Healing

Version 0.18: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Healing is the act of restoring lost HP. All characters need to heal when combat wears them out, preferably in a hurry, but not all methods of healings are suitable for all characters. The following is a list of all means of HP recovery:

Healing Naturally

• Injured characters recover HP over time, allowing you to recover after combat by simply standing around. You can pass a single turn by pressing . or up to 100 turns by pressing 5. The amount you recover is based upon your character's regeneration rate.
  • Be aware that trolls, well-fed vampires, and vine stalkers recover HP faster than normal this way, while deep dwarves and bloodless vampires won't recover HP from resting at all.
  • Wearing an amulet of regeneration, troll leather armour, artefact with the Regeneration intrinsic, or having the Regeneration mutation increase your regeneration rate.
  • By contrast, having the Slow Healing mutation decrease your regeneration rate whenever monsters are around.

Healing Through Spells

• The Regeneration spell gives you a temporary but massive boost to your regeneration rate, allowing you to recover quickly.
• The Vampiric Draining spell allows you to steal HP from adjacent living enemies.
• The Borgnjor's Revivification spell immediately recovers all your HP, but casting it permanently reduces your max HP by a small amount.

Divine Healing

• Elyvilon's abilities allow you to directly heal yourself or others.
• Gozag's Potion Petition ability may give you the chance to buy a healing potion.
• Makhleb's followers may recover HP each time they kill a monster.
• Ru's Draw Out Power ability restores some HP at the cost of draining you.
• The Shining One's Followers may regain HP and MP each time they kill a demonic or undead monster.
• Trog's Trog's Hand ability temporarily increases your regeneration rate, along with its other benefits.
• Xom occasionally decides to heal you when tension is high.
• Yredelemnul's Drain Life ability injures all living monsters around you, granting half of the damage dealt as healing to you.

Healing Through Items

• Some attacks against appropriate enemies made with a vampiric weapon heal the wielder for half the damage dealt.
• Potions
  • Quaffing a potion of curing restores 1d7+4 HP, along with its other benefits.
  • Quaffing a potion of heal wounds restores 3d28/3+9 HP.
  • Quaffing a potion of ambrosia gives you several turns of increased HP and MP regeneration, but also confuses you while you're regenerating.
    • Bloodless vampires and ghouls cannot regenerate while monsters are visible. Mummies are unable to quaff potions. Vine Stalkers cannot regain HP from potions.
• Decks
  • Drawing the Potion card from a deck of changes, war, or defence has a chance to restore you as though you'd drank a potion of curing or heal wounds.
  • Drawing the Elixir card from a deck of changes, war, defence, or escape greatly increases your regeneration for several turns.
  • Drawing the Alchemist card from a deck of changes, defence, escape, or wonders restores HP in exchange for some gold.
• Wands
  • Zapping yourself with a wand of heal wounds restores 3d28/3+9 HP.
    • Vine Stalkers and characters wearing the Robe of Vines cannot heal from wands.

Species-specific Healing

• Demonspawn with the Powered by Death mutation have a higher regeneration rate when near fresh corpses.
• Ghouls can recover current and max HP by eating chunks.
• Hungry vampires recover some HP and satiation each time they successfully stab a living enemy.

Amulet of Guardian Spirit

• Guardian spirit causes all damage taken by your character to be split between HP and MP until your MP reaches 0. Characters that don't use MP normally can treat this as additional HP, and enjoy a bonus to regeneration rate because both HP and MP regenerate separately.
  • Quaffing potions of magic or using channeling (excellent for mummy or lichform characters) are effective means of "healing" characters with this amulet.
  • Deep dwarves have difficulty taking advantage of this amulet, as their MP regeneration rate is set to 0 when they equip it. However, any of the above methods of restoring MP still function.