The best way to heal?

[Chasper]

where can I heal myself? (besides random pickups)

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Collect oxygen, or craft gel, to replenish life support. Collect sodium to replenish hazard protection. Use your analysis visor to occasionally find healing items which restore you as well.

[Flexible Knot]

Look for health modules out in the world (white cargo boxes), and look for planetary structures - these often have wall-mounted gadgets that heal you.

[Chasper]

Originally posted by Vamphaery:

Collect oxygen, or craft gel, to replenish life support. Collect sodium to replenish hazard protection. Use your analysis visor to occasionally find healing items which restore you as well.

I'm not talking about the life support but your actual health. Are random pickups really the only way?

[xPEDx]

you can normaly find a healing station in abandoned buildings and some small outposts, or you can craft a station in your base, Space stations have them sometimes too if you have atlas pass 3 i think. but they are rare at stations too.

[JSB]

I read that eating should help, but I am also trying to find out what helps

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by JSB:

I read that eating should help, but I am also trying to find out what helps

Eating does help. It's the healing item of choice for people who play Survival+ or Permadeath difficulty. But not all food items heal, different foods offer different effects (most of which are just kind of lame).

For healing, the easiest item to gather which heals is raw meats. Pretty much all of the various types of raw meats gained by killing critters heal 1 health pip per consumed meat.

Another option, for those who don't like killing creatures, is fish. If you catch fish and use the nutrient processor to combine 2 fish, you get Assorted Roe, which also heals when consumed.

[xPEDx]

the game kinda changed since then, 6 year ago post :)

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by xPEDx:

the game kinda changed since then, 6 year ago post :)

Yep, the food ingredients and cooking wasn't added until a year after this thread was first active. That's why I responded to the necromancer...it's kind of a pain trying to sort out outdated info from current info in a game that changes and grows as frequently as NMS when you jump into it now.

[Grimmslayer73]

The whole health bar system is outdated and doesn't make much sense. The only thing I found that really matters is your shield, and the only thing that heals your shield is time. There are no foods or items to recharge the shield that I know of. You can lose + marks on your heath, but only when your shield is down. So food only matters during that brief window while your shield is down, and if you wait a bit, the health +s and shield return on their own. This has been my experience anyway.

[Jaggid Edje]

There are shield rechargers. It's a wall-mounted item.
Dropped sentinel loot (the barrel things) also recharge shields.

Health doesn't return on it's own either. You can go days and days of playing with health reduced if you do 'nothing' to restore it. Thing is, health restoring crates and items are all over the place, so if you actually 'loot' things you pass, it will get restored relatively quickly.

[Grimmslayer73]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

There are shield rechargers. It's a wall-mounted item.
Dropped sentinel loot (the barrel things) also recharge shields.

You're right I forgot about those. I guess I don't think about the shield rechargers because I'm never near one when I get in a fight, and by the time I get to one my shield has recharged!

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by Grimmslayer73:

You're right I forgot about those. I guess I don't think about the shield rechargers because I'm never near one when I get in a fight, and by the time I get to one my shield has recharged!

LOL, yep, they are arguably the most useless functional item in the entire game. :)

[SapienChavez]

Food.

You're looking for food.

Or, White Crates.

[Galactic Starman]

If you're playing on Normal Mode, health and shields need less attention compared to playing on Survival or Permadeath, In the early stages of the game, the refill containers placed at building locations or found in the wild becomes far more important to visit in the latter two modes. The signal booster makes more sense to use often in those modes to find nearest buildings and collect any make use of any resources they may have.

Otherwise as mentioned above build your own health first aid unit at a base. It recharges quite quickly if you walk away and return, or build a few and use them all. They can be disassembled and the resources reclaimed. It can be useful to build them just before a sentinel battle so they can be used to fall back on if under heavy fire.

The green sentinel barrels dropped by exploding sentinels will increase the lives of your character. If you attack from a place of safety then run out and claim a barrel you can reasonably heal lives quite quickly.

Also upgrade shield defence tech to increase the number of character lives to maximum 9 (I think it is). As your character gets stronger in all modes, rarely do your lives drop below 3 or 4 from casual damage. But in the harder modes damage received can be heavier and tech can fail more often and so healing with a little planning is always wise. It can be useful to have at least one home prefab base, however small, just for several first aid units, to make use of like a hospital, to return to, use and leave quickly.

[ignis]

Picking up combat supplies dropping from destroyed sentinels replenish health, shield and hazard protection.

Hint: you can shoot them instead of picking up.