NieR Automata: Healing - how to recover health? NieR Automata guide, tips
Last update: 05 August 2021
This page of the NieR Automata game guide contains important information on how to keep the controlled character alive. You'll find out how to heal your character, whether you can regenerate health automatically how to increase healing effectiveness and how to extend the health bar of the controlled character.
- Losing and recovering health - key information
- Manual recovery
- Automatic health recovery
- Extending the health bar
Losing and recovering health - key information
In the game NieR Automata, you won't automatically regenerate lost health by default. Keep this in mind and try to react as quickly as possible when your character loses more than half of their health bar due to enemy attacks - around this point, it will be easy to die if enemies manage to hit you with 1-2 strong attacks.
As you progress through the game, you'll discover various automatic health regeneration options which can occur under certain conditions. We have listed the most important of these further down the page.
Death in the game has serious consequences (we described them on a separate page of the guide) and, as a result, you should always try to ensure that your health does not reach a dangerously low level.
Sticking to ranged combat (that is, relying on the attacks made by the pod that accompanies your character) can help you avoid frequent injuries. The pod won't win every fight for you, but it might make it unnecessary to risk fighting in close quarters. Make sure to evade and counterattack often. All this will allow you to keep your character in good health for longer.
Manual recovery
You can heal yourself mainly by using items from the Recovery group- they come in three varieties, allowing you to recover a small, medium or large number of HP. Recovery items can be:
- found along with other loot in the game world,
- occasionally received as rewards for completing quests,
- purchased from traders - it's best to treat this option as a last resort if you completely run out of medicine.
In the later stages of the game, you will be able to find stronger recovery items and medicines with additional effects. For example, the Cure All Heal All from the above screenshot will instantly restore you to full health and cure all diseases / negative statuses. These types of objects are best left for the most difficult fights in the game.
You can consume medicines by opening the system menu or using a shortcut by pressing the bottom directional button. A list of consumable items will then appear in the lower left corner of the screen and you can select the medicine you want to use. The disadvantage of this method is that the game won't be paused and while selecting a cure, you can easily be attacked by enemies again.
An alternative and less useful method to recover health is by resting. Once you have sufficiently advanced in the game, this method will become available in locations such as the Resistance Camp, where your characters will receive their own room.
Automatic health recovery
You can gain automatic health recovery by installing chips that affect the character's regeneration and health bar. We have described how to install and use them in detail on the Chips - how to install? page.
As a reminder, you can find chips in the game world, receive them along with other rewards for completing quests and purchase them from certain traders.
Here are a few types of chips that can help you recover health:
Deadly Heal - This chip allows you to recover some lost health every time an opponent is killed. This is especially useful during battles where you need to eliminate a group of weaker enemies.
Offensive Heal - It's a chip with a similar effect to the above. It allows you to recover a small portion of health points by dealing damage to opponents (in this case, you will recover HP immediately, without having to kill your enemy).
Auto Heal - This chip will automatically recover your character's lost health if they haven't received damage in the last few seconds. Having this chip installed, it is best to avoid fighting directly for a while upon receiving damage and instead resort to dodging and ranged combat.
Auto-use Item - Chips from this group will automatically restore lost health points. The game will automatically consume medicine from your inventory if the character's health reaches a dangerously low level.
Extending the health bar
The health bar is permanently extended each time you level up, making your character more effective during fights against higher-level opponents.
You can also temporarily extend your health bar with the right chips. Specifically, these are chips from the Max HP Up group. The better the version of the chip, the greater the health percentage increase received while using it.