Health
| Health | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Mechanic |
Health is the red meter beside the energy bar, and it is the one resource that punishes a farmer for losing it rather than simply ending the day. The bar only appears while there is danger about or damage to show, which is why many farmers go a whole first Spring without seeing it. Monsters are the usual cause of damage, and food, a night's sleep or a soak in the Spa put it back. The meter starts at a hundred points and grows with the Combat skill, with one large bonus hidden behind a trip to the bottom of the Skull Cavern. Reaching zero means passing out, waking up somewhere else and paying for it in gold and lost gear, so managing health is really about managing a pack of food.
Overview
The bar is hidden most of the time and shows itself where it matters: inside The Mines, the Quarry Mine, the Skull Cavern, the Secret Woods, the Slime Hutch, the Mutant Bug Lair and the Volcano Dungeon, and anywhere at all once the meter has dropped below full. Monsters do nearly all the damage, whether that is the slimes of the Secret Woods, the bats of the lower mines or the serpents of the desert. The train on the Railroad is the odd one out, and it will knock a farmer flat if they stand on the tracks as it passes.
Healing is simple and cheap. Any food that restores health does so instantly, and a gold-quality dish restores considerably more than a normal one, so cooking with the best ingredients is a real saving in pack space. Cauliflower and Melon are the strongest healing crops on the farm, while a single berry or fruit barely registers and is best left for the shipping bin. Sleeping refills the meter completely, and the Spa refills it steadily while standing in the water. In a shared save a farmer can stand in bed without ending the day and watch both health and energy climb back, which is how co-op groups patch themselves up at midday.
Maximum health grows in three ways. Every Combat level adds five points, with the two profession levels paying only if Fighter and then Defender are taken, which together make Defender the single largest boost available from the skill. The third way is a secret. Finding and reading Secret Note number ten points the way to Mr. Qi, and meeting him on floor one hundred of the Skull Cavern earns a cutscene and a bottle of iridium snake milk, which raises the ceiling by twenty-five points for good. Qi comments on how many Staircases were used to get down there, but the milk is handed over either way.
Passing out is the penalty the whole system is built around. At zero health a villager carries the farmer away, and where they wake depends on who found them: the entrance room of The Mines, their own bed, or Harvey's Clinic. A collapse in the Skull Cavern always ends at the clinic. Gold goes missing in proportion to what was being carried, up to a cap, and up to three items can be dropped along the way. Tools come back, but a weapon or a ring does not, which is what Marlon's Item Recovery Service at the Adventurer's Guild exists for; one lost item can be bought back from him at its sale value.
Several pieces of gear change the arithmetic. A Vampire Ring returns a couple of points on every kill, which adds up quickly on a crowded floor and makes it one of the best early-game rings. A weapon carrying the Vampiric enchantment heals a share of the dead monster's own health rather than a share of the damage dealt, so it is at its best against big targets. A Fairy Box keeps a fairy following the farmer that heals during fights. The Phoenix Ring is the real safety net: the first time health reaches zero on a given day it refuses the blackout and restores half the meter instead, which turns a ruined Skull Cavern run into a near miss.
Notes
Energy and health are separate meters with separate penalties, and the two are easy to confuse. Running out of energy or staying out past two in the morning ends the day and costs gold, but it leaves the pack alone. Losing all health costs gold and gear together, so a farmer short on both should head home rather than push one more floor.
Food taken for a buff and food taken for healing are not always the same choice. Dishes with long buff timers are worth eating before a fight, while the heavy healers are worth keeping untouched in the pack for the moment the bar drops. Life Elixir, whose recipe comes early in the Combat skill, restores the whole meter in one go and is the standard answer for a deep run.
All Mechanics
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
