Health
Health, in general, measures how much damage you can take before dying. If the sum of your damage lowers your health to 0, you will fall in critical status. Further damage will lower health into negative numbers; you'll die if you reach the opposite of your max health.
Health is not precisely visible normally; all you have is a green pulse that gets redder and smaller when you get hurt. You will also have a Health Doll, which shows which limbs have been hurt. To heal from damage with brute packs or ointments, you'll have to target the hurt limbs first.
Health Analyzers can be used to obtain a detailed readout of the health of a humanoid, showing precisely how much of each type of damage has been taken, and where. It will also tell in broad terms if the target is suffering from special damage types.
Health Scanner HUDs are a special type of glasses that will show a lifebar on top of all living beings. The bar will go from full to empty when going from alive to crit; when in crit, the bar will start flashing red, with the flashes becoming more frequent as the target approaches death.
By default, humans and humanoids have 100 health (and consequently up to -100 crit health).
Blood
Most humanoids have blood. The base amount is 560cc, which generally remains at that level. Blood can be drawn and injected with syringes and IV drips, can be lost from wounds and regenerated through chemicals.
There are also blood types, which follow the general real world rules. Lizardpeople have a special bloodtype, marked L, which can only receive from and donate to the L blood type. See the table below to see which blood types can receive which. Red is the donor.
Donor | |||||||||||
A+ | A- | B+ | B- | AB+ | AB- | 0+ | 0- | L | |||
Receiver | A+ | Y | Y | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | N | |
A- | N | Y | N | N | N | N | N | Y | N | ||
B+ | N | N | Y | Y | N | N | Y | Y | N | ||
B- | N | N | N | Y | N | N | N | Y | N | ||
AB+ | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | ||
AB- | N | Y | N | Y | N | Y | N | Y | N | ||
0+ | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y | Y | N | ||
0- | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y | N | ||
L | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | N | Y |
Damage Types
Health is not gained per se; to restore lost health the specific type of damage dealt must be fixed.
Main Damage Types
There are five main types of damage, and some other forms of damage which does not directly harm health.
Brute
Brute damage is the most common: it's caused by being hit with physical weapons, pressure or lack thereof, explosions, acid, surgery, and so on.
It can be commonly treated through brute packs, bicaridine or styptic powder.
A side effect of brute damage is Bleeding: once you take enough brute damage, you'll start bleeding out in proportion to the damage taken. Bleeding can be noticed by drops of blood falling off your character periodically.
Burn
The second most common damage, Burn damage is usually dealt by lasers, hot weapons like welding tools, electric shocks, explosions, and fire. Damage dealt by cold is also taken as burn damage. It can be commonly treated through ointments, kelotane or silver sulfadiazine.
Burn damage cannot cause bleeding, but corpses affected by enough burn damage become Husks, becoming hard to identify and to clone.
Toxin
The least common (normal) damage is Toxin damage. It's caused mainly by, obviously, toxins, and miscellaneous poisoning. It's commonly treated through Antitoxin or Charcoal, although Cryo is also a fairly good option.
Unlike burn or brute damage, toxin damage leaves no physical marks, making it invisible to bystanders examining you. It can still be detected by using a Health Analyzer. You can't directly detect the presence of toxins on yourself without one either, but you can usually tell by checking the health bar on the health scanner HUD, or from the fact that you are slowed down without being hurt in other ways.
Oxygen
Also known as suffocation, or oxyloss, oxygen damage is taken when not breathing, or by some special toxins.
Oxyloss, unlike other forms of damage, will heal quickly over time if you're breathing, making it generally not too threatening on its own. However, it still counts as normal damage when calculating crit and death, so continued lack of breathing will still end up being lethal. If you take 50 or more suffocation damage, you pass out.
Accumulating too much oxygen damage also causes you to occasionally pass out, making it harder to get to a safe spot or acquire internals.
Can be healed with Salbutamol, which will counteract suffocation quickly enough to offset lack of air while active. Epinephrine will slowly heal oxyloss while in crit, keeping critical status from getting worse.
Cellular
Cellular damage (also referred to as cloneloss or clone damage) is a special type of damage which is hidden even from Health Analyzers, although it will still factor in the health total, which means that subtracting the other damage from the total health will result in the total cellular damage.
The most common source of cellular damage is cloning: clones will start with heavy cellular damage when they get out of the pod. Other sources are slimes, which are rarely seen unless you work in Xenobiology.
Cellular damage is very hard to heal: it can only be cured by Cryoxadone or Rezadone, the latter being hard to make and the former requiring a cryogenics tube and someone to activate it.
Special Damage Types
Stamina
Stamina damage (also called holodamage) is basically "fake" damage: it will change your health icon as if it was real damage, but it's not calculated for crit or death. However, if normal damage plus stamina damage would make you fall below 0 health, you'll get paralyzed for some time. It will also slow you down as much as normal damage does.
Normally caused by disablers and similar weapons, damage from holograms made by the holodeck, some toxins, and hallucinations.
It will rapidly heal on its own, but epinephrine and some stun-reducing drugs will increase the regeneration speed.
Brain
Brain damage can be caused by cloning, hits to the head, some chemicals and toxins, the chaplain with his bible, and some diseases.
By itself it does nothing, but taking brain damage has a chance of inflicting Brain Traumas. This chance scales both with the amount of damage taken by the hit and the brain damage you already have.
Brain Traumas can be Mild, Severe or Special. See the Guide to Traumas for info about how to cure different traumas.
If brain damage reaches extremely high levels (200 hp) you'll die of brain death, with no possibility of cloning as the brain becomes unusable. You can still fix this by splashing some Mannitol on the brain. It will heal its damage instantly.
Brain damage itself can be cured with Mannitol or Brain Surgery.
Bleeding
Bleeding is generally caused by brute damage, and rarely by embedded objects or heparin. When bleeding, your blood volume decreases over time. When it starts getting low, you'll start seeing messages like "You start to feel tired...". If it gets even lower, you'll start rapidly taking oxygen damage, proportionally to the amount of blood lost.
If your blood volume gets too low, you'll die even if you managed to stave off the oxygen damage.
Blood loss can be treated by adding new blood (of the right blood type) or saline-glucose solution. Iron will also help regenerate blood.
Radiation
Radiation can be accumulated through genetics testing, radiation storms, staying too close to the supermatter or the nuclear fission device, or by a few traitor devices. Radiation will gradually deal toxin damage. Additionally, it can cause complete hair loss, random mutations, fainting, and vomiting.
Radiation can be reduced with Potassium Iodide or Pentetic Acid. Toxin damage caused by radiation must be healed separately.
Ear Damage
Ear damage is caused by loud noises like flashbangs, or diseases. Enough ear damage will result in deafness.
Can be cured with Inacusiate.
Eye Damage
Eye damage is caused by stabbing eyes with sharp items, bright flashes from flashbangs or explosions, or diseases. Eye damage will result in eye blurring, nearsightedness, and eventually total blindness.
Can be cured with Oculine.
Critical Status
Also referred to as Crit, critical status happens when you fall below 0 health. You are still technically alive, but you are effectively helpless: you'll be deaf, mute, blind and unable to move or act. You'll also start slowly suffocating, meaning that eventually you will die if nobody saves you.
Whispering (.w) while in critical status will allow you to whisper a short message in your last breath to those who are close to you; however, doing so will kill you instantly.
Deathgasp (*deathgasp) can also be used while in crit. It's an emote that mimics your death message, which may fool bystanders (or your killer) into thinking you died, buying you some time.
Death
The final stage of life, death is what happens when you take too much damage.
If you still have a brain, coming back is possible through Cloning, or you may end up is a Cyborg if the Roboticists harvest you first. If you don't have a brain, but still have blood, you can be revived through Replica pods by botanists. These methods of resurrections will allow you to keep your memory.
Otherwise, enjoy spectating the round as a Ghost, or take one of the Ghost Roles. There are also special opportunities and events where ghosts can enter a round again as another role or antagonist. All of these are separate lives, and you cannot use knowledge gained in a previous life while playing them.
Simple Animals
Simple animals handle health in a simpler way: they have a health value, which is displayed to the player as a percentage in the Status tab on the right. Any damage taken will lower the health value, which in most cases can be healed by bruise packs or self-healing in rare cases.