drop this here:

During testing their actually was a period where injuries would have names based on what caused the injury (punctured paw pad, torn ear, bug bite, bite, cut, bruise, scratch, ect.)

I believe these names are still in the code and were just turned off due to an issue they had, but it would be cool to see them still affect the art that a wolf gets upon being injured. Obviously some of these might not cause an open wound, such as bruise but the rest could have unique art. Here's just a few ideas/examples of art I came up with.

• Punctured paw pad - Wolf is standing on three legs and holding up one paw, which is dripping with blood.
• Bug bites - Similar to pox? A few clustered up red spots, possibly have been scratched open to match the 'open wound' vibe
• Torn ear - Ear split vertically, with the background visible through it. Blood on the ear and around the wound

Maybe these would then have different HP loss or effects based on what they are. A bunch of bug bites and a gaping bite wound aren't the same, y'know?

Ooh i love that idea!! I don't think there should be any that change the pose of the wolves, because that would require every making every marking and base different. But... Oooh i will have to add this stuff to the first post, i love it LOL

Ah, you're probably right!

Like I said, they're just rough ideas. Maybe just blood on the paw and the ground then. Then, scratch, bite, cute, ect. could fit with your idea "Other legs, across the chest, the flanks, the face, they can get hurt in a multitude of ways"

I would love to see more wound variety! 

I think the progressing wound idea is fun, it could start at "open facial wound, minor" or "open ankle wound, minor", whatever the location is, and every time a wolf does an action like hint, scout, play, etc, it could have a certain chance of worsening. Tier names could go minor->moderate->major->infected, or infected could become an extra tag on the end which any level of wound could get.

I don't think wound chances as a whole should change, but rather once your wolf has been injured the site should roll for what injury they got. That way there's not a higher chance of injury, just more varied injuries. 

Oooh I like this! I'll add to the first post. (: