Pathologic 2 is already a hard game (if you play it on the intended/maximum difficulty), without cheating, here are some tips that may help you survive. The game will still be hard, but not as hard as it would be without these tips. WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead. Not major spoilers like the ending or what the heck is going on with the town, as it with the plague or the lore, but some minor spoilers ahead. You have been warned.
 
 

Introduction

This guide will not make you flawless and at the same time will not break the mystery of the game. It will only give you a better chance of survival, considering you’re playing on the intended difficulty.
 
 
A lot of the bad reviews Pathologic 2 got on Metacritic are because the game is difficult, what if I told you, the game is intended to be difficult, it’s part of the lore. In fact, it wouldn’t make much sense without it being difficult.
 
 
The developers added lower difficulties because of public demand, but specifically said that that’s not the intended difficulty. And for good reason. Lore aside, Pathologic 2 is not your average Skyrim RPG. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s meant to be more like a Dark Souls but because its’ a survival Dark Souls and not a fighting Dark Souls people don’t usually see the similarities.
 
 
Not only the fun is in the challenge, but the lore is in the challenge.
 
 
And about death, yeah, the game got that covered. In Day 1 at Midnight (day 1 so not major spoiler) at the theater the director will say to you “try not to ever, ever die, ever”. Well, you will die. It’s better not to die, but you will die, and it’s going to be interesting. It’s part of the game.
 
 

 
As they say, the difficulty is a feature not a bug.
 
 
 

First Days – Stack a lot of Food & Water

There is plenty of food & water in the first days of the game. But soon, they will become a rare commodity and prices will double each day. So the first days of the game are your chance to stack as much water & food as you can.
 
 
You can find bottles in the trash and the fill them up at wells or barrels. Further in the game wells will break and later barrels too.
 
 
You can be given food by certain characters and you can buy food at groceries.
 
 
The best way to do this is to go and complete quests, and while you are on the road check the trashes for everything, including bottles, and the grocery shops for food. Stack as much as you can.
 
 
The best type of foods are:
 
 

 
 
Don’t bother eating the snacks, you get better use out of them by trading with the kids:
 
 

 
Note that children often trade items that infected people are after. So you can trade with kids, then trade with infected, and profit. When you trade with infected, trade antibiotics of the color you have the most of.
 
 
 

Quests – Do and Don’t Do during the First Days

Not major spoilers ahead. Just some essential stuff.
 
 
1. Day 2: Don’t speak with Yulia Lyuricheva located on the balcony of the Lump
 
– The lump is the big house where Big Vlad is, not a big spoiler as you find him in day 2.
 
– If you talk with her, this introduces her as a character which means now he has a risk of catching the plague.
 
– If she’s not spoken to, she’s not introduced until day 6, so one less character to worry about.
 
 
2. Day 2: Don’t speak with Vlad the Younger about the Termitary. Instead, speak with Big Vlad, then with Clara who is in the lobby of his house, then with Big Vlad again.
 
– He will send people to retrive his son, keeping both of them alive.
 
– There is no penalty to this with the steppe people in the Termitary.
 
 
3. Day 3: Don’t do the House of the Dead sidequest. -> Simply do not enter the House of the Dead
 
– Doing this one prevents an area with a single character from being infected.
 
– However, if you don’t do it, Khan won’t leave the Polyhedron so he can’t be infected.
 
(Not major spoiler, you find out in Day 2: Khan is important because he’s one of the 7 kids that your father took care of).
 
 
4. Day 4: Don’t give a bottle of water to Lara -> Prevents the infection from reaching where she lives.
 
 
5. Day 5: Do speak with Sitcky (the kid) to find out about a chemist involving bodies. -> If you do it corretly you’ll protect the west of the town from being infected the first time.
 
 

 
 
 

Children Chests Locations

Early in the game, children will inform you about chests they hid through the town. Telling you that you have to take something from the chest, and put something back, that’s how you play the game.
 
 
Actually, you don’t have to put anything back. Here are the children chests locations:
 
 

 
The chests reset everyday. Just like the trash cans.
 
 
 

Storage Locations for the First Days

Not the trash cans, they reset everyday. Not the Warehouse where Bad Grief lives, there will a fight there one day that will reset the chests. But, most of drawers and chests in named NPC houses are persistent.
 
 
1. Lara’s House, the cabinet next to her -> That’s the only place in her house where you can store items indefinitely. In the room opposite from where Lara resides, there is a large cabinet that is not safe for the player’s stored items, as it will occasionally be stocked with items from Lara.
 
 
2. Big Vlad’s House, the dresser in the entrance -> Initially containing money, that is a place where items may be stored indefinitely, as well as a couch where you may sleep. Both Capella’s Wing and Olgimsky’s Seat have house clocks where the you may save your progress.
 
 
Afterwards, you will get the keys to your house and can safely deposit there, you’ll have a lot more room than in Lara or Big Vlad’s house. And afterwards, you’ll get access to a deposit vor even more space.
 
 

 
 
 

Time to Practice Medicine

Any tincture not used in diagnosis is one more tincture used in antibiotic or painkiller production.
 
 
The Plus Tinctures are twice as effective in revealing symptoms. It will reveal 2 symptoms where a normal Tincture can reveal 1.
 
 
If we use a normal Tincture to reveal the useless central symptom, the Plus Tincture can be used to reveal the resulting color.
 
 
The Plus Tincture will always reveal 2 symptoms if it can, so if it reveals only one, you know that it is the other color that is the correct one.
 
 
If you reverse the order and start with a Plus Tincture. A Plus Tincture has a 1/3 chance to reveal the right color straight away, with the second normal Tincture being necessary 2/3rd of times.
 
 
The second Tincture can be any color, even the same color as the Plus Tincture, just make sure pain is not 100% maxed so symptoms can still be revealed.
 
 
If pain starts at about 40% or higher, it guarantees needing a Morphine.
 
 
So, use 2 Tinctures of any color: one Plus, one normal, for any all all diganosis. Use a Plus Tincture first if the pain is low so you have a chance of 1 shot kill. And use a normal Tincture first if the pain is high.
 
 

 
 
 

Exhaustion – The Liver Painkiller

We took care of hunger and thirst, but what about exhaustion? It seems like a consntat right? That you have to sleep for 1 hour to recover 20% of your exhaustion meter.
 
 
Additionally, you can eat Lemon or Coffe to reduce your exhaustion. Sleeping is bad because generally you lose parts of the game when sleeping, the world around you still moves when you sleep.
 
 
But, there is one the exhaustion fears, in his tongoue he is the liver of dead bodies!
 
 
If you take the liver antibiotic before sleep, your exhaustion will recover quicker, by about 20%. So 3 hours of sleep will do the job of 4 hours. If you don’t mind the loss of health. If you take your Morphine to maximize health, you could trade a couple of herbs, one bottle of water and Morphine, for an extra hour of hunting around and fixing your loot and the town.
 
 
But you know who beats the liver antibiotics? the liver painkillers. They do the same thing as the liver painkillers, but you know what the bomb is? they stack.
 
 
Take 2 liver painkillers and sleep for 2 hours, you will be almost fully recovered.
 
 
The liver antibiotic:
 
 

 
The liver painkiller, making it:
 
 

 
Get a few livers from the nearest corpse and you will never have to sleep again.
 
 
To make painkillers, combine a Tincture with a healthy organ or blood.
 
To make antibiotics, combine a Tincture with an infected organ or blood.
 
 
 

Health – Useful Information

And an important bit about health:
 
 
Health is primarily lost during combat, however if the player’s hunger or exhaustion are at their maximum limit, or the player has contracted Plague, their health will diminish incrementally.
 
 
If already infected, interacting with infected surfaces, people, clouds, or air will result in additional loss of health. Health can also by lost by consuming certain rations (such as Coffee) and drugs (namely antibiotics).
 
 
Health can be regained by using healing items such as Tourniquets and Bandages, or by sleeping (+25% HP/2 hrs). If the player consumes a Morphine or Painkiller prior to sleeping, the rate at which they recover health will increase. Damage received during combat can be mitigated by wearing clothing.
 
 

 
 
 

Infection – How to Get Rid of It

The plague kills you in about half a day, depending on you keeping your immunity up, that is not walking into infected districts, and depending on your health beforehand.
 
 
How effective are antibiotics at removing the infection and how dangerous? They cannot kill you. They always take a percentage of your remaining health. However, something else can kill you when you have low health due to antibiotics.
 
 
Not all antibiotics are equal however, depending on your choice of starting Tincture and organ you could be reducing the infection by as much as 80% or as low as 30%, and the health from as much as 50% to as little as 25%.
 
 
If you sleep with infection, you may lose health instead of gaining. Given that antibiotics cannot kill, do not use your health items unless after you’ve taken your antibiotics.
 
 
Also, the infection rate increases exponentially so there is never a wrong time to take antibiotics.
 
 
The infection growth rate is proportional with how much infection you already have. So there isn’t really a bad time to take antibiotics, there’s no benefit to waiting until the infection has grown to take an antibiotic.
 
 
Infection cured & health lost per antibiotic:
 
 

 
Antibiotics also provide minor benefits to immunity, hunger, thirst or exhaustion.
 
 
But preferably, you would want to cure the plague rather than keep being on top of it.
 
 
There are 4 ways to cure the infection and the 3rd one is a big story spoiler so I will only talk about the first 3 ways:
 
– Panacea, no penalties.
 
– Shmowders, more common than panacea, lose a lot of health, can usually be found at children.
 
– Fire, if your infection level is low and your health high enough to survive a burning, you always need to have low infection for this to work. Find a firestarter in the infected districts and attack him, take one molotov to the face, wait until you’re cured, then run.
 
 

 
 
 

Respawn Rates

As time goes on, bins refill, shops change their stocks, herbs regrow, children play with chests and the outdoor furniture continues to be filled with stuff. But when do these happen?
 
 
There are 2 times when these inventories in the world reset, at: midnight 12:00 and at 7:30.
 
 
If you catch some of these inventories before and after those times you can double your profit. Especially if you catch the reset time for shopkeepers inventories.
 
 
Bins refill at 12:00. Shops refill also at 12:00.
 
 
Herbs regrow at 7:30. Children change chests at 7:30.
 
 
This is very useful for herb hunting. If you collect all herbs in an area just before 7:30, you will double your stock.
 
 
Also, the townfolks despawns at 12:00 to be replaced by thugs, and they return at 7:30.
 
 

 
 
 

Other Useful Information

1. Stamina -> You only gain thirst (the red part of stamina) when your stamina (the green part) is not at full. That means, you only gain thirst when you run.
 
 
When going to sleep, make sure your stamina (the green part) is 100% full, otherwise you will gain thirst while sleeping.
 
 
When walking your thrist bar won’t increase, unless you eat food or get into a fight.
 
 
2. Days get Shorter -> As the in-game characters say, the days get shorter, but your in-game survival bars don’t, so each day is going to be harder and harder to survive, and you will have less time.
 
 
You the player have less time each day to acquire food as each day the time of the day shrinks.
 
 
3. The greater your immunity, the lower your infection rate -> So always try to keep your immunity to max level.
 
 
4. The time stops when talking or trading -> So don’t worry about that.
 
 
5. Shmowder locations -> Various side quests, children inventory, children chests, but they are quite rare. Shmowder usually costs 35 when found in children’s inventory, as such you should always carry more nuts with you, buy them from any grochery you pass by.
 
 
6. Children’s Hazlenuts -> Hazlenuts are the best for trading with children. They value their own nuts as 1 and your nuts as 2, so you can repeatedly trade with them to obtain all of their nuts all at once.
 
 
7. When fighting big guys -> Use a heavy punch to stun them first, followed by quick strikes to minimize your stamina drain. However, if you wear a weapon, even if a rusty one, you attack faster than if you were using your fists. So use a weapon, even if it is completely broken.
 
 
8. Menkhu’s Finger -> Is the most powerful knife in the game and a good tool for getting organs. You can get one from Lara in Day 1 but it’s badly damaged. However, it’s cheaper to repair that one that buy a new one.
 
 
9. Infected districts are great for looting stuff -> Keep in mind, drawers that appear dirty will drain your immunity while searching them, but the ones that appear clean, won’t drain your immunity while searching them.
 
 
10. This is a big one so you may want to do without it -> Do you want a full stack of healthy organs? For your antibiotics and other? Look no further than the Maw. Nobody cares about the Maw district. If you’re hated in the Maw, nobody else cares. So if you’re really desperate. Go on a killing and looting spree in the Maw to get as many organs and items as you can so you can save the rest of the town. This post was provided to you by the Maw-hating gang.
 
 

 
 
 

Ending

That’s it, consider your medical licence taken Doctor Artemy Haruspex.
 
 
Now go out there and save the town!
 
 
And try not to ever, ever, die, ever.
 
 
Btw, if you try to save scum, doesn’t work, the game remembers how many times you died.
 
 
By the way, everyday, at midnight, at the theatre, a play predicts the future.
 
 

 
 
This is all for Pathologic 2 Survival Information Guide & Basic Gameplay hope you enjoy the post. If you believe we forget or we should update the post please let us know via comment, we will try our best to fix how fast is possible! Have a great day!