Health

**Health** is one of the three primary statistics of The Character in and it measures your physical condition - how close are you to Death.

The default starting value is 100. If it reaches 0, the character perishes. Additionally, the lower it gets, the more desperate the character becomes, causing "**Injured**" C**ondition**.Lost health is represented as a semi-transparent dark

The current value of the Health is represented by a small vertical bar in the Avatar hub (top right corner of the screen) and in the Character screen.

## Losing health

Lost health is represented as a semi-transparent dark -red part of the health bar in the Character screen and as an empty section in the Avatar hub.

Health lost is the result of receiving wounds, which can currently happen in three situations:

* In the attack during the Night Phase if monsters enter the village or if the character participates in the defense; Players outside the village can also be attacked during the Night Phase.
* In Combat with monsters out of the village.
* In rare cases, during hunting by a boar or a deer.

## Healing

In Grimmwood, it is hard to recover from serious injuries. There are yet several ways to achieve it

* During **Night Phase** - automatically, each **Night Phase** the characters restore small amount of Health, depending on their Conditions. (Insomniac and Hyperactive have negative effect), location (outside or inside the village), commodities, such as camp, tent, bedroll (the last one effective in the village as well). Evening action Meditate improves the regeneration process as well.
* Using Healing potion (Item) instantly restores 20 Health.
* Using Bandage (Item) instantly restores 25% of the lost Health, so it is only effective when a character is seriously wounded.

## Maximal Health

The **Maximal Health** is a value, that the current Health can never exceed, regardless what healing methods are used. This value is always a multiple of 20 and each 20 points are representing with 1 sector of the Health bar in the Character screen.

Depending on the starting Traits, the character can have:

* 100 Maximal Health = 5 sectors (default)
* 80 Maximal Health = 4 sectors ("Faint" Trait)
* 120 Maximal Health = 6 sectors ("Healthy" Trait)

Each time the Maximal Health is reduced due to a Condition, this sector goes black in the Character screen (note the three sections on the image below - current Health about 50%, lost due to wounds about 30% and 20% lost due to reduced Maximal Health). It can be recovered only by losing the condition causing the **Maximal Health** drop. Currently this can be caused only by the "Skinny" Condition. Standard healing does not recover Maximal Health, nor current Health beyond the maximal. In the Health bar in the Avatar hub, maximal health loss is not indicated.

## Tips

* Avoid any Combat, until you are well experienced to know how and when to fight. Unlike most games, in Grimmwood it is rarely beneficial or necessary to fight. In order to avoid unwanted encounters, scout the areas you walk into and if there are monsters either don't risk it or at least use the Sneak option (though small risk still remains).
* Don't get too bold when you are on full Health. Things go bad very quickly and if you are eager to get some wounds, usually the most beneficial way to do it is being on the front line of the Village's defense or fighting for something important, like saving a friend in trouble, destroying monster lairs, or killing monsters very close by the Village - those are a worthy fights.
* If you get low on Health while in Combat, call for help and wait. Continuing the fight or even trying to flee might cost you your life, or your Sanity.
* Don't use Items to heal yourself if you've lost just a small portion of your Health - these items are very scarce and probably they will be more useful elsewhere.
* If you are low on Health, don't Defend the village during the Night Phase, don't enter Combat and don't even hunt to minimize the chance of making it worse. You might even consider upgrading your house defenses.
* Choose Meditate among the evening actions for better regeneration.
* Beware that your Sanity also drops with gaining and having "Injured" **Condition** continuously, so you'd better watch that statistic closely as well.
* Some monsters (especially Giants) can deal a lot of damage with one hit, so beware - entering and staying in combat even if small amount of your Health was previously lost, might be extreme risk for you to get killed by a single blow.