A comprehensive guide on Health, Pain, Armour, Stamina, Fatigue and Items to replenish them. Includes tips and advice to inform and support decision making.
Preface
This Health Guide is intended to provide clarity on basic game mechanics and give insight into how to maximize your results regarding choosing items and making decisions.
Use the Table of Contents to skip or find the appropriate section for you.
Below are some abbreviations I will be using throughout this guide:
- Pirate Bandage = PB
- Small First Aid = SFA
- Pirate First Aid = PFA
- Large First Aid = LFA
Health
Maximum health is 100.
Damage formula: ((Shot Damage – Armour) x # of Projectiles) x Limb Multiplier = Damage Dealt
- Torso/Arms = 1x
- Legs = 0.5x
- Head = 3.25x
Whenever you receive damage, your health is decreased. This can be increased by consuming food or meds.
- Chocolate – 6
- Cracker – 6
- Water – 6
- Biscuit – 7.5
- Food Can – 7.5
- Large Water – 10
- Ration – 12
- Bandage – 12
- PB – 14
- SFA – 36
- PFA – 39
- LFA – 96
Pain
Whenever you receive damage from any source, a percentage of that damage is converted into pain.
Pain formula: Damage Received x 0.1175 = Pain gained
This is shown as the white portion on your health bar. You can heal pain with drugs.
- Chocolate Spice – 5
- Aspirin – 15
- Spice – 25
- Meth – 50
- Morphine – 75
Bleeding
Whenever you receive bullet damage, you have a percentage chance to receive the bleeding status effect. Different guns/ammo types have different bleed chances. Bleeding does 3 damage/second for 60 seconds and stops at 10% HP.
Bleeding can be stopped with a bandage, SFA or LFA. Food/drugs will not stop the bleeding.
Helmets & Armour
Players and AI have 4 hitboxes:
- Head
- Torso
- Arms
- Legs
Helmets protect the entire head hitbox, including the face.
Armour protects the torso and arms.
Legs do not receive any protection from armour, but have a 50% base reduction from incoming damage.
Helmets and armour can have up to 2 values displayed in the top left of the icon.
The top value is Armour Protection, the bottom value is Blast Protection.
All helmets & armour have Armour Protection, but only a handful of them have Blast Protection.
Armour Protection reduces incoming damage by 1 per point.
- Damage Formula:
((Shot Damage – Armour) * # of Projectiles) * Limb Multiplier = Damage Dealt
Blast Protection reduces explosion damage by 10 per point (except explosive barrels), and bombardments while in disabled ships by 1 per point (may need correction).
Critical hits on ships currently do not register.
- Blast Damage Formula:
(Explosive Damage – (10 * Blast Protection) * Limb Multiplier = Damage Dealt - Bombardment Damage Formula:
Damage – Blast Protection = Damage Dealt
Durability
Primary gun durability is reduced by 1 per 3 bullets.
Sidearm durability is reduced by 1 per 2 bullets (this includes the M712 Special).
Armor durability is reduced by 1 per bullet/pellet hit.
Stamina
Maximum stamina is 100.
Stamina is consumed when sprinting, jumping, and when you ADS. Stamina naturally regenerates over time.
Chocolate spice, spice and meth can be used to “pause” your stamina consumption for X amount of time. This gives you unlimited stamina for X duration, and prevents your stamina from regenerating until X duration elapses.
- Chocolate Spice – 25s
- Meth – 50s
- Spice – 125s
Fatigue
Whenever you consume stamina, a percentage of that is converted into fatigue. This is shown as the white portion on your stamina bar. You can heal fatigue with food.
- Cracker – 4
- Biscuit – 5
- Canned Food – 10
- Chocolate – 15
- Water – 20
- Large Water – 40
- Ration – 50
Obtaining Meds
Meds are obtained by purchasing from the Trader (food, bandages, Aspirin and SFAs), crafting (PBs and PFAs), or looting from raids (medical bags, medical crates, salvaging, Vending Machines).
Buying bandages will be your primary method. You can buy SFAs from any Trader with faction rep lvl 10 (except Pirates). You can buy Aspirin at Kingdom Alliance lvl 6 (XP from raid missions) and Pirates lvl 6 (XP from Zero to Hero contracts, unlocked specifically at rank 12).
The best way to obtain first aids/drugs is by salvaging, followed by looting med bags, using Vending Machines (1 copper coin/SFA), and collecting med crates.
You can also collect disinfectant from common containers (garbage bags/cans, cardboard/wooden boxes, filing cabinets/drawers) and salvage.
I suggest you spend your disinfectant on crafting PFAs instead of PBs. My reasoning for this is that normal bandages are sufficient and can be bought from any trader, compared to SFAs which cannot be bought until your traders hit lvl 10.
The only other ways to obtain SFAs is through medical bags, medical crates, medic AI on Colony Cruiser, Vending Machines and other players. That is why it is better to spend disinfectant on PFAs: the jump from bandages>PFAs is much higher than bandages>PBs. Healing per second is much more important than total healing per cell.
You receive 3x PBs per craft, and 3x PFAs per craft.
Other Useful Tips & Info
- Middle mouse is the default quick-use keybind.
- You can cancel healing by pressing Fire once.
- You recover stamina significantly faster while crouched.
- If you want to be very conservative with your money, I recommend using food instead of meds to heal when fighting AI or if you are safe and have time. Once you acquire enough funds, you can use bandages more frivolously.
- For your med loadout, I suggest:
– 4-6 stacks of bandages
– 2-4 aspirin
– 4+ waters/chocolates
– 1-2 stacks of SFA’s
– 1 LFA
I recommend this as your minimum amount. Aim for the higher end if you are PVP focused or engage is heavy ship combat.
This may seem expensive at first, but saving your life and/or winning the fight will allow you to keep your loot and help you snowball into a more bountiful stash, making this very affordable. Think of it like insurance.
LFAs heal 96 HP total, and the high healing/second is vital in recovering from a firefight in short time.
- Fill the remaining space in your bag with food. It is exceptionally cheap and gives you extra resources to spend instead of your more valuable meds. You can always drop it for better loot.
- Always top up your fatigue as you go to be prepared for PVP. Heal your pain before a fight as some guns deal 97.5 damage on headshot to lvl 12 helmets.
- Place meds in your rig pockets, specifically the LFA in the centre. When you press tab, your cursor appears in the centre. This allows you to tab and immediately middle mouse to use the LFA
- Meds heal over 3-5 seconds, with food healing the least/second, followed by bandages, then SFAs, then LFAs. Save your bandages/first aids for PVP when healing time is crucial!
- Bring 1-3 copper coins with you into every raid to guarantee you can buy 1-3 SFAs from the Vending Machine. You can easily find more coppers in-raid from common containers/valuables pouches. Copper horns can be scrapped for 4-8 copper coins.
- Helmets are more important than armour. Each lvl of helmet reduces damage by 3.25 due to the headshot multiplier.
- You can sometimes benefit more from using armour with more pockets for extra meds/loot with minimal compromise on protection.
ie. a Plate Rig with 9 armour has 12 slots, versus a Sherman Plate that has 11 armor and only 6 slots. Having double the meds will allow you to fight/trade more while 2 armour points may not make any difference, especially if you are headshotted. More space for loot also means your stash increases at a high rate. - Multiply your gun durability by 3 to calculate how many bullets you can shoot before your gun breaks. The ideal synergy is to bring the exact amount of ammo your gun can shoot before it breaks. Rifles are an exception due to their high durability, damage and ammo rarity.