First Aid skill
First Aid is a Survival skill that measures a character's proficiency in bandaging bleeding wounds. Internal bleeding wounds can not be tended, and the skill has no applications with regard to treating poison or disease, permanently curing wounds, or restoring vitality loss.
For the purposes of this skill, the game assumes that every character has an unlimited supply of bandages which can be used whenever necessary.
Higher ranks in the skill mean that the character is capable of treating progressively more serious bleeding wounds with greater success and less roundtime. At higher levels of skill, characters can stop bleeders of great severity without incurring any roundtime at all.
A character that attempts to treat a wound that is vastly beyond his skill will fail to reduce the bleeding at all, and will likely cause a substantial roundtime for both himself and the intended patient.
Wounds where the tending has not completely stopped the bleeding (i.e. they don't show as clotted(tended) or (tended)), will bleed more freely when the bandages are unwrapped or come undone.
Use
See the TEND command.
Disease
Having a bleeding wound will subject you to a chance of getting gangrene. The chance of catching this disease increase dramatically if a wound goes untended for 9 minutes. Every time a wound bandage needs to be applied there is a chance of catching gangrene, but it is a much lower than letting the wound bleed.
Blood Staunching will dramatically reduce the chances of getting gangrene from bleeding wounds.
The severity of the bleeder has a direct relation to the severity of the disease you may contract.
The chance to get infected is based strictly on how well cared for the wound is over a given period of time.
Difficulties
Tending back wounds is more difficult than other types of wounds.
Training
TENDing Wounds
Experience is awarded every 15 seconds for the first 5 minutes a wound is tended. After that point no more experience is earned until the bandage falls off naturally and is re-tended, or the bandage is unwrapped and re-tended.
Thus, the most efficient way to train through TENDing is to bandage the hardest wound within the character's abilities and wait until you get the message that the bandage needs changing. Then unwrap and re-tend the wound.
Anatomy Charts
Once you have at least 50 in scholarship you can STUDY Anatomy Charts/compendiums to practice First Aid. You can TURN the page in the compendium to get to another creature to study. This is the safest way to learn First Aid, and by no means ineffective. It also trains scholarship, but locks scholarship far faster than first aid, which in the past could cause problems with your overall state of mind. This is no longer an issue with the current experience system.
Notes
Empaths get a bonus to First Aid.
Wound Levels
- Clotted
- Slight
- Light
- Moderate
- Bad
- Very Bad
- Heavy
- Very Heavy
- Severe
- Very Severe
- Profuse
- Very Profuse
- Gushing
- Massive Stream
- Uncontrollable
- Unbelievable
- Beyond Measure
- Death Awaits
Commentary
"After 100 ranks in first aid the compendiums are much easier to keep your learning going than trying to keep enough bleeders going --Khazera 16:46, 23 March 2008 (CDT)
"Khazera's observation holds true even with 20 ranks in first aid. Simply fill your compendium with every chart that you can read and cycle through them. The exp timer is NOT on the compendium itself, but on each individual chart. So STUDY, FLIP, repeat until locked. Don't finish studying chart then flip--flip immediately after studying once!" Renian 01:51, 10 May 2009 (UTC)