Vitals

We are born light. Each day the world sets another stone in the basket, and the wise learn which stones can be set down.

The weights your body carries, how to read them, and what happens when one grows too heavy.

Your body keeps count. Every hour you live, it carries a little more. Your vitals are those weights.

Vitals fill up

Each vital starts near empty and fills as its weight grows. An empty ring is good. A full ring is trouble. The one exception is your breath, which you spend and must get back.

The five you carry

• Injury. The harm your body has taken. When it fills, you die. See Injury and Wounds.
• Fatigue. How worn down you are. Rest and sleep pay it back. See Fatigue and Sleep.
• Hunger. How long since you last ate. Let it fill, and it starts to kill you. See Hunger.
• Thirst. How long since you last drank. It fills faster than hunger, and kills faster when full. See Thirst.
• Reek. The smell of you. Creatures follow it; water washes it off. See Reek and Cleanliness.

Breath

Breath is the bar to the right of your hotbar. Running, jumping, drawing a bow, winding up a throw and swimming under water all spend it. Spend it all and you are winded. See Breath and Drowning.

The weights you cannot see

Some weights have no ring of their own. You know them by what they do to the rest of you.

• Wounds bleed into Injury until they close.
• Venom from a bite or a poisoned point tires you and hurts you.
• Toxin from something you should not have eaten sickens you and turns your stomach.
• Illness lasts for days, and rest is the cure.

See Poison and Sickness.

Reading your vitals

Press ` (backtick) to raise or lower the five rings. You can keep walking and looking around while they are up.

A small marker sits to the left of your hotbar. It pulses red when any of the five rings passes four-fifths full. When it pulses, look.

Time

Vitals move with the world's clock. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, reek, wounds and healing all count in hours of the day, and they keep counting while you sleep. Breath is the exception: it comes and goes in moments.

When Injury fills

You die. You can rise where you fell, or a short walk away. You come back fed and watered, with your wounds closed. Death costs you a little Experience, but the ground you walked stays walked.