Attribute:Endurance

**Endurance** is the governing attribute for Block, Heavy Armor, Medium Armor, and Smithing. It affects:

* Stamina = Endurance + Agility + Strength + Willpower (NPCs and player)
* Base health = Endurance × 2 (player only)
* Health increase on leveling = Endurance ÷ 10 (rounded down) (player only)
	+ If increasing Endurance on level up: Above + (Increase x 2).
* The duration that your character may breathe underwater for before drowning.

In-game Description: *Affects how much Fatigue you have, your Health, and how much your Health will increase when you sleep and raise levels. Governs the skills of Block, Heavy Armor, Medium Armor, and Smithing.*

If your Endurance is increased while leveling, your health will increase both because the base health has increased and because of the health increase on leveling. In other words, base health is recalculated at each level-up after applying any Endurance gains.

## Character Creation

The starting values for Endurance vary by race and gender:

* Initial +10 endurance bonuses are possible by selecting either The Lady or The Warrior as birthsign.
* The following standard classes have endurance as a class attribute (initial +5 bonus):
	+ Acrobat, Pilgrim, Scout, Sorcerer, Spellsword, and Warrior
* Or any custom class can select endurance as one of its two attributes.

## Health Gains

The health gain each time you level is dependent upon the current value of your endurance; this increase is not retroactive. Therefore to get maximum health you need to raise your endurance to 100 as quickly as possible. To illustrate, the following table compares the health for five characters who all reach 100 endurance by level 20.

The minimum Endurance you can start with is 30 and the maximum is 65. Between these two characters, there will be a 37 point difference in maximum health as long as both max out their Endurance as soon as possible. If, however, you neglect to level endurance until as late as possible, a character following the efficient leveling guide, with the maximum level of 46, will have between 384 and 486 health, a deficit of over 100 to a character who started with 30 endurance and maximized it by level 15.

## Notes

* Any *Fortify Endurance* effect will also provide a health increase (equal to two times the endurance boost). These effects will not modify the health received when you level.
* Conversely, *Damage Endurance* or *Drain Endurance* effects cast upon you will decrease your health. In the case of *Damage Endurance*, this is substantially more expensive than directly casting a *Damage Health* spell. On the other hand, *Drain Endurance* is effectively cheaper than *Drain Health* (although obtaining access to the *Drain Endurance* effect is very difficult, and draining Endurance only amounts to a temporary decrease in health).
* However, using a *Damage Endurance* or *Drain Endurance* effect upon NPCs does **not** decrease their health.
* Fortifying endurance to values greater than 100 continues to increase your health and fatigue.
* It is possible to permanently increase your base Endurance past 100, allowing you to squeeze out a little bit more health on leveling:
	+ In total, a maximum base Endurance of 115 is possible, although this will be rounded down to a maximum of 11 health gained per level.

## See Also

* **Increasing Attributes**: Tips on how to increase endurance.
* **Magic Items**: There are multiple generic items with that fortify the endurance attribute.
* **Unique Items**: A list of unique items, of which several fortify the endurance attribute. These do not include Artifacts.