Performing a Checkup
As you can see across this picture, all the different teammates are at various stages of health loss.
Hit Points and Health: Your general well-being is measured in terms of hit points. Every teammate begins with 100 hit points, and loses health when struck by a foe or friend, or if the player falls from a great height (usually one floor or higher).
Anyone with 50 or more hit points is considered healthy, and shouldn’t worry about healing. Between 100–50, your Health Bar is green, and you aren’t slowed down by your wounds.
If your Health dips below 50 points, you’re considered wounded and your health bar turns orange. In addition, you suffer a slightly movement penalty. You’re slowed down and can’t maneuver quite as quickly.
If your Health drops below 15, you should really start to worry. Your health bar turns red, you are slowed significantly, and must seek medical attention immediately.
Health Management
Healing yourself or others involves a 5-second wait and the hope that your teammates can cover you.
Think about healing yourself when you drop under about 30–40 hit points, and definitely when you’re “in the red.”
Ask your teammates to slow down so you’re not left behind to die. Use a First Aid Kit, either on your back or from a teammate’s, and wait around 5 seconds for the healing to be administered.
You and the healer are prone to attack during this time so ensure that someone is covering you.
You can swig down some Pain Pills (and Adrenaline) for a lesser fix, but these don’t completely do the job, as you’ll discover when you read up on these inventory items in Chapter 3.
Incapacitation
I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! Crumple under a barrage of attacks and you drop, having only minutes to live.
When a teammate loses all 100 hit points, they fall to the ground and are incapacitated. The avatar portrait and health bar is replaced with an icon showing the teammate on their back, and a new health bar appears, daubed in red lines.
At the start of Incapacitation, the downed teammate has 300 hit points, and these slowly diminish over time, quickening if further enemy attacks take place on the prone Survivor.
A fallen friend, bathed in an orange glow, will die if this new set of hit points reaches zero, but isn’t completely out of it.
The player can fire on anything they see from this ground position using a Pistol. They must be rescued by a teammate, who helps them up.
Naturally, they have to dispatch any foes in the area, or risk being savaged themselves when they reach for you. A rescued player has 30 hit points and should heal immediately.
If you are Incapacitated three times, you die. This is terminal on Realism mode (you respawn in the next Safe Room), but in Campaign, Versus, and Single Player modes, you respawn in a Rescue Closet (AKA “spawn closet”) a few rooms or streets away from your position at the time of death.
Feeling helpless? Then try not to get pinned (picture 1) or in a dangling predicament (picture 2).
One variation of being Incapacitated includes being pinned after an attack by a Special Infected (Chargers, Hunters, and Smokers perform this elongated attack).
You must wait for rescue by your teammates. Or, if you’ve been rammed off (or fell off) a roof, ledge, or wharf, but managed to hang onto the edge of the ground you were standing on, you’re left dangling and Incapacitated.
When your hit points run out, you’ll drop, usually to your death. Teammates must save you in the usual manner.