- The amount of damage you can take before you die. Increases every time you gain a level.
Health is the amount of damage you can take before dying. Your starting health depends on your Endurance and Strength. You gain additional health when you level up.
Total HealthEdit
The red bar in the lower-left corner of the screen indicates current and maximum health.
- Maximum health at the beginning of the game is determined by
(Strength + Endurance) / 2
. - When leveling up, health is increased by 10% of Endurance.
- Only the base Endurance and the 25 Endurance added by the Lady birthsign affect the health gain, meaning that Fortify Attribute spells won't help.
- Although displayed as an integer, maximum health is accurate to one decimal place, allowing partial health from leveling to accumulate.
Losing HealthEdit
- Health is usually lost during combat.
- Getting hit by a weapon damages health, the value depending on the enemy's weapon, Strength, and equipment condition (see formula).
- Getting hit by a creature attack damages health.
- Getting hit by a Hand-to-hand attack damages fatigue. At zero fatigue, the target is knocked to the ground and hand-to-hand attacks start damaging health instead. Hand-to-hand health damage takes the skill into account but not Strength (see formula).
- Armor Rating reduces the amount of health lost in combat. It is based on the combined strength of worn armor pieces, the relevant skill for each type worn—Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, or Unarmored—and the equipment condition (see formula).
- No health is lost when an attack is evaded or blocked.
- Magical effects that damage health include Damage Health, Fire Damage, Frost Damage, Shock Damage, and Poison. Absorb Health acts like Damage Health on the target. Drain Health lowers current health, but raises it by the same amount when the duration expires.
- If you cast Fortify Health on yourself, you will lose that same amount when the effect expires, potentially killing you.
- Vampires lose health from Sun Damage when exposed to sunlight.
- Several environmental effects can damage health:
- Falling from high distances damages health, but the damage is reduced by Acrobatics.
- Staying underwater until your breath meter runs out rapidly damages health until you can breathe again.
- Standing in lava rapidly damages health while in contact.
- Death occurs when health is less than or equal to 1.
- Upon death, you'll be asked if you want to load your most recent saved game.
- If you choose "no", you'll get the option to load another save, start a new game, or quit.
Recovering HealthEdit
- You can restore your health with the Restore Health effect. Using Absorb Health also restores the caster's health.
- Resting, but not waiting, will restore health equal to 10% of Endurance per hour.
- This value is accurate to one decimal place and can accumulate.
- Fortify Health effects increase current and maximum health for the duration.
Equipment ConditionEdit
Armor and weapons have a condition value, which degrades with use. It acts as a damage modifier in combat. Condition is shown in the item's inventory tooltip and, for your currently equipped weapon, also as a red bar underneath the weapon icon in the lower-left corner near your health bar.
- With low condition values, armor provides less protection and weapons inflict less damage.
- An item with zero condition cannot be used at all until repaired.
- Equipment can be repaired by a Smith or by using repair tools.
- Equipment can be damaged by the Disintegrate effect.