[2020] Unbalanced Antibiotics?

The schems can drop at gamestage 0, as far as I know. All schematics can. However, ALL schematics share the same drop table. If you loot a bookshelf, you have an equal chance to get the antibiotics recipe as you do to get the steel tools one or the iron pickaxe one.

Herbal antibiotics are meant to be the more easily renewable version of antibiotics- Not a middle tier version (Although it does occupy that position as well.); It's something made by the player, or sold by the trader, not found when exploring.

Also most things that take a chem station can be crafted in a campfire with a beaker for an increased material cost. Not exactly ideal, but, can allow you to make chem station items far sooner than when you obtain a chem station.

Part of the game is supposed to be dealing with the hand you're dealt- If you don't roll the antibiotics schematic early, then you need to find other solutions.

Originally posted by Jolly: Okay I see what my problem is on my Wasteland only map. My difficulty is Survivalist and I can't loot fast enough to keep up with finding Honey until Traders luckily have one like Capp00

A wasteland only map is a self imposed challenge. Making complaints about an aspect of the game because you shot yourself in the foot with a VERY difficult challenge map is not very constructive.

Given your challenge, your first priority should be finding a way to make armor of some sort, Likely padded- Chop drapes for cloth, hunt for glue and duct tape and get padded armor ASAP to dramatically reduce your risk of getting infected to begin with.

That said, in answer to a question from earlier, Infection was changed pretty dramatically as of A18, iirc.

Originally posted by samcharles77: I think they should remove honey's ability to cure low level infections. Antibiotics should become even more rare and the ability to craft them as well. I remember when getting infected would give me a kind of scared feeling especially early on in a playthrough.
I just feel like it should be more of a threat than it currently is.

Problem is that it's difficult to make it a threat to your survival without making it become objectively annoying to the player. It really should be a threat- It should be, imo, the biggest threat to your survival; Getting infected should be a huge deal. But it's not. IF it's too easy, players just ignore it, if it's too difficult it just brings complaints, and in every case, if players dont want to deal with it they'll just suicide to clear the debuff. (Imo infection, and other debuffs, as well as your current food/water level should follow you through 'death'; Exception being if you actually die from something; EG: If you die from starvation, your food will be replenished to an extent to prevent a death loop. If you actually die to 100% infection, then you respawn without infection.)