Health vs Stamina

[Silvador]

I'd like to know what others prefer to focus on, when venturing out, a focus on health, or a focus on stamina? Or perhaps an even balance?

I feel like two stam and one health is good, as it affords me plenty of stamina to work with, without constantly worrying about it getting low, and having to wait for it to recharge.

But, what do others prefer? (please no spoilers)

[Humpenstilzchen]

Depends on the region and it´s danger level. In safer areas I sometimes eat two stam foods and one hp food as well but usually for me it´s one stam food and two hp food because you need that high hp for mistlands and for parrying harder stuff.

[Pantstron]

I prefer 2 health and a stam. stam management is something I've been forced to get real good at with certain challenge runs so more health with more aggressive knife play works well for me

[Asmosis]

Prior to mistlands i used 2 HP 1 stamina. During mistlands i used 2 stam 1 HP since you often need quite a bit of stamina to get out of danger, and things will still oneshot you with 2 HP anyway. 2 Stamina is a lot more convenient for traversing large distances, so i doubt i'll ever use 2 HP again.

Later on switched to 2 magic 1 stamina, mainly because you can't use certain spells with only 1 magic (at least initially).

[Hobo Misanthropus]

If you're relying on blocks and parrying melee, you should do 2 HP 1 Stam.

If you're relying on dodging and pure DPS, you should do 2 stam 1 HP

If you're doing an Eitr build, but have under 75 Blood Magic, you should be using 2 Eitr 1 HP

If you're doing an Eitr Build and have over 75 Blood magic, you can do 1 Eitr, 1HP and 1 Stamina.

If you're an absolute unit and really good with Barrier uptime, you can do 2 Eitr and 1 Stamina.

If you're fishing, do 3 Stamina

If you're leveling block, do 3 HP

[Flashheart]

I just turned off stamina with a mod, the game improved immensely.

[CombatWombat]

You need at least 2 health food or you get one shot all the time. But then you need stamina so you don't die from exhaustion...

I don't feel like there is a lot of freedom in choosing your food.

[Complaintdesk]

1 health, 2 stamina foods since day one, but lately I have been using 3 stamina when fishing, sailing or exploring as I can get over 100 health with the new foodstuffs.

[Faceplant]

Obviously there's times when stamina foods can make life more pleasant, but in any type of combat situation I prefer 3 health foods, and here's why:

- Your max stamina has very little effect on stamina regeneration. There's some benefit, but it's minimal. Once you're very low on stamina, which happens often in combat, it doesn't really matter if you ate all health foods or all stamina foods. Essentially, you have a bigger bucket, but the same size faucet filling it.

- Health, on the other hand has drastically different regeneration rates for health foods over stamina foods. Top tier stamina foods regenerate HP at 3 hp / tick. Top tier health foods regenerate at 5 hp / tick. That's nearly twice the regeneration rate. In this case, your health bucket is bigger and your faucet is also much bigger.

- You can get away from pretty much any combat. period. I've probably run from 100s of combat situation if all different conditions and survived almost all of them. Obviously there are some worst case situations that you can't get out of, but, most, if not all of those are going to be stamina locked situations that you get yourself into. In this case, refer to the first bullet. It doesn't matter what you've eaten if you get stamina locked.

- You have a natural buffer if you have high health when you get into bad situations. For example, if you get stamina locked and your health is still high, you can take a hit or two while you wait to get out of it, then recover.

- I see mention of 1-shot in other posts. Obviously you don't ever want to be in that situation when at full health. If you're regularly in that situation, then you're relying more on luck than skill. If you can be 1-shot by a 2* draugr, for example without even knowing it's there, then what fun is that? Saying that you're going to rely on stamina to get you out of those situations is not going to work.

I have been trying 2 health, 1 stamina a bit lately, since I've played a bit on my main server, where I have stacks of blood pudding, that somewhere along the line went from a great health food to a good stamina food. Mostly it's been in mistlands, wearing light armor, and fighting with knives, where you would think it would help the most.

For the most part I've noticed very little difference. Getting up hills is a bit easier. I seem to be able to get more sustained combos in with the knives more often (this is where it makes the most positive difference), but, mostly I just seem to have to run away more often due to my health getting beaten down. Taking down single, weaker opponents might be better, but stronger opponents or multiple opponents, where I'm in the most danger and need the extra health more, it seems worse.

[Oakshield]

I'm usually using 2 HP / 1 Stam food; but the kind of food differs depending at the location I'm at.

When working at my main base, I start at depleting my lowest quality of food - unless I just have started, at that point it's just the highest possible meadows food - which usually means a lot of cooked boar and deer meat topped with some yellow mushrooms and from that slowly going up towards the best I have available.

When going out to explore, I may combine my highest tier food with a lower one; depending what I plan to do. But in case I have to enter an area of which I know it'll be dangerous, I'm always making sure I got the best 2 HP / 1 Stam combination possible.

For Mistlands I eventually switched to 2 Eitr / 1 stam food as it's more convenient to use that when using magic, while those foods still provide you with enough HP to save your life if you're smart enough to NOT run into that area, but taking it slow instead.

Thorin :)

[dstroy]

Originally posted by Flashheart:

I just turned off stamina with a mod, the game improved immensely.

That would be too boring for me!

[Honorable_D]

If you intend you use shields to parry a lot you'll probably want to go 2 health 1 stamina food. Especially when you get into legit hard content like Mistlands and come across 2 star seekers...1 health food won't cut it then as your stagger bar won't be big enough.

[Complaintdesk]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

If you intend you use shields to parry a lot you'll probably want to go 2 health 1 stamina food. Especially when you get into legit hard content like Mistlands and come across 2 star seekers...1 health food won't cut it then as your stagger bar won't be big enough.

I have yet to die to a seeker in the Mistlands wearing the full Fenris set with Black Metal Shield and Silver Knife, while using Wolf Skewers, Bread and Turnip Stew as my foodstuffs. The only creature that I have had problem tanking, if memory serves, was a 2 star soldier. He did not kill me, but he did stagger me through an unsuccessful block parry. It was close, I had around 12 HP left, but fortunately I had medium health pots and the Fenris set allowed me to flee then kill it from range.
I have since learned to switch to Porcupine when tanking creatures in Mistlands and I think your reasoning is sound. Two health foods would definitely reduce those near death experiences.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Originally posted by Complaintdesk:

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

If you intend you use shields to parry a lot you'll probably want to go 2 health 1 stamina food. Especially when you get into legit hard content like Mistlands and come across 2 star seekers...1 health food won't cut it then as your stagger bar won't be big enough.

I have yet to die to a seeker in the Mistlands wearing the full Fenris set with Black Metal Shield and Silver Knife, while using Wolf Skewers, Bread and Turnip Stew as my foodstuffs. The only creature that I have had problem tanking, if memory serves, was a 2 star soldier. He did not kill me, but he did stagger me through an unsuccessful block parry. It was close, I had around 12 HP left, but fortunately I had medium health pots and the Fenris set allowed me to flee then kill it from range.
I have since learned to switch to Porcupine when tanking creatures in Mistlands and I think your reasoning is sound. Two health foods would definitely reduce those near death experiences.

You got lucky. The two-star soldier can one shot through the best armor in the game, with the best HP food. But only one of his attacks (The double smash) which deals over 750 damage.

The headbutt, which is probably what you got hit by, does 25% of its possible damage, with the mandible bite doing full 100% (The double smash does 100% x2)

But let's be real, if you got hit by a soldier in Fenris armor, you made a mistake, like greeding damage.

Originally posted by Flashheart:

I just turned off stamina with a mod, the game improved immensely.

Just turn off health at this point too.