How healing, pain, and intoxication works - Stoneshard

Published , by Sam Chandler

Stoneshard is a brutally challenging game, made all the more difficult with its health and healing systems. It’s not simply about knowing how to heal, it’s about knowing how to manage pain and how to cope with intoxication from painkillers. Thankfully, there are things you can do to aid you in battle and keep your adventurer in fighting condition.


Healing, pain, and intoxication

There are only a few main areas when it comes to health that you need to be concerned about in Stoneshard, and those are healing, pain, and intoxication. Healing is what you’ll want to be doing whenever your health dips below max, pain is about how well your character can perform in battle, and intoxication is a symptom of taking too many painkillers.


How to heal

Resting is the best way to heal and is only available outside of combat.

Let’s get the big one out the way first. Knowing how to heal in Stoneshard is going to mean the difference between life and death. For the most part, the only way to heal in Stoneshard is to rest when outside of combat. To rest, simply press the R key. Your character will enter a zen-like state and slowly regenerate their available health.

You will also replenish health every few turns when in combat. However, if you get hit, the turns before you regain health will be reset. For example, you may regain health every seven turns, but if you get hit on the sixth turn, the counter will reset to seven.

Keep your eyes peeled for other ways to regain health, but always rest up before a fight. This is especially important when facing the Ascended Archon, one of the first bosses in Stoneshard.


Pain and the pain threshold

Pain is a by-product of being injured in Stoneshard. When a limb – or your torso – sustains enough damage you will begin to experience pain. If you fail to stabilize the limb with a splint, you will continue to suffer greater and greater pain.

Applying a splint to a wound is the best way to stabilize it, ensuring that pain stops growing.

The main effect pain has is that it makes healing less effective. This obviously plays a massive role in your ability to heal while in combat or even while resting. In extreme circumstances, severe pain can even lead to death.

To fix pain, you should begin by applying a splint to the damaged area. By stabilizing the area, the injury will no longer accrue pain but the negative effects will still stay.

If you want to remove pain altogether (and the negative effects), you will need to find and use some kind of painkiller. Taking any form of painkiller will lead to intoxication. Take enough and you may die due to the toxins.


How to fix intoxication

An antidote is one of the best ways to cure intoxication in Stoneshard.

Dealing with pain means either taking alcohol, drugs, certain herbs or other medicines. Unfortunately, all of these have varying levels of intoxication. While they will certainly remove any pain and negative effects from said pain, they come with their own drawbacks.

Your level of intoxication can be checked in the Character screen by pressing C and looking under “health”. There are negative effects attributed at each 25% milestone. Be mindful of this when looking to fix pain – weigh the benefits and negatives of the two.

In terms of actually fixing intoxication, your choices are rather limited. One of the best ways to remove intoxication completely is with an antidote. This will remove all forms of poisoning and reduce the intoxication by a large percentage.


Healing in Stoneshard isn’t exactly easy, nor is dealing with pain or the intoxication you get from taking painkillers. Thankfully, there are a few options out there for mitigating damage and getting your health back so you can continue adventuring! Be sure to check out the Stoneshard page for more helpful guides!