Health, Hunger and Saturation

Comrades, the Health Service keeps the working people of the Commonwealth fit for their labour in this world. This lecture explains how the body works here: health, hunger and the hidden reserve called saturation, and how to keep all three in good order.

A word first. Everything the Health Service teaches is about your character in the game. For your own health, see a real doctor.

Health

You have 20 health points, shown as ten hearts. Every injury takes points away; at zero you die, drop what you carry where you fell, and wake at your bed or at spawn. Return to your belongings quickly, for dropped items do not lie there for ever.

Health returns in three ways:

• By itself, when you are well fed (see below).
• Quickly, with potions of Healing or Regeneration, or a golden apple (the subject of my second lecture).
• Never by sleep alone. A bed skips the night and sets where you wake after death, but it does not heal you.

The food bar

The food bar also holds 20 points, shown as ten shanks. Everything you do tires you a little: sprinting, jumping, swimming, fighting, mining, being hurt, and healing itself. When enough tiredness has built up, you lose first saturation, and then food points.

What the food bar decides:

• At 18 points or more (nine shanks), your body heals by itself, about half a heart every four seconds, drawing on your food as it does.
• At 20 points, with saturation left, you heal fast, about half a heart every half second, until the saturation runs out.
• At 6 points or less (three shanks), you are too weak to sprint.
• At 0 points, you starve: hunger hurts you every four seconds. On Easy it stops at five hearts, on Normal at half a heart, and on Hard it can kill.

So the rule of the Health Service is: keep your food at 18 or more, and you will mend between every fight and every fall.

Saturation

Saturation is a hidden reserve of nourishment. While you have any, your food bar does not fall: saturation is used up first. It can never be higher than your food level, and different foods give very different amounts.

This is why a golden carrot (6 food, 14.4 saturation) keeps you going far longer than a melon slice (2 food, 1.2 saturation), and why cooked meat is better than bread for a long day in the mine. The Professor of Agronomy lists the foods in full (/cw lecture agronomy 2); the short list:

• Best: golden carrots, steak, cooked porkchop, cooked mutton, cooked salmon, rabbit stew.
• Good: cooked chicken, bread, baked potatoes, cooked cod, soups.
• Poor: apples, carrots, melon, berries, cookies, dried kelp.
• Harmful: rotten flesh and raw chicken (they may give Hunger, which drains your food bar faster), spider eyes and pufferfish (poison).

Before you go out

• Eat to full before a journey, a mine or a fight.
• Carry good food: a stack of cooked meat or golden carrots.
• Eat at 18, not at 6. Waiting until you are weak costs health you could have kept.
• Sprint less on long journeys; it is the greatest drain on the food bar. A horse or a boat is cheaper than bread.

The check-up

Visit me at the Polyclinic, or anywhere type /cw checkup: I read your health, your food and your saturation, and tell you what to do next.

When the colony is ill

The citizens of a MineColonies colony fall ill and are wounded too. A hospital with a healer cares for them; the Professor of Architecture explains the huts (/cw lecture architecture 1).

My second lecture treats potions, golden apples and the dangers of the world: /cw lecture medicine 2. Questions: /cw ask physician <question>.