Health

You hear the wailing of the Banshee...

Health works just like in any other game - if you lose all your health, you are dead. Try to avoid that!

There are many ways to lose health. The most frequent cause is combat and taking hits, but disease, foolishness, and many other bizarre things can cause you to lose health. HellMOO doesn't debuff you for having low health, so from a practical perspective, having 1 health is just as good as having 30 (until you next get hit, of course!). All that really matters is that your health level is more than zero.

Max Health

There is no overheal or temporary health mechanic in HellMOO, but you can permanently increase your maximum health via two means - the Fibrocartilage mutation, and endocrine modules.

Note that if you go through the process of removing all your mutations, your maximum health will be reset to 25, no matter what it was initially. This means that any previous investment in max health will be lost on top of a -5 penalty. With enough time, money, and endocrines, you can eventually get back to 60.

Fibrocartilage

Fibro increases health by +5, which is fantastic. Five health points will save you a significant amount of dying, a lot of worry, and a lot of time. Most players consider this mutation outright essential and work it into all of their builds.

Some players shun Fibrocartilage because of its downside, which is effectively neutering Rejuvex - the only way to reverse ageing. This is generally discouraged, partly because age can be reset by rerolling, partly because it takes a long time (or a lot of dying) to reach old age, and partly because the extra +5 health is just so darn important.

For more information on Fibro, see the mutation's wiki page.

Endocrines

Endocrines can be purchased from shops. In descending order of price: Corpclave, Maas Neotek and Botany Bay all stock them, though each shop only stocks two endocrines at a time. Each endocrine has a chance of increasing your maximum health by 1. Endocrines are always a big investment - you can expect getting from 35 to 60 health to cost you well over $100,000. This is because the first few endocrines are almost guaranteed, but with each successful endocrine usage, the chance of your next endocrine succeeding reduces. Missing endocrine after endocrine isn't fun, but it's worth it! Every point of health between you and being dead is incredibly high-value.

Many people like to take Fibrocartilage before they start seriously investing in endocrines, because Fibro buffs your endocrine success rate. Don't forget to update your clone after gaining your extra health - if you die before you do so, you'll have to buy and use the endocrines all over again.

Preventing Health Loss

Protecting your health from damage is an important topic discussed elsewhere on the wiki - check out the Combat guide and the List of Armor. Outside of direct damage, however, there are more indirect means of losing health - and ways to prevent them.

Bleeding

Blood loss will continually subtract health from your HP pool until the bleeding is patched up or wears off on its own. Bleeding uses the heartbeat timer, and is subject to that system when determing whether healing from trauma kits or damage from bleeds hits first; see the linked article. The strength of a bleed can be reduced using lie. If you are lying down, you take less periodic bleed damage.

Bleed can be removed by using a suture or first aid kit, which requires the Medic skill. If you don't have Medic, you can use a roll of makeshift bandages. These are slower but can be used well into the negative medic totals.

Sickness

Some illnesses can subtract directly from your health pool. The solution to sickness depends on what sickness you're dealing with, but they all need to be treated quickly. See diseases and afflictions for more.

Recovering Health

Losing some health is inevitable. Here's how to get it back!

Items

There are several items that can help you recover health:

• Nanite healers give you an up-front burst of healing, followed by a smaller burst on the next heartbeat. Each nanite has 3 charges, and the use nanite action can be queued up multiple times. This can even be done mid-combat, and will only require you to briefly stop attacking, but nanite spam will stun you and induce nausea if abused. Nanites can be found in various places around the gameworld and bought in several stores. They also require minimal medic skill to use. However, several mutations reduce or remove their effectiveness.
  • Abomination, Hyperimmune and Iron Liver reduce nanite effectiveness by 40%, 60% and 25% respectively.
• Trauma kits come in three flavors: single-use, five-use (medium) and ten-use (large). Trauma kits heal on the heartbeat timer, and the amount of healing scales with the Medic skill of whoever applied the bandages. Trauma kits can be bought from most medical shops.
  • Large trauma kits can be found or crafted. The recipe is found in the hospital.
  • Trauma kits can be combined, much like gun ammo, which saves some inventory space. You can only combine medium and medium kits or large and large kits; they can't mix.
• Mediguns require good medic skill to use, but are very strong, healing for big chunks with only short intervals between bursts. They also have an ubercharge function, which provides a substantial boost to the target's dodge - handy for preventing critical friends from taking more damage. You cannot use a medigun on yourself, and they require charge to function.
• Food heals a very small amount of health when eaten, though this is mostly just a nice side effect of not starving.
• Rolls of makeshift bandages will heal for a tiny amount; their main use is stopping bleeding, but they at least require no Medic to use. These come from improv band with clothing with random orphan clothes and your local craft-grinder's mountain of leather berets.

Abilities

Certain abilities heal damage when used.

• Sex is available to everyone, unless you're a virgin loser, in which case you can at least wank. Orgasming will give you the endorphins buff, which heals you for +2 or +1 every heartbeat for a short time. Having more fuck skill and having sex instead of wanking increases the duration of the buff. In the very early game, you'll probably find that sex and food is enough to pull you through most scrapes.
• Salamander mutants can mend. This requires focus in the mid- to high-teens and gives you a burst of about 6 health with every use upon completion. Mend has a relatively long cooldown and costs stress, however.
• Iron Liver mutants can drink huge amounts of alcohol to heal themselves. This uses the heartbeat timer, and heals very inconsistently - anywhere from +1 to about +6 health.
• Vampires can use feed to suck other creatures' blood, which heals for up to +5 every heartbeat. The amount healed depends on the target; see the article for more info.
• Zombies can heal for up to +5 a heartbeat by feeding on heads (this is not related to the Vampire feed). This is, in fact, the only way for zombies to heal - no other method listed here will work on the walking dead!
• Abominations can devour humanoid corpses for a big burst of healing, which then peters down. The heal amount ranges from 6 to 16!
• Chromemouths can zero in combat, which activates a life-steal - they heal for a percentage of all damage that they deal, which can add up very quickly. Zero requires a great deal of Cool, however.
• Billygoat mutants can munch things, which heals for a little extra on top of normal fullness based on the weight of the thing consumed. Munch a whole refrigerator for +5 heals for a short time!