I was not aware of this until I checked mine health status yesterday. While doing Hole in wall quest at Vault 81 (long time ago), you shall save a boy named Austin. Same place you meet Curie. I did a forum seach at FO Wiki and it seems like if you have companion with you or someone else present - if they being bit and not you, you get the disease as well. The disease damage your health with max -10. It's permanent so you have to choose, you or the boy. I saved the boy. Some npc during MQ will ask you if you have been bitten by something and got a disease. Myself did answer "no" to these questions because I was not aware. So, since this is a known "bug" I did player.additem 00055F10 and I got 1 extra cure. Maybe Bethesda should make a fix for this also for those on consoles. Let's say add a minor questline that makes another cure available.

Cheers,

-Klevs

It's definitely not a bug by any means. The bug is that you'll get sick if companions (or the damn Protectron) get bit too, and that should be fixed, but offering a separate cure completely defeats the purpose of that quest in the first place. I mean, it's 10 HP. I wouldn't have even noticed it if it weren't listed in the active effects.

Thanks for the additem code.

I never realized. Do you have any idea which stats are effected or is it just lowered health?

It's just -10 max health. Really the only annoying part is that it'll always show up in your active effects.

-10 really isn't that big of a deal. As long as nothing else is effected.

I think it's lame that Lorenzo's serum doesn't cure it.

I've never noticed, but since I cured the boy I guess my character has had the -10 for most of the game.

It's not a bug. It's the cost of doing the right thing, which is to give the full cure to Doctor Forsythe to insure that Austin lives and no one else in Vault 81 gets sick.

It's super minor throughout most of the game, as it is not a large percentage of your max HP once you have some levels under you.

It's meant to be there so there's some incentive to do the selfish thing, which is to keep enough cure to clear the debuff.

They made it very clear that you were sacrificing so the child may live in that quest, don't be all surprised that it is permanent, I wear my -10 HP as a badge of honor saying "I did the right thing" especially since I have 11 endurance so 10 HP is a small fraction of what I get in 1 level

I need to do the BOS route AFTER catching this bug. Curious what the response is with that doctor.

As for the disease as a bug, you could cure it, but leaves you hating yourself if you do for your PC. It is not a bug, ultimately.

Well I did the Console Command and spawned another cure for myself. I RP it this way - my character has a 10 Intelligence....and he SOMEHOW split that one does up and made it work. He also has 10 Luck....so it works for my head-cannon. Same for when i clean up my settlements via Console Commands (mainly removing the Mole dirt piles that look like POOP at the Red Rocket Station)....my character is VERY resourceful and he simply Finds a Way.

I RP it as you wussed out and cheated to get out of deciding between the child's health or your own like the game wanted you to

Yes, my first character does indeed have Molerat disease........which considering I haven't noticed in hours of hours is largely an irrelevant thing to me really, perhaps because -10 off your max health is so minor a penalty.

Ahhh...but see in a single-player game you don't get to RP mine!

Finally bethesda let's me murder a child!

that is one way to look at it, yes more like take 10 HP from a child for the rest of his life but still.

The child dies if you keep the cure and everyone is pissed off at you.

They give you a room as well I think, but I haven't been back and it was well over a hundred hours of gameplay since I did the quest.

If you got yourself bitten, your own fault. That is not the bug, but it's when any companion or other ones nearby got bitten you got the disease. The place crowded with critters, but I was not even close because I knew that something bad could happened, but I was too lazy to check out health status after the quest. If I got bitten and I knew it's mine fault I would never ever spawn the serum. I don't want to cheat, spoils the fun

Cheers,

-klevs

I admit that I used the console to create another dose of the cure as well when I discovered it. My justification? Not that I needed one, but my character was sort of in a romantic relationship with the very individual who made the cure in the first place. She may have only had one dose left of her original batch, but now that she was out of the vault I saw no convincing reason she couldn't make me another dose.

And yeah, it wasn't the hit points that bothered me. It was the constant effect being listed in my pip-boy.

Why don't you get a cure later, seems like they would tell you to come back in a week or so and then cure you rather than "thank you for saving the boy and the rest of us, you should however never be cured and simply carry a mild version of the disease forever.....oh and thanks again".

it took her 200 years to make that batch and all but 1 dose spoiled. She explained that pretty well.

I cured it with console after I got Lorenzo's serum. I'm at a high enough level that the hit points themselves are meaningless, and it was more about getting rid of that stupid red sliver on the health bar and clearing the effect list.

I think the implementation of the effect was poor. It should have just taken away the hit point permanently rather than give you a permanent, incurable nerf to clutter up the interface.

I'd have to agree with that. A permanent decrease would have been fine but the constant red sliver and the effects listing. My OCD could not abide THAT!

It took her a long time to develop the formula. She completed it some 83 years before the sole survivor freed her, and during that time most of it expired. Now she knows the formula. She wouldn't have to reinvent it, just make more.