Injuries and medical care
Main difference from vanilla ss13, is that the means to heal yourself are limited in either it's accessibility or time. However, the game also has various ways to reduce penalties from injuries or ways to stabilize a fallen comrade.
Health indicator
You can see the current state of your character in the upper right corner of the screen. If a particular part is bleeding, it will blink periodically with a red light.
Types of damage
Despite the variety of means to hurt yourself, game only has two types of damage - kinetic and hazards. Kinetic damage involves kinetic force - bites, bullets, kicks, falls from a height, shockwaves, etc.
It's specifics are:
- Cuts, stabs and gun wounds might cause you to bleed. Make sure to have a bandage on you.
- Cuts, stabs and gunshots might hit an internal organ, dealing considerable damage, which makes armor vests useful even if you don't wear full body armor.
- Any kinetic damage done to the skull (not the face, but the part of the skull containing the brain itself) deals considerably more damage, which makes such injuries fatal.
Hazards represents things like electrical shocks, fire, toxins and acid. Specifics of this category are:
- An electrical shock might knock you out or even stop your heart, especially at a low health attribute.
- Someone set on fire will periodically take extra damage until he is extinguished. Use the resist button at the bottom right to drop down and roll.
- Toxins and acid will damage you over time, but can be (usually) negated by washing the affected part with water, or taking off contaminated clothig.
Injuries
Any damage done to your character will also momentarily daze him - status effect representing the consequences of pain shock and disorientation.
Injuries will reduce the combat effectiveness of your stalker, penalizing your intelligence and agility. Depending on your health stat and fortune, your stalker might die before noticing any serious consequences from his wounds. Alternatively, he can take considerable punishment and still move, his body running on fumes and luck. Besides that, an injury might disable a limb, being unable to hold anything from a disabled arm, limping because of a disabled leg, or crawling if both legs are disabled.
Daze accumulates and goes away rapidly. The higher the damage, the higher the daze - but different damage sources might apply more daze with the same damage values. For example, a stab will daze much less than a cut with the same damage value. Similarly, ammunition with more stopping power will apply more daze (example: 9x18 Makarov will give more daze than 7.62x25 Tokarev, even if both bullets dealt the same damage). Expansive ammunition has higher daze values than it's regular counterparts. How fast your character recovers from daze depends on his health attribute, which might take a couple of seconds if the injury is serious enough. Daze aftereffects:
- Loss of coordinations and reduction to intelligence and agility
- Loss of balance, causing you to fall outright or stumble if and fall if you try to run
- Loss of perception - blurred vision, buzzing ears, etc.
- Loss of combat effectiveness and even a knockout at high daze values
Medical aid
Almost any injury can be healed with proper care, which can be put in to two categories - chemical injectors and medical equipment.
Chemical injectors included in the game are:
- Healing stimulators - mix of complex regenerative extracts and artificial stem cells, intended for continuous recovery over time. Especially grievous wounds might two or even more injections, drawing out the healing up to 20 minutes.
- Morphit - a potent painkiller derived from opiates, intended for modern armies. Numbs all senses, allowing to ignore even debilitating injuries, letting a man fight almost as if he was unharmed. Because of the loss of senses, using it on healthy on slightly-injured people might do more harm than good. Doesn't work with the hyperstimulator.
- Hyperstimulator - a chemical compound, meant to stimulate the nervous system, boosting metabolism and alertness of the user. Also has anti-shock, anti-paralyptic properties. A man affected by this mix is physically unable to lose consciousness - he was knocked out, he will immediately come to senses. Has a negative side-effect, which becomes noticeable after multiple sequential uses. Does not work with morphit.
- Adrenaline - a situational chemical, requiring a certain degree of medical skill. Restarts the heart, reanimating the person as long as brain death has not occurred and, obviously, someone who hasn't been turned in to ground beef. Necrosis takes a couple of minutes to take after the heart stops, so don't dawdle.
Medical equipment present is:
- Bandages - applies to the bleeding body part, preventing death from blood loss. Heals a miserably low amount of damage, which is never more or equal to damage done.
- Splint - made from two sticks and a bandage. Allows to restore a broken limb without a medkit, but takes time. Leg injury requires a cane (click a stick on help intent) to walk during recovery. Sprinting, or walking without a cane will reset the timer, but won't remove the splint.
- Ointment - heals burns over time, regardless of their origin, but won't do anything for bruises or cuts. A serious burn might not fully heal with just one application.
- Medkit - bread and butter of a true physician. The medical kit includes various tools, drugs and equipment meant for proper medical care. It's the fastest and most effective way to heal an injury, but the same person can only be healed up to 3 times until the next blowout.