Staying Healthy, Staying Strong

Wei Shen can only take so much damage from attackers before he succumbs to his injuries, but the health system in Sleeping Dogs is a bit more involved than simply taking damage and avoiding it.

As you sustain damage during a battle, your health bar in the lower left corner of the screen decreases. If you somehow make it through a fight by the skin of your teeth, you’re not entirely out of luck for the next encounter. Wei Shen naturally regains half of his total health, giving you a buffer for mistakes against the next group of enemies.

There are ways to improve your total health, as well as how much health you regenerate outside of combat.

You can locate Health Shrines throughout Hong Kong. Some are in plain sight, whereas others will take some skillful parkour to reach. Locating all fifty Health Shrines can double your total health, so it’s a worthy endeavor to pursue. As soon as you get access to all of Hong Kong shortly after the introduction missions, you can start hunting these Health Shrines down.

Treating Yourself Right

Increasing Wei Shen’s total health pool is good, but in order to be able to fully regenerate between every encounter, he’s got to eat. Fortunately, there are plenty of places all over the city where you can pull up to a food cart and order a quick meal. Eating restores your health completely, as well as enables full health regeneration for a limited amount of time.

In addition to foods that offer health regeneration, Wei Shen can visit apothecary stores to drink various kinds of herbal tea, or buy energy drinks from women who are advertising the brand or from soda machines throughout Hong Kong. You can also grab an energy drink from the refrigerators found at your safehouses. Energy drinks improve your overall damage output in melee combat, while herbal tea can provide extra resistance to damage or improve your melee damage.

The great thing about all food and drink effects is that you can have up to three active buffs at any time. It’s a good idea to try to go into missions having had a bite to eat, along with some refreshments to wash it down.

Located throughout Hong Kong are massage parlours, some of which are more legitimate than others. Whether it’s a trained specialist or a shady “lady of the night”, Massages provide a bonus to your Face generation during a mission, making it easier to fill your meter through your actions in combat.

The Clothes Make the Man

The phrase “dress for success” applies to Sleeping Dogs as well. While the clothes you start the game with aren’t bad looking, if you limit yourself to one set of clothes for the whole game, you’re missing out on an opportunity to further improve Wei Shen’s stats. Certain clothing sets include special bonuses for Wei Shen, such as melee damage increases, Triad and Cop point bonuses, and discounts for purchases at all other stores.

While shopping at any of the clothing stores in Hong Kong, pay attention to see if the clothes are part of a set. If you buy and wear the all of the items in that set, you receive that bonus. Players interested in every advantage they can get will want to invest in the sets that provide bonuses, especially because the clothing set bonuses stack with your food buffs! It’s not entirely necessary though, and it’s totally possible to beat the game wearing whatever you please.