In Ethernalis, dirt is not just decoration. A filthy hero is an unhappy one, stained gear drags your Comfort down, and strong smells draw creatures to you. There are three things to keep track of: grime on your body, stains on your gear, and the scents of the room you are in.
How you get dirty
You become Dirty when you wound or kill something that bleeds in close combat, when you walk into a room that has dirt on its floor, and when you mine or dig with a pickaxe. Skeletons have no blood to spill on you.
Your gear gets stained too. Every melee hit splashes your weapon, and walking into a muddy or bloody room rubs some of that dirt onto the clothes and armour you are wearing. The item details show each stain and how heavy it is.
What grime costs you
Being Dirty costs 5 Comfort. Each worn item whose stains add up to more than 50 costs another 3. Low Comfort makes you rest badly, weakens your attacks, and below -50 stops you sleeping at all.
Stains on the gear you wear fade by 1 each turn. Personal grime does not fade. It stays until you wash it off.
Take a bath
Rivers, lakes, streams, fountains, basins, troughs, meltwater pools, and kitchen pumps offer a Bathe action for 1 action point. It washes off your grime and partly cleans the washable clothes you are wearing. You need no bottle or bucket.
Most kinds of dungeon have somewhere to bathe. The Abandoned Mine has none. The same places let you wash a Dirty Rag back into clean Rags.
On the surface, rain and storms wash the room around you a little every turn.
Use soap
Soap works anywhere. Use it from your pack for 1 action point to wash off your grime and fully clean the washable clothes you are wearing. It leaves a faint, pleasant scent behind. A bar of Crude Soap or Herbal Soap lasts 5 washes, and Hard Soap lasts 15. Soap is not used up if you are already clean.
You can make Crude Soap early on at a Burning Campfire from Animal fat, Ash, and a Water Bottle, with a bowl at hand. A Scroll of Cleansing cleans you, everything you carry, and the floor of the room in one go.
Only clothes you are wearing get washed. Anything packed away stays as it is.
Mind your scent
Rooms carry smells. Cooking, food and meat left lying about, corpses, and places like crypts and sewers all add scent to the room. Pleasant smells raise your Comfort and foul ones lower it. Some heroes have traits that make them love or hate particular smells.
Creatures that are wandering, and have not noticed you, can smell a strong scent from the next room. If the smells in a room add up high enough, nearby creatures drift toward it. A roasting supper or a pile of fresh kills can bring visitors to your door.
Smells fade on their own, some quickly and some slowly. Eat what you cook, carry away what you do not need, and do not make camp beside a corpse.
Keep your food safe
Eating while you are Dirty carries a 1% chance of Fever every time. Wash before you eat.
Killing an animal with a blade still wet with undead blood taints the meat it drops. Eating it can give you an Illness, or a Fever if the blade was very bloody. Clean your weapon after fighting the dead.
Raw meat rots into Rotten meat after about 30 turns, and cooked meat after about 80. Where blood soaks into the floor of an underground room, a Blight fruit can grow. Eaten raw it makes you Diseased, but brewed in a pot it cures the disease instead.