Healing in Detail
Healing skill can be the basis of a role played, dedicated healer, but more usually it is the skill trained by warriors (see the page Melee Fighter). Healing has three main functions, repairing damage, curing poison and resurrecting player ghosts. Success in these endeavours depends on your skill in both Healing and Anatomy.
Up to 60 points in both skills you can repair damage. At 60 points you begin to be able to cure poison, you must have BOTH skills at this level. At 80 points you begin to be able to resurrect player characters, though it will take several tries at first. Power scrolls exist for both skills, making the highest possible skill 120.
For healers with 80 skill or greater in Healing and Anatomy, at half the Heal Duration for self heals, healing will attempt to remove poison and bleed effects. This will reduce the amount healed when the heal is finished its normal duration. Maximum heal duration is 8 seconds, at 100 dexterity the self-heal duration is 6 seconds, healing another character, 2 seconds.
The higher your skills in both healing and anatomy, the greater chance of success you have at effectively healing, curing or resurrecting your patient.
The skill is employed by using a bandage and targeting the damaged character’s lifebar. This can be done by double clicking the bandage stack in your pack and clicking the cursor on your target, by creating a macro ‘bandage self’, or ‘bandage target’ in classic client, or dragging bandages to a hotbar slot in enhanced client then setting the target to ‘self’ or ‘stored’ if you plan to heal a companion.
Trying to heal while taking damage will give you a “your fingers slip” message – the more of these you receive, the less successful your healing attempt will be, slip damage scales based on dexterity. However higher skill can negate these messages.
Obtaining Bandages
Bandages are a fundamental necessity, without them your healing skill is useless, even at legendary level. Here are some suggestions on how to supply this need:
- Buy from a healer shop – at a cost of 5gp each, this is an expensive option.
- Buy bolts of cloth from a tailor shop, you will also need scissors.
- Use your scissors on the bolts of cloth to obtain ‘cut cloth’
- Use scissors again on the ‘cut cloth’ to give bandages, one bolt = 50 bandages.
- Cost varies from town to town, the cost being governed by the ‘supply and demand’ system. Minimum cost 100gp per bolt. ie 2gp per bandage.
- Make your own from wool
- Once again you will need scissors, also a sharp implement (dagger/sword/knife/etc)
- Find some sheep that are not shorn (
).Yew is a good place to look, there are 3 sheep fields each having 8 sheep. - Use your sharp implement (double click it), target the sheep. It is now a shorn sheep (
). Kill the shorn sheep to create a respawn until you have as many piles of wool as you need. - Take the piles of wool to a tailor shop and spin it on the spinning wheel (or home if you have a wheel and loom) one pile of wool = 3 balls of wool
- Use the resulting balls of wool on a loom to create cloth, 5 balls of wool = 1 bolt of cloth then cut the cloth as above. Cost 0gp
- Make your own from cotton
- Travel to Southern Moonglow where there are 2 cotton fields
- Pick (double click) the cotton – involves some waiting for respawn
- Take the cotton to a tailor shop and proceed as for wool. One bale of cotton = 6 spools of thread. 5 spools of thread = 1 bolt of cloth.
- Cut the bolts into ‘cut cloth’ and the cut cloth into bandages
- Loot them from monsters. Mummies, Juka Lords, Savage Riders, Female Savage Warriors, Cu Sidhe and Troglodytes all have bandages that you can loot. The faster you kill them the more of their stock of bandages they will have left. Cost – 0gp, loot the gold from the corpses as well as the bandages and instead of cost you’ll have profit!
Enhanced Bandages
By dropping bandages into a ‘fountain of life’ they become ‘enhanced’. Such bandages give a healing skill bonus of 10 skill points in terms of amount of damage healed. They do not actually increase your skill level, they will not, for example, allow you to cure poison or resurrect if you do not have the required real skill points.
The Fountain of Life is an ‘8th anniversary’ item which can be obtained from a Heritage token. Heritage tokens have, in the past, occasionally been included in holiday gifts. For this reason they can sometimes be bought from players.
Training
Begin in New Haven, buy your initial training from Avicenna The Healing Instructor and then take her quest for accelerated gains to 50 skill.
Follow the same path with Andreas Vesalius the Anatomy Instructor, taking your anatomy to the same level.
It is useful to have a partner when training, as gains will be faster from healing others. From 60 you can try drinking lesser poison and attempting to cure it. From 80 try to convince a friend to become a ghost for your benefit. If you succeed in your resurrection attempt he will see a gump asking him to accept the resurrection. He should refuse, you will still gain.