Health
Overview
Health, or better known as HP, is a value that dictates the amount of “life” within a player’s character, whether in the case of zombies or humans. If Health reaches zero, the character dies. Health can be increased, decreased, preserved, or hindered by multiple different status effects, perks, conditions, and interactions which can either negatively or positively impact the health bar. Each player starts with a base HP of 100, while zombies can range anywhere from below 100 towards the thousands.
The amount of health is dictated by the player’s Traits, if human, and the zombie type, if zombie. While there are alternative ways to increase the robustness and strength of a human and zombie, they are largely a result of one’s own choice and selection of perks and zombie type.
Health Values
Base Health Increase
Health is often necessary when attempting to build a strong, melee-oriented, and/or tanky build. Whilst there are many ways to achieve this, they can be summed up to:
- Perks like Tanker and Stoic (Making you slower in the process)
- Trinkets like Health Bank (Which makes zombie debuffs 15% more effective on you)
Base Health Decrease
Health can be decreased in a similar manner. There are many reasons why you would want to decrease your health, but the ways you can decrease your health remain similar to increasing them:
- Perks like Speed and Ultra Nimble (Which increase your speed)
Different Effects on Health
A lot of different trinkets and perks either decrease or increase the amount of incoming damage. There are also perks that focus on giving off defensive buffs, like Defense or Perseverance. Blood Armor also plays a major role in lowering the amount of damage taken.
- Perks like Egocentric and Blast Proof lower the amount of self-inflicted damage.
- Trinkets like Armor stop up to 26% of incoming damage.
- Status Effects such as Shield, Defense, and Perseverance.
There are other things that do a similar but opposite effect on your player character, such as:
- Perks like Last Stand and Berserk which increase incoming damage.
- Trinkets like Antibleeder, Cleanser, and Evasion Cloak decrease bleed, poison, and increase dodge time but also increase damage taken.
- Status Effects like Enfeeble and Winter's Curse, which increase damage taken and decrease maximum health.
Healing and Damage
Healing is received from multiple sources, both from oneself and others. Healing is always crucial, as you will take damage throughout the game regardless of how methodical you are.
- Regeneration status can heal you over time. Useful when you are already full on HP.
- Food items give a wide variety of health and status effects.
- Bloodlust can heal you if you intend to play a melee playstyle.
- Fencebar and Vitality Charger give healing orbs on kills.
- Healing can be provided by dedicated healers, who will assist you.
As the game progresses, and the zombies become stronger, the ability to heal should become more powerful. If the rate of healing does not align with the rate of damage, humans will slowly but progressively begin to die. Damage can be taken in a variety of ways, none of which are pleasant. They can be either self-inflicted or taken from external sources, such as zombies or level traps.
- Bleed and Poison essentially damage the player over time, which can be negated by using a bandage and antidote respectively. They can also be out-healed by normal medkits.
- Perks like Avatar of Death inflict damage upon a player after a reaper stack dissipates.
- Zombie claws directly cause damage, ranging from mild all the way to lethal.
- Physics can play a role in your death. Shades and other zombies can hurl objects towards you, causing huge amounts of damage.
Avoiding damage is much better than trying to heal it, so it is recommended you at least attempt to avoid it whenever possible. This can be done by estimating if zombies can reach you within a cade, if it is safe outside, or if your build is sufficient enough, or if it needs supplementing.