Enshrouded: How to Heal and Craft Healing Potions

You wouldn’t know it from the first few minutes of gameplay, but knowing how to heal in Enshrouded is absolutely essential to enjoying it. Heals can be tough to come by in the early game, so I’ll tell you all the ways you can recover HP.

How to Heal in Enshrouded

There are two primary ways to heal in Enshrouded: instantly with Health Potions or over time with fruit. Unlike the endless list of fantasy RPGs on the market, snarfing down every food you find does not instantly result in a full health bar. Instead, cooked meats increase your maximum health for a duration. Fruits like Purple Berries and Strawberries provide healing over time.

Raw vs Cooked vs Dried Foods: Buffs and Debuffs

Cooking meats and drying fruits vastly improve their effects. Raw meat gives you the food poisoning debuff, so I don’t recommend it. However, cooking some meat at the campfire, like XYZ, gives you ABC. A raw Purple Berry provides +2 health regen for 30 seconds, but a dried one gives +1 for five minutes.

You must find the Hunter and build the Drying Rack to dry fruits. To my dismay, you can’t stack the two effects. Once you’ve eaten a particular buff, you must wait for the current one to run out. You can then apply another one.

If you can’t find many Health Potions out in the wild, there’s a reason. Basic Health Potions provide a massive and instant 200 Health Points when used. It fills all or almost all of your health bar in a single Potion. And I was surprised how quickly it works. Greater Health Potions restore 400 Health, but you can’t access them for hours.

How to Get More Health Potions in Enshrouded

Enshrouded wouldn’t be much of a survival crafting game if you couldn’t craft healing items. To create Healing Potions yourself, you must rescue the Alchemist. You get the quest to find the Alchemist after clearing the Elixir Well north of the starting area.

After rescuing the Alchemist, build him a house, then provide one Red Mushroom, one Purple Berry, and one unit of Water per Health Potion. There are tons of Purple Berries and Red Mushrooms around the area where you make your first base. You can find water at any abandoned settlement, by using wells or smashing up the pots, pans, and other containers littered about.

Finally, there’s the question of when to use Potions vs. Berries and vice versa. My answer depends on whether I’m in combat or not.

If I’m in a fight I either didn’t expect or am struggling with, I always want a Potion. I eat Fruits after I’ve eaten a piece of cooked meat or have just left a tough encounter. They’re a lower-stress way to heal, though that script flips when using Berries in a fight. They’re just too slow.

Remember that you unlock additional recipes at craftspeople (survivors) and the Workbench when you find new ingredients. Check back with the Alchemist to see if he’s added Greater Health Potions, though don’t expect to craft them until long after you leave the starting zone.

That’s everything you need to know about how to heal in Enshrouded. It’s a bit more complicated than most other crafting games or RPGs, but it’s not too tough to wrap your head around, either. So long as you always have a solid base of operations where the Alchemist can rest his head, you can have a steady supply of heals. For more content on Enshrouded, check out our guides hub.