Health Draining to 1 HP?

[Kindred]

I feel like I'm missing something.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems that every time I pick up a life steal weapon (gain 1% health per melee hit, but take x1.5 damage) then each time I take damage my health begins to drain to 1HP until I deal damage to prevent it. I'm not understanding this mechanic. It's killed me several times now as the last enemy in the area will deal the damage and I'm stuck with no way to heal other than my flask. If this is the lifesteal weapon doing this, the text needs to be reworded because taking x1.5 damage should mean you take 150% damage. Not your health drains to 1 unless you deal damage to prevent it.

Maybe this is just caused on further levels because it only seems to happen in the sewers, but not all the time, so I'm at a loss here.

And this part might be a bug, but I picked up a health upgrade right as this happened and thought, "Oh! Maybe this will stop it since there's no enemies around to attack." But instead, it instantly drained my health to 1 and increased my max health.

[wckowalski]

Enemies were simply dealing more damage than your health, and it's set so that sometimes leaves you at 1 hp instead of instant killing you. This can happen due a combination of low hp and the 50% extra damage. As for picking up an hp scroll to stop the drain, that won't restore the recoverable health from taking damage, and won't change your current health %, so if you were at 1 hp before picking it up, you will be at 1 hp after.

[QuaestComm]

Your actual health at all times is indicated by the green bar. The yellow draining bar merely shows you how much health you can recover by dealing damage as part of a mechanic borrowed from Bloodborne, or so I've heard. You lose the ability to recover any more of the yellow portion if you use your flask or perform an action that prompts a cutscene (for example, taking a scroll). Note that this life-recovery mechanic applies for all weapons, not just ones with a lifesteal affix (the lifesteal affix has nothing to do with the yellow shrinking bar).

Along the lines of what the first commenter said, enemies are probably dealing more damage to you than your health, but OHKO protection leaves you with 1 health instead of letting you die.

[Luxiom ´pbR]

As QuaestComm said, Dead Cells have a health recovery system.

If you get hit, you can regain the lost health by hitting stuff with weapons (not skills). This is represented by the yellow draining part of your healt bar.

The other mechanic is "health gating". If you have at least X% health left (unsure of exact value, but it is as long as your health bar i solid green, if it goes low enough it starts blinking and you get a red tint on the edges of the screen) you can't be killed by a singel attack. IF something would kill you, you get set to 1 HP instead, and with a lot of yellow bar you could get back by attacking stuff.

The life drain weapon had nothing to do with what happen, more so then that you hade a increased incoming damage and as such got hit for more HP then you had.

Some links to compare simillar mechanics in other games:
http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Health#Health_gating
http://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Regain

[Kindred]

Thanks everyone for the answers and assistance on this. I've since played quite a bit (and forgot I asked this question, obviously) so I figured it out on my own. It just seemed to start happening when I got the 50% increase to all damage taken because... that's when I started getting one hit. Makes perfect sense. Love the game. Great mechanic.