TL;DR Smells will cause different reactions to different enemies
In most games, excluding most of The Sims titles, hygiene is not a concern. In Unturned II, it could be. If your character doesn’t keep their character squeaky clean, then entities such as zombies and animals could detect it. Other things that could amplify the distinction of the player’s scent is blood. These could hurt the player, or help the player.
For example, if the player is trailing a path of blood, a zombie could follow it over to the player. But if a player finds a blood bag in a pharmacy or some blood from an animal, they could lure an animal or zombie over to a trap or a clear opening in a forest perfect for an easy shot to their vitals.
A player could also mask their scent with zombie blood to prevent zombies from smelling them, but wearing this wouldn’t be hygienic. This would prevent players from hiding among the zombies for long periods of time by lowering their immunity.
But some animals are deterred by predators, so if made a lure for animals or zombies (or your B.O was strong enough) then some herbivores would be scared away by these scents.
If you wanted to clear your scent, you could go to various stores to find soaps and cleaning products to clean yourself off. You could also just go and jump in a clean lake to wash off the dirt.
Ofcourse, cleaning your character may get tedious. If that becomes the case, it may be better to implement just the odour of blood. I think this would add a dynamic to stealth tactics in towns and finding food in the wilderness. Tell me what you think about this idea.
I liked the idea of disguising the smell and attracting the zombies with blood, but that’s the only thing, I think hygiene is not something that will add a lot to the game besides being able to mess up a little, maybe keeping clean self could help in recovery of health or immunity .
For practical implementation, it would probably be simplest that the player’s hygiene would have a simple effect of allowing entities to detect you via smell for longer than normal. Longer trails when moving, more smell persists when left behind in any given spot.
Perhaps as a mildly hilarious addition, if your hygiene was poor enough or you’d been exposed to a very noticeable odour, other players could even pick up on this with their own sense of smell.
To be honest i think the hygiene part should be added since it would be a pain to keep yourself clean but maybe when you are covered in zombie blood zombies wont attack you like you said but some animals would run away or be more egger to attack you and other players maybe could smell that there are zombies nearby and as they get closer the odor is stronger and if they are smart they could attract all of the zombies (or most of them) away with a flare or something and hunt you down by smell
Not too sure how I feel about this concept to be honest, but I do know I have zero issues with using Turned blood as a way to blend in or at least help to avoid detection from most Turned.