Health, hunger and air: how survival works

What are the three gauges?

• Health: a stone gauge to the left of your hotbar, with your points written at its tip. Every creature, weapon and burn in the game speaks in these health points. You start with 100.
• Food: a bread loaf gauge to the right of the hotbar, 100 points. One point is 20 kcal, so a full bar is 2000 kcal. You also carry a hidden reserve (20 points when you spawn, 50 at most) that is used up before the bar goes down.
• Air: a gauge that appears above the food as soon as it starts dropping, counted in seconds. In the vacuum of the space ships it becomes an oxygen bottle that frosts as it empties.

What makes me hungry?

When do I heal, and when do I starve?

• Food at 75 or more: health comes back by itself, 0.8 point per second at 75, rising to 2 points per second with a full bar, and 1.5 times faster while the reserve lasts. A full heal takes about 2 minutes at the slow rate, about 50 seconds at the fast one.
• Food under 30: you are too weak to sprint, and your stomach growls.
• Food at 0: you starve, 3 health points every 3 seconds. How far hunger can take you depends on the difficulty: it stops at 50, 30 or 5 health on the lower levels, and kills from Hard upward.
• To eat, hold the right mouse button with food in hand (about 1.5 s per mouthful). You can only eat when the bar is not full.

How long can I hold my breath?

When your eyes are in a liquid, the air gauge empties: 20 seconds. Then you lose 8 health per second, so you drown 12.5 seconds after the air runs out. Back on the surface, the air refills in about 4 seconds. Your feet in a puddle do not count: only the head matters. Also deadly: your eyes inside a solid block (stuck in a wall) cost about 12 health per second, and lava costs 15 health per hit, about 2.7 seconds to die.

What do cold and heat do to me?

• The air has a real temperature, from about 38 °C in a desert to -22 °C at the poles, colder at night, under rain or snow, and with the wind.
• Under 12 °C felt, hunger drains faster, up to three times; under 0 °C you run slower; under -25 °C you lose health (never below 5). Above 32 °C hunger runs one and a half times faster.
• Dress warm: a knitted sweater (+12 °C) or a fur coat (+20 °C) from the sewing machine, worn in the outfit slot. They wear out as they protect.
• Heat a room: a closed room with a fireplace or an electric radiator (1.5 kW) warms up in a few minutes; every hole or open door leaks the heat. See cold and heat.

How far can I fall?

• A drop of up to 3.5 metres never hurts. Beyond that, each extra metre costs 6 health points, rounded up. A fall of about 20 m kills from full health.
• Landing in a liquid deep enough for your body cancels the fall. Lava only divides it by two.
• Hitting a wall at speed (flying a wingsuit into a cliff) costs 3 health per m/s of speed lost above 7 m/s.
• A hit gives you 0.4 s of protection: during it only a stronger hit goes through, and only for the difference. Lava or a swarm cannot hit you every tick.

Updated 2026-10-22