Explanation: Even if water poisoning wasn’t broken like it currently is now, it is still a genuinely terrible mechanic in which the game decides to, without warning, start piling on damage to you randomly until you either die or make it back to the ship to clear it.
It isn’t fun to deal with at all especially when it happens without warning in the middle of a tough fight and gets you killed to random bullshit.
That’s why it needs to be completely reworked and put into a position where players can properly counteract it and prepare for it.
The Rework:
There is now a bar on the side of the screen similar to thermo’s heat bar that shows your
“water poisoning”, this bar slowly fills up while you’re in the rain and fills up much faster when you’re swimming.
Taking shelter or bathing rapidly drains it to 0.
Bathing, as vetex said its supposed to, would also provide a visible status effect that would prevent the bar from going up at all for a time.
When the bar fills up, the water poisoning status effect is applied until you take shelter or bathe, as it currently is.
In the last 2 (now three) runs I’ve attempted its been ended by a bug, all in the most recent patch, the first two times was the exact bug you’re mentioning here and this third attempt is my ship clipping into an island and flinging me backwards when I tried to get back on it.
Now I’ve died TWICE within seconds after winning a close fight.
I love winning a fight and immediately getting water poisoning when I’m recovering giving me all of 5 seconds to run across an island back to my ship AND get to the bath on that ship.
This is the most bullshit mechanic in the entire game.
I have to ONLY take fights I know I’ll not only win but absolutely stomp or I risk dying to RNG.