Healing | Healer FAQ | The Healer

Healer FAQ, by the Healers of Britannia

The Warrior Forum

“Health and life to all good citizens of the realm!”

Q: I want to start a new character that will be a Healer. What skills/stats should I start with?
A: I recommend starting with 44 STR, 11 DEX, and 10 INT. This will start you out strong enough to survive a while, and with enough DEX to keep you from being “too fatigued to move” every time you shove someone. Start with 50 Healing skill – this will give you some starter bandages and newbie scissors that will always be with you. I would also recommend starting with 49 Anatomy, and 1 in either a combat skill (to get a weapon) or a craft skill (to get the tools you will need to make some gold). You can always “train” other skills of your choosing with the appropriate NPC. With 50 Healing and 49 Anatomy, you can be a useful Healer right away, and the rest will come.

If you want to make your own poisons and start cure attempts right away, start with 1 in Alchemy for the newbie mortar and pestle, and buy some alchemy skill and nightshade from an NPC Alchemist with your 100gp. I recommend starting in Moonglow for easy access to nightshade and sheep, though Delucia has a better sheep population. If you want to go to Delucia, use the Moonglow entrance to the new lands to get to Papua, and ask around at the bank in Papua for a Gate to Delucia. There are usually flocks of sheep west of the Healers and out of town in the valley to the west of Delucia. You can also make nightshade money in Delucia by picking up the junk people drop at the bank and selling it to the NPC Provisioner.

Q: Where do I get bandages?
A: You can buy bandages from Healer NPC’s in the Healer shops for around 6gp each, buy cloth from Tailor or Weaver NPC’s in Tailor shops and cut your own bandages, or make your own cloth for free, or low cost. You can buy thread at the Tailor shops and loom it into cloth, or shear sheep and spin and loom for free cloth.

Q: Will I turn grey if I try to heal or resurrect a criminal?
A: Yes. If you apply a bandage to a criminal you will also turn grey, and guards can be called on you. Guard will also be callable when you have finished successfully applying the bandages.

Q: I heard that if you heal someone in a guild, you temporarily become a part of their guild and can be freely killed by opposing guilds. Is this true?
A: This was proposed, but never implemented.

Q: Using Anatomy, what does it mean if someone looks “very agile and extremely strong?”
A: The Anatomy responses tell you the Dexterity and Strength of the person or creature you are evaluating. Please see Anatomy Responses for a list of the actual numbers associated with each response. Anatomy also tells you the percentage of stamina the person has, once your Anatomy skill is 65 or higher.

Q: I have 63 Healing and 58 Anatomy. How much can I heal?
A: The range of hitpoints healed and the formula used can be found on another page – check out Numbers on Healing to get your range.

Q: My guildmate DeathMage says that I should get my anatomy to 100 as soon as possible, but others are telling me to raise healing first. Surely DeathMage couldn’t be wrong?
A: If your anatomy is above 61, once your healing also reaches 61 you will have the ability to cure poisons. While this is a very handy ability to have, it will also make it more expensive to train healing. This is because you will be successful in curing the poison every second or third attempt on average. If your anatomy was locked below 61, you would never succeed in curing the poison, so you can get upwards of 20 cure attempts for each poison. So with a higher anatomy, you will actually need to use about 20 times more poisons that someone with a low anatomy, with a commensurate increase in cost.

Q: My anatomy is above 61 already! Is my character ruined?
A: The rate of gain through the curing phase will be roughly the same regardless of your anatomy skill level. However, the curing phase will cost you a lot more in terms of poison costs. If your anatomy is not too much higher than 61, you could consider lowering it with the skill lock, if you are at the skill cap. If your anatomy is much higher than 61, or you are well below the skill cap, you will probably have to suffer in the knowledge that being able to actually cure poisons makes you a much more useful and valuable healer.

Q: Help! My anatomy is stuck at 92. What do I do to make it move again?
A: Your anatomy is not stuck – just keep working at it and it will move again soon.

Q: How long does it take to heal, cure, and resurrect?
A: It takes 5 seconds to heal someone else, 15 seconds to heal yourself. It takes 6 seconds to cure someone else, 18 seconds to cure yourself. It takes 10 seconds to resurrect a ghost. You cannot resurrect yourself.

Note that a recent change to the healing skill means that healing, curing and resurrecting times have been lowered, according to the healer’s dexterity. For a character with 100 dexterity it will take approximately 3 seconds to heal someone else, 11 seconds to heal yourself, 4 seconds to cure someone else, 13 seconds to cure yourself and 10 seconds for a resurrection attempt. For someone with 25 dexterity, the healing times will be approximately the same as they are currently. Note that the results achieved seem to vary between shards. Further research is being conducted in this area.

Q: Can I heal two people at once?
A: No. You can only be healing one person at a time. If you try to apply a second bandage before you have completed the first application, the first healing attempt will be cancelled.

Q: Can I heal and hide at the same time?
A: Strictly no. Selecting a bandage to use will unhide you, although actually applying the bandage will not. Therefore, you can select the bandage, then hide, and then wait until you actually want to use that bandage, without becoming unhidden again. This tactic can be useful when helping someone else fight a monster but you don’t wish to be accidentally targeted yourself.

Q: I was told by DeathMage that I need to have high dexterity to be a healer.
A: A likely future change to the healing skill will mean that healers with a high dexterity will be able to heal faster than one with a lower dexterity. At the moment it makes no difference.

Q: How do I gain skill at my current level?
A: The chart below shows what you should be doing to gain skill for any given level of Healing and Anatomy.

 

How to raise your Healing skill
Healing Skill	Do this
0 to 44	Heal yourself or others. If you can bandage someone with 100 Strength who has 1 hitpoint remaining, and do NOT get the “bandages barely help” message, you are ready to move on to cure attempts.
44 to 74	Attempt to cure poison. Drink lesser poisons, cast the poison spell on yourself, or get poisoned by snakes or poison vents, or by the Taste ID method. Poison wears off in about 5 minutes, so you can get lots of attempts in per poisoning. Please note that cure attempts can raise your Healing well into the 80’s as long as your Anatomy is less than 61. To accelerate your learning, get someone else to get poisoned for you, since it only takes 6 seconds per attempt on someone else, but 18 seconds per attempt on yourself.
74 to 100	Attempt to resurrect ghosts and work your anatomy up as well. Once both your anatomy and healing are above 81 you will be successful in resurrecting ghosts.

Q: Just tell me what is the fastest way to raise my healing!
A: The best technique for raising your healing depends on your current levels of anatomy and healing. The short version is:

• Heal damage up to about 42 skill, whilst raising your anatomy to 60
• Lock your anatomy below 61.0 and proceed to attempt to cure lesser poisons up to 72 in healing
• Start practicing resurrecting ghosts, and resume using anatomy. Get your anatomy to a minimum of 81.0 as soon as possible.
• Continue on ghosts as far as your want to go in the healing skill.

For the more detailed version of reaching grandmaster in healing see 5 steps to Mastering Healing.

Q: Can I gain healing skill by using an NPC?
A: It is possible to use an NPC to assist in your healing skill. You can fight the NPC and then heal both yourself and the NPC to try to gain skill early on. You can also cast poison on the NPC and then attempt to cure the NPC. Be careful because the NPC will be fighting you after you poison him. You may need to break off the combat first. Also be wary because these actions will make you a criminal.

Q: I have less than 44 Healing skill. I’ve been healing everyone in sight, and practicing on myself, and I’m not gaining any Healing skill. What am I doing wrong?
A: If your Healing is 44 or higher, move on to cure attempts. You have to challenge yourself to learn. As your skill increases, you need to attempt to heal more and more hitpoints. Repeatedly healing 5 damage is not going to raise your skill. If you’ve been healing people with 50 to 60 damage and not learning anything, try healing 70, 80, or 90 damage. If the bandages “barely help,” the person is too damaged for your skill – let them heal up a little bit and try again. If you can, find a volunteer with 100 hitpoints to practice on, since they have the biggest range to work with. Watch your patient’s health bar – make note of the point on that scale just above where the bandages “barely help” and aim for bandaging at that spot every time. As your skill increases, that target will get lower and lower on their health bar. When you can heal someone with 1 hitpoint left out of 100, and you don’t get the “bandages barely help” message doing that, it’s time to mo! ! ve on to curing.

Q: I have heard you can gain skill by healing monsters. Is this true? Will it raise Veterinary skill, too?
A: You can heal some badly damaged monsters up to a maximum of 150 damage. I’ve heard you can do this all the way up to 100 Healing, but have not tried it myself. Most animals will raise your vetinary skill, whilst some monsters cannot be healed at all.

• You can heal the following animals and monsters with the Healing skill: Trolls, Cyclopes, Ophidians, Ogres, Ettins, Orcs, Harpies, Headlesses, Lizardmen, Ratmen, Frost Spiders, Ridgebacks and Human NPCs.
• With the Veterinary skill you can heal Gargoyles, Corpsers, Dragons, Reapers, Slimes, Terathans, Eagles, Birds, Giant Snakes, Spiders, Gorillas, Mongbats, Giant Scorpions, Snakes, Drakes, Frogs, Sea Serpents, Dolphins, Horses, Cats, Alligators, Pigs, Rabbits, Lava Lizards, Sheep, Chickens, Goats, Ostards, Bears, Grizzly Bears, Polar Bears, Cougars, Giant Rats, Cows, Dogs, Llamas, Walruses, Wolves (timber), Nightmares, Bulls, Great Harts, Hinds, Rats, Pack Horses and Pack Llamas.
• The following list of monsters cannot be healed with either skill: Zombies, Daemons, Air Elementals, Earth Elementals, Fire Elementals, Water Elementals, Gazers, Imps, Liches, Spectres, Skeletons, Wisps, Energy Vortexes, and Blade Spirits.

Q: Will curing stronger poisons work better than curing weaker ones?
A: Since the last patch to the healing skill, the strength of poison does have an effect on skill gain. If your anatomy is below 61, you should experience good skill gains using lesser potions all the way up the the resurrecting stage. However, faster gains will be experienced from using stronger poisons.

If your anatomy is above 61 and you are successfully curing poisons, you will find that the effectiveness of lesser poison diminishes when your healing skill reaches 70. At this stage it is wise to move onto resurrection attempts or use a stronger poison mixture.

Q: I can’t cure poison yet. Why can’t I heal people who are poisoned instead of trying to cure them?
A: The game forces you to handle the immediate problem first, that your patient is poisoned. You will not be able to heal them until they are cured of the poison. Poisons generally wear off in about 5 minutes. Carry Greater Cure potions or Cure scrolls with you until you are able to cure them yourself.

Q: My Healing is 80 and my Anatomy is 82. Why can’t I resurrect yet?
A: You will not be able to successfully resurrect a ghost until both your anatomy and displayed healing skill reach 81.

Q: What are my chances of resurrecting a ghost?
A: At 81 healing your chances of resurrecting a ghost is 25%. At grandmaster healing this increases to 50%.

Q: Will having 100 skill in Anatomy increase my chances of resurrecting?
A: No. Your chance of resurrecting a ghost is based entirely on your Healing skill. You are only required to have a minimum of 81 Anatomy skill to be able to resurrect.

Q: Where can I find ghosts to resurrect?
A: The new lands are in need of healers as there are no healers there except for in the towns. Therefore a healer would be appreciated near the areas where people like to fight, for instance the City of the Dead, the Terathan Keep the Ophidian Lair, etc.

Q: I have no money and cannot afford to buy poison potions. What can I do?
or
Q: What is this Taste ID method of getting poisoned I hear people talking about?
A: There is another method to get poisoned which will drastically reduce the costs involved in the curing stage. You will need to find someone to poison some food for you. Once you have your poisoned food, lock your Taste ID skill at zero. Then use the skill on the poisoned food. With such a low skill, there is a chance you will get poisoned from the food. However, you will not always get the same dose of poison that was originally applied to the food item – sometimes it will be stronger. You will not get poisoned every time you use the Taste ID skill, and you need to wait between each attempt. This means that it could take you well over a minute to get poisoned each time, although you can use the same poisoned food item all the way through the curing stage with minimal cost.

Q: I am practicing healing and anatomy and my intelligence keeps soaring and lowering my strength. What do I do?
A: Ummm. Carry less? You will find that your intelligence will naturally rise whilst learning healing and anatomy and this will lower your strength if you are at the stat cap. To keep your strength up just periodically use skills which will increase your strength, such as mining, lumberjacking, bowfletching, mace fighting, arms lore, carpentry, herding, etc.

Q: I have a burning desire to discuss the healing skill with others, and impart the knowledge of healing I have learnt during my studies. Is there a place where I can go?
A: Yes. I can think of several. *grins* But the best place is probably the Stratics Warriors Forum. You can find this from the ‘Profession Forums’ link on the left navigation bar on the Stratics Site, or by direct link here.

Q: What is the percentage chance of curing deadly poison at 65 healing?
A: No idea…

Q: I am at 45 healing and want to move onto attempting to cure. Can I speed up this process by using poisons stronger than lesser poison?
A: No. Not initially at least. At lower levels of healing, the stronger poisons seem to be too much of a challenge, and you will get NO gain from attempting to cure them. Once healing has increased to the 70s or so, you may see faster skill gain from curing poisons if your anatomy is above 61.

Q: How long will it take me to get to GM Healer?
A: I can’t tell you how many hours, days, weeks, or months or even bandages this will take. It depends on how much time and effort you put into it. I can tell you that when you reach the level where you can resurrect, you can go as many as 120 bandages without seeing a single .1 increase in skill. Patience and persistance! It will take you anywhere from 10 days to 10 months, depending on how much time you spend working on it.

 

5 Steps to Mastering Healing

This article will explain the method to follow in order to best raise the healing skill. The techniques described here have been passed down through generations of healers, with input from Healers guilds across many shards and the countless number of people who have visited the Healers Forum and shared their experiences.

This method will enable you to reach grandmaster in healing, although for some the ability to cure is all the knowledge they require, and others will be happy to just be able to resurrect a fallen comrade and no more.

Step 1:
Assuming you are starting both healing and anatomy at 0, use anatomy on everyone you see. You can use it on monsters, animals, other people, shopkeepers, but not player vendors or town criers. Use the healing skill to repair damage to yourself or others. Whether you succeed or fail at using these skills, soon you will reach a skill level of 10 (base skill) in both. You can then buy some anatomy and healing skill from shopkeepers. You can buy both anatomy and healing from the Healers in your local town. Usually the guildmaster or mistress there will give you the most gain, and should get you to about 25 in each skill. It will cost 100 gold to raise 10 points in either skill, so altogether this should cost about 300 gold.

Step 2:
The next stage of learning the healing skill is to heal yourself or others. Depending on your current skill level, there is an appropriate amount of damage you should be attempting to heal. If you try to heal someone and you receive the message “You apply the bandages but they barely help”, then you are trying to heal too much damage for your current skill level. Let the patient naturally heal a point or two of damage and try again. Repeat this procedure until you are able to heal the patient. Take note of how much damage the patient had at that point. This is the level of damage that you should be trying to heal to gain the most from your healing studies.

Over time, as your healing skill increases, you should try to heal more and more damage to get the most benefit out of healing. That is why it is beneficial to find a patient with strength as close to 100 as possible – they can have a larger amount of damage so you can gain from healing them for a longer period of time. Continue healing damage until your skill reaches about 42. Also during this period of time, use your anatomy skill as much as possible, but lock the skill just before it gets to 61.

Step 3:
Raising healing from the 40s to the 70s is the most expensive stage of healing. It requires the use of poison – generally poison potions, but by keeping anatomy below 61, the costs involved can be limited by the young healer only requiring 300 or so lesser poison potions to complete this phase. Find a partner to help you through this stage, as it takes a lot less time to try and cure someone other than yourself. Get your partner poisoned by any of the various methods outlined earlier, and apply a bandage. You will fail to cure the poison, then apply another bandage. Your skill level should quickly rise. Once the poison wears off, get your patient poisoned again.

As you will not be able to cure the poison, you may have to worry about the poison actually killing the patient. A way to help prevent this is to make sure the patient is well fed – they will naturally heal faster, but keep a cure potion or two close by just in case. Also, if your anatomy is below 60.9 keep using it until you get to this level, when it should be locked for best skill gain.

Step 4
Once your healing skill reaches about 72-74 it is probably best to move onto resurrection attempts. Learning healing by resurrection costs a lot less than curing, as your only cost will be the bandages themselves. Apply the bandages to the ghost. Again you will fail to succeed in the resurrection attempt, but will still gain skill from the attempts. You should also unlock your anatomy and begin working this up past 81 until it reaches a level you are happy with. There is no bonus to resurrection from anatomy as long as it is higher than 81.0, however the additional 19 points to get to grandmaster will let you heal another 4 points of damage and be more proficient at melee fighting. During this phase, once your anatomy gets above 61 you will be able to cure poisons quite effectively, which will make you a much more valuable healer.

Step 5
When both your anatomy and healing have reached 81.0, you will be able to resurrect. You are now a fully-fledged healer! Continue raising your anatomy as high as you would like, and keep resurrecting ghosts until you get to a level you are happy with. Getting to grandmaster in healing will increase your chance of resurrecting someone from 25% to 50%, and will let you heal up to an additional 20 points of damage. If you are using a ghost to practice on, when you are successful at resurrecting they will be presented with a screen asking if they wish to be returned to the living. If does not matter if the ghost ignored this question or even replies ‘no’, you will still benefit from a successful resurrection.