Medicine (skill)

Skill

Skill "Medicine" directly affects your health and ability to heal yourself without medic`s help.

* Each invested skill point increases effectiveness of healing potions and other medication by 3% (with base value of 40%).
* Each skill level increases your maximal health and enables you to operate special medical instrumentation.

## Usage

Keeping yourself healthy is vital to surviving the harsh wasteland, so improving how effective you can heal yourself will go a long way to keeping you alive.

Healing potion effectiveness starts off at 40%, and each point put into medicine raises this by 3%, for a maximum of 100% effectiveness. (This can reach even further with other boosts such as the Rapid metabolism perk.)

Each level of medicine you reach will slightly increase your maximum health. Level 1 will raise it by 20, level 2 by 30, level 3 by 40, level 4 by 50 and level 5 by 60, for a total of 200 extra max health.

Certain medical instruments require a certain level of skill to be reached before they can be used.

* Medicine-1: Blood bag
* Medicine 2: First aid kit
* Medicine 3: Doctor's bag
* Medicine 4: Military surgeon's bag

Aside from your health points, you also have several body parts that you need to watch over. Taking enough damage results in a variety of negative effects, and letting them reach 0 will kill you, forcing you back to base camp.

## Perks

There are several perks associated with medicine:

* Rapid metabolism (Medicine 1): +10% health treatment efficiency (added to current treatment efficiency, e.g. 55% + 10% = 65%). Health regenerates at x2.5 times the normal rate.
* Long-term effect (Medicine 3): Chemicals last twice as long.
* Military anatomy (Medicine 4): +15% damage to equine enemies such as raiders.
* Combat stimulators (Medicine 5): Boosts the power of various chemicals, and halves the addiction rate.

## Medicine alternatives

Medicine is absolutely necessary in nearly all combat scenarios, but there are a few alternatives:

* Magic: Various defensive spells like magical barrier, crystal shield or magical shield will absorb damage, reducing how much you must heal yourself.
* Repair: The Armor enhancement perk will increase the defense of your armor, reducing how much damage you take.
* Science: The Holographic module will increase your evasion, reducing the chance to be hit, while the Reanimation module restores 200 health (with a cooldown of 60 seconds) if you receive a fatal injury.
* Sneak: You won't get hurt if you can't be seen. Sneaking past enemies will reduce how much damage you take.
* Barter: A high barter skill can be used to buy many healing potions, instead of a few highly effective ones.
* Survival: Several potions can be made that will help keep you alive, such as the Super-stimulation potion or the Potion of fortitude.

## Notes

Even though Medicine says it increases the effectiveness of health potions and other medication, it will only increase the effectiveness of health restoration. Anything that recovers body parts will not be affected.

Reaching 0 health will cause you to die and gain a level of the ERS User perk, however dying from a body part reaching 0 and being sent to base camp will not. Falling into a bottomless pit will also not give you a level in the ERS User perk.