Guide to Proper Health Management

[JohnCapital]

When hunting mobs (monsters), and PVP PKing, managing your health is very important. The idea is simple: Completely remove your opponent's health before yours is taken away. If your health reaches 0.0 you die. However, even if your health is at 0.1, you are still in the fight. (At 108 health, I once took a critical hit for 108.6 dmg and stayed alive long enough to win.) When you die and revive, you always start again with 1.0 health.

To see your general health you can look at the red/yellow/green bar just left of your radar. However, to see what your health is specifically, press the "K" button and look under the attributes tab. Your health is in the upper right section, showing (current health)/(full health potential).
NOTE: As of VU 9.1 seeing your actual current health is no longer available.


SKILLS FOR HEALTH

Beginning avatars start with quite low health, (88 I believe) but that number is increased based on increases in certain skills/attributes. You can see which skills increase your health on the PE-Wiki health charts. Under the "HP Increase" column, if it says yes or gives a number, increasing that skill/attribute will help increase your health. Increasing your Combat Reflexes 1,600 points, for example will give you another full health point. (Please note the numbers, etc. are approximations based on player research, since MA does not comment on specific info such as this.) However the short and easy version is: The more you hunt and mine, the higher your health increases over time.

However, if you are in a hurry for more health and have some PED to spend, you can buy some skill chips and your health will increase appropriately when you insert them.

Also note that health, like all skills/attributes don't increase in whole numbers. They increase in parts. If your health attribute shows your full health as 99, it could be 99.1 or as high as 99.9. When you increase to a whole number in your health, you get a "You have gained additional Health!" message in the chat window.

ASPECTS OF HEALTH MANAGEMENT

Proper health management involves 2 aspects

1. Making sure you do not die
2. Staying alive as economically as possible

The first aspect reminds us that we don't need to be at full health all the time to stay alive. The second reminds us that using a fap costs money, and some cost more than others.

BASIC RULES

The basic rules for health management are simple

1. Heal naturally whenever possible
2. Use your lowest fap when you have the time
3. Use your mid-fap when you need a small quick boost
4. Use your largest fap only during a fight when in danger of dying, or truly need to regain health quickly

HEALING EQUIPMENT

Healing items come in three groups, looted faps, crafted emt kits and looted healing chips. For simplicity sake, we'll lump emts and faps together (let's just call them faps). Each group has their pros and cons. (For now we're leaving out Resurrection Chips & Coover's Personal Nurse for obvious reasons.) Faps and healing chips are one of the 4 major cornerstones of hunting, together with weapons, armor and skills.

Healing chips are by far the least used among miners/hunters. The slow speed, high usage cost and problem of losing concentration due to getting hit makes them more useful for long-distance healing of sweaters or team mates.

Of the faps, the best is by far the Modified Omegaton Fast Aid Pack or Mod Fap. healing up to 160 health at 1PEC/use makes it the best, in both quality and economy. However, the average player will never get their hands on one, so let's skip it.

Check out fap stats on PE-Wiki.info here.

HEALING & MOVEMENT

Remember, you can not fully heal yourself while walking/running forward. You can lose as much as 75% of your faping ability while walking/running, (depending on speed of movement) while still paying the same decay. Doing this is a huge waste. You can heal fully while walking sideways or back, however, this action is generally useless. You can't walk backwards fast enough to evade mob hits, and it's usually better to just shoot them as they enter from a distance (assuming your health isn't too low to begin with).

PHYSICIAN HEAL THYSELF

One fact in EU that many Calypsians forget is regenerating health. Every avatar regenerates ~5% of their full health every 20 seconds. (NOTE: This heal rate is not exact, based on latest tests, but your heal rate does stay constant regardless of movement, unlike faps.) So if you're full health is 100, and you took damage, you'll gain back ~5 points every 20 seconds for free. By comparison, a 200 health ava will regenerate ~10 points.

The two parts of that statement you should focus on is the time frame and the cost. During heavy hunts that regeneration time is much too slow to help by itself. However, we can use the cost aspect to our advantage elsewhere.

For example, just because you ran into some Merp along your mining trip and took some damage before killing them, you do not need to whip out your fap and full heal. If you are not expecting any trouble for a short while, (no red dots close to agro range) and you are still relatively healthy, allow yourself to heal naturally while you mine your claim(s).

Let's say you died and just revived. You don't need to grab your biggest fap and restore yourself to full health. (Assuming you're not using a TP chip) heal naturally while you run back. Once you start coming close to red dots on your screen, and are about to fight again, stop running for a moment (outside the mobs agro range) and heal yourself then. Use your most economical fap that your time permits.

The best example of using free healing to full advantage is the naked hunt. Those that hunt naked, meaning no armor and (often) no fap learn how to combine the regeneration factor plus aspect #1 above to full effect so they can hunt as fast as possible while still keeping their health high enough to stay alive. They know to slow down between mobs if they're dropping a little too low on health, to allow a bit more healing before facing the next beast.

For now, we'll assume you will be using a fap during your hunting/mining.

FAP CHOICES

When hunting and mining, it's best to have 2, often 3 faps with you. They should be high, medium and low powered (or high and low when just using 2). Each one is useful at the right time. Currently, I carry fap-5, fap-28 and ek-2500 (for certain times, I bring my ek-2350) so we'll use these in our example.

Note for miners: most faps weigh 5-9 kg, usually 5. that means 3 faps will likely weigh 16-19 kg total (2 will be about 10-11). Please factor this accordingly for weight management.

Your choice of faps depend mostly on 4 factors;

1. heal amount
2. heal speed
3. decay cost
4. price (including markup)

Price, is essentially n/a on faps you loot, since you don't pay markup. However, generally the more they heal and faster they work, the more decay they use and more expensive they are.

As an example ek-2500 heals up to 30 every 2.3 secs. (7PEC decay) while ek-2350 heals only 24, but every 1.4 secs. The speed of the ek-2350 makes it valuable, but 2 quick heals costs 12PEC decay. Using only 1 of these faps for all occasions can get rather expensive.

LOW FAP

Your low-powered fap should always be the fap-5, or Vivo T1. Yes, I said Vivo T1, the same one you get at the Trade Terminal, or the old fap-5. Why? Simple. 1PEC or less per use.

Let's say you have time for a slow heal, and you need to gain 50 health back. Using my 2500, assuming best results, I'll need 2 uses at 7PEC each, for 14PEC total decay. Using the fap-5 will take a bit longer, but will only cost me about 7 uses or 7PEC total. I save 50% in decay each time I do this. (Some believe you also skill a bit more doing this, since you use the fap more times.)

However, the Vivo T1& fap-5 generally heals much too little (just over 10 max.) and much too slow (about every 3 seconds) to be useful during any real hunting. But just because you're in a fight doesn't mean you need your biggest fap every time either.

MID FAP

Now, let's say you took a little damage, and are afraid of getting a critical hit before finishing the fight. You may want to use your mid-fap just to boost yourself enough to avoid that problem. (this is where knowledge of mob dmg amounts vs. your current health comes in handy.) My Fap-28, for example, heals me 20 points for half the decay cost of my ek-2500 healing 30. (3.5 vs. 7) One use of my fap-28 could keep me healthy enough to survive any possible crit for the next 2 hits until I kill the mob and I'm good to go.

You can also use your mid fap to "top off" your health, if you want full health, but only need to heal 10-20 points, for example.

HIGH FAP

In a huge fight, when you are in danger of dying, you should use your biggest fap. Again, don't over do it. Stay healthy enough to win, but don't get into the trap of healing yourself needlessly after every hit you take. Remember, the mob is regenerating also, (some mobs regen faster than others, but on avg. it's about the same as avas.) so the more time you waste healing yourself, the harder it is to win.

The only other time you really need your biggest fap is when you just died and need to return to the "scene of the crime" ASAP. Even then when you are almost full health, you can switch to your mid/low fap to top off before firing up your TP chip.

Quick hint: If you must "speed-heal" right after dying, start hitting your fap button during the white screen. You'll begin to heal yourself even before you fully arrive at the Revive terminal. (But like I said, for economy sake do this as little as possible.)

LIMITED FAPS

Now, (L) faps are available. These faps are not repairable. They have a nice mid-high heal, but are quite slow.

However while the heal rate/sec. is nice on them, the fact that they are non-repairable makes it even more important to stay with the multi-fap rule. It would be a shame if this was your only fap and it broke in the middle of a nice run. If you plan on using (L) faps, consider always having 2. 1 for backup. Also do not forget your other faps. It's even more important to not waste clicks on an (L) fap when time permits using something a bit more economical.


THE UNDERLYING RULE AND WHEN TO BREAK IT

Notice all the above rules I've given are about your health vs. time. In short, the more time you have, the cheaper your healing is. There are situations when it seems you must break the rules I've given. That is when you are under a time constraint, such as during a 1-hour most-loot wins event. In that case, you're more worried about the time aspect vs. health economy and will likely use your high fap and neglect the others. In this case that's exactly what you should do. Stick to your high fap and rack up those points for the win. However, there you are just swapping economy for time, so the most basic rule still applies:

Manage your health according to your time and equipment constraints and you'll enjoy this universe even more for even less.

Well hopefully you'll find this information useful. I know I have.

[Micheva]

Very nice, good information!
+rep

[actam]

Nice guide, JohnCapital.
Just a little note: noobs start with 88 today (me started at 90)
And I prefer the mighty fap-50, the only fap that you will love more than you mother... (as a nooby noob)
+rep for ya!

[Mega]

I vote this gets moved to stickys after a week or two.

Good info for beginners.

[JohnCapital]

Originally Posted by actam

Nice guide, JohnCapital.
Just a little note: noobs start with 88 today (me started at 90)
And I prefer the mighty fap-50, the only fap that you will love more than you mother... (as a nooby noob)
+rep for ya!

Thanks Actam. I adjusted the post to 88 per your notes.

Yes, the fap-50 is a very common and well loved fap. I used to have one myself.

EDIT:
And thanks everyone else for the positive response.

[chevrons]

Yes, a feature of the Health attribute is that the decimal places are truncated on the display. This is in contrast to the Hit ability on weapons where the displayed value is rounded, i.e. if the displayed value is 1.8, the actual value is between 1.75 and 1.84.

A feature worth noting about FAPs is that the relative economy is the same at any skill level, a FAP 5 is always the most economic followed by the FAP 50 and then the FAP 10,15,18,28, etc. Again this is in contrast to say mining tools where better results are obtained by moving up the scale as skills increase. This explains why the FAP 50 is the first FAP to have a markup over TT value. This does seem to be a design flaw in the FAPs.

Good guide, John.

[GullyFoyle]

This seems to be the right place for my FAP question:
I have a FAP28 (actually my best one... ) and I used it to heal fast while hunting. Later I checked out my FAP18 and was wondering that it heals up to 26 Health whereas the FAP28 only heals 20 Points max. I don´t get it, where is the internal logic? What do those numbers (5,10,15,18,28) really mean?

BTW: My experience is that I skill much better with the FAP18 compared to FAP5.

[Richard Devil]

Originally Posted by GullyFoyle

This seems to be the right place for my FAP question:
I have a FAP28 (actually my best one... ) and I used it to heal fast while hunting. Later I checked out my FAP18 and was wondering that it heals up to 26 Health whereas the FAP28 only heals 20 Points max. I don´t get it, where is the internal logic? What do those numbers (5,10,15,18,28) really mean?

BTW: My experience is that I skill much better with the FAP18 compared to FAP5.

fap 28 heals much faster then fap 18, and thus a much better fap then fap 18...

however in certain circumstances fap 18 would be bettter, for example u have less then 5 health, and a mob can do up to 31 dmg a hit, then fap 18 would be better because if u max heal u get 31 health, and smaller chances of dying...

its a woozy explanation... but hey im tired... hope it helps

[Violet]

Faps & healing always seem to be ignored. Ive lost count of times new players post their equipment and ask what they should upgrade or what they can hunt with that equipment and omit what fap they have. Seems to be the last on the list for them, although should be right up there with weapon & armour. Good post, very informative!

[Etopia]

Fap heal less while mouving but.
I have always get 1/4 of the heal when mouving to much no less no more.
Also , it can be usefull to heal while walking backward or on the side in PVP for exemple
If you walk backward to fast (walking down from a hill) you will reduce you healing.
I wonder if noob walk so slow nowday that they can heal while walking ?