Knowing how to heal in Back 4 Blood is especially important if you want to stay alive. This may sound like a silly point to make, but healing can be a little confusing in this shooter. This is because you have both soft health and max health that can be lowered via the Trauma mechanic. Continue reading our guide below for how to heal both types.
How to Heal in Back 4 Blood
Most of you are probably familiar with how healing your soft health works. This is the bright red missing portion on your bar. Unlike the darkened version explained in the next section. There are a few different ways to heal your soft health that we’ll quickly go over.
First, the most common way is spending the in-game currency of Copper to heal up. Every safe room has a shop you can buy items and also restore health at. Keep in mind, this won’t restore your max health. This is a good option for when you leave the safe room and immediately get destroyed by a horde. You can still run back inside to heal.
Prepare for each level at the Vendor with useful team upgrades and consumables.
Two more common methods for healing on the fly are using Bandages and First Aid Kits. You’re more likely to find Bandages on a level than First Aid Kits. But, you can always buy them from the shop in a safe room.
Another method for healing soft health that we haven’t seen yet in the beta is via the locked Doc character. They can supposedly heal teammates that are at low health without using items. The final way to get health back in Back 4 Blood is mentioned in the next section. And it can be a little expensive on your Copper.
How to Heal Trauma Health
The first aid station is the best way to get health back if you don’t mind spending some money.
The Trauma mechanic in Back 4 Blood reduces your max health over time with each hit you take. This can make your experience a lot tougher if you don’t bother trying to get it back. Unfortunately, there’s only one way to restore max health that isn’t always available.
You’ll need to search for a red first aid station on a wall that costs 400 Copper to use. While this won’t completely heal you to full, it will provide both soft health and max. Be careful to not spend all your Copper at a first aid station if you still want some for the shop. However, you won’t always have an opportunity to get rid of your Trauma, so it’s often worth it.
I haven’t played enough to confirm whether or not first aid stations are static and always remain in the same spot. However, it does seem to be this way after doing a few runs myself. You can find them on certain walls inside buildings or sometimes hidden behind locked doors. These doors require using a Tool Box to get through.
I recommend carrying a Tool Box with you from the shop because you’ll often have a use for one. In most cases, a level has a couple of opportunities to unlock something. It’s just a matter of whether it’s a locked room with loot, an item case with a minigun, or an empty bathroom.
If you find a first aid station and don’t have 400 Copper for the cost, your teammates can drop money. Be sure to ask for help because you’re better off all alive.
With all that said, it’s worth mentioning that the locked character Doc also has a passive Trauma Resistance buff for the team. This will make it tougher for your max health to drop. Plus, you can also take advantage of certain cards that reduce Trauma damage too.
Gaining Temporary Health in Back 4 Blood
You can see the benefits of temporary health at the bottom left corner, reflected by the bright blue bar.
One last tip I wanted to mention in this guide is using Pain Meds to get temporary health. This shows as a light blue color on your health bar when they’re used. The nice plus of using Pain Meds is that you’ll gain max health back temporarily as well. They’re nice in a pinch when you have a lot of Trauma.
If you have any other Back 4 Blood questions for me, feel free to ask in the comments below. This is a quickly put-together guide to help those playing the short beta right now. More content may be added later when the game completely releases on October 12, 2021.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.