The're a sveral stats that cause debuff or even death(insomnia) if they go to high or to low.
While it's save to ignore hunger and thirst and only eat/drink if you enter a war-/fightingzone, not knowing the insomnialevel of your char and cause unpleasant experience of sudden death or being forced to replay a longer time, esp. because ways of reducing insomnia are rare, at least at the beginning.

A FAQ stated the Insomnia level should be shown via a yellow "insomnia-meter" but the only yellow meter i see is the health bar.

Dos someone know i can see my chars current Insomnialevel?

I think insomnnia level also affects the screen in general - as it rises, the screen edges kind of look blurry or something? It's hard to describe.

But then again, it doesn't matter that it's hard to describe, because I'm almost certain this "affect", subtle though it is, is removed if you quit and then reload the game (or possibly even just reload?).

Once insomnia reaches a certain level, it's supposed to actually show "insomnia" somewhere on the HUD - again, not sure how long that stays there or if it persists properly after a save/reload.

So, in short: there's supposed to be a way to see insomnia level, but it's at best "a general indicator" or a dire warning when it's really high, but in practice may quite possibly not be working properly, like many other aspects of this game that they still haven't managed to fix a whole year after release.

Early on, you can reduce insomnia by smoking a number of cigarettes - it may take a fair few, depending on how high your insomnia is already, before it's back to a level where you can survive an insomnia attack (e.g. those ghost mutts).

It looks like you could also reduce it using some drug (not the proper one you get later, but the street drug you can buy). I can't remember what it's called, but I do remember that back in 1.5 there was a really high likelihood of it instantly killing you. I managed to get it to work once I think, and I have no idea what strange circumstances made that possible - it may have been completely random, given how buggy the game still was then.

BTW I heard they finally fixed the problem with being able to "defeat" those insomnia mutts - is that true? I haven't played since 1.5 - got to the point literally right before the end, before a game-breaking bug fucked my play through, and haven't been motivated to go back, considering how many broken things there are in the game.

Also the fact that the devs decided to increase the difficulty in certain parts for no fucking reason doesn't exactly help when they should be spending their time actually fixing the many, many things wrong with it. The last thing this game needs is for its shitty balance to become even shittier.

So i will get a warning if it reaches 70%+, thats something at least.
Difficulty is ok overall, i have more problems with Itemmanegment and maintanance of weapons and sometimes armor, It felt a bit like a joke if i fight several enemys with gun's..that have infinite ammo and no weapon degrade while i have to count every bullet and fix my weapon every 5-10 shoots...and after victory you get nearly nothing most the time..some Junk-Item, no exp no weapons, no ammo no money...the next fight i have some easy animals, each drops a sword+some Junk items and i made 4 lev. with that fight^^...maybe i have insomnia too but the game feels more like Ver 0.6 not 1.6

Edit: I have to add...i don't have a problem with repairing weapons and armor and i found enough stuff to keep everything in good condition but but the speed weapons are falling apart is a joke, it's just annoying and using higher quality weapons doesn't help but make's it even worse...seems that many guns have % degrade/shot

Yes DF1871, you are right, repairs on start level and medium level weapons and guns are not so bad, you can easily loot/trade/buy the necessary materials if you pay attention to things.
Actually guns and armors are not really a big problem to repair, even at higher levels, you will see once you get the higher level guns, they seem to degrade slower than the low level ones, partly because they kill faster, partly because they seem to have a higher durability overall.
The main problem and my biggest gripe is with melee weapons that require steel to repair and you need lots of it after each and every fight.
The balance is so that its definitely not worth using these weapons, at least not in normal fights.
Save these weps and mats for really tough fights.
In a certain way this makes sense, but then again i have a feeling this was not intended to be this way because its really odd.
So yeah its obvious the devs were not able to balance everything nicely, but after all is said and done, and despite my complaints, i enjoyed this game enormously the way it was.
Yes the game had issues but despite that, it was so much fun to play, and offered me an unforgettable experience.
For players who can look past the quirks and unnecessarily frustrating bits, this game has a lot to offer.

I don't mind the fact that the higher-tier stuff requires harder-to-obtain materials - it's an interesting way to limit their use while still allowing you to obtain them earlier.

What I really hate about the whole repair business is that the amount of materials required is so much that you need to dedicate a significant portion of your inventory to those materials, which combined with the drinks and food you also need to have around at all times (unless you want to suffer the debuffs due to hunger or thirst), doesn't exactly leave a lot left over for ammunition.

Which basically means that the machine-guns are completely useless, since you'll run out of ammo well before the end of a mission. SMGs are thankfully still viable since they're a secondary weapon (and so not used as much as a LMG would be), and I think their ammo is lighter and generally not chewed through as quickly as the LMG ammo.

I have no problem with guns requiring repairs, but it would make much more sense if weapons would degrade at a level where, for most missions, one could wait till the end of the mission before repairing them. As it stands, you need to constantly repair your guns in the field - even if they somehow don't break by the end of the mission, it doesn't take many shots before they start to jam constantly.

Who the hell thought it was a good idea to require weapon repairs every time one changes the cartridge?