In my view, health regeneration is one of the worst additions to Skyrim. It makes a mockery of the whole concept of battle injury if you don't need to sacrifice anything (potions, magicka, gold to sleep in a bed etc.) to heal, and the rate of regeneration is far too quick. You can recover from near-fatal injuries in a matter of seconds. I know Oblivion had healing on wait, but that should have been simply abolished, and not replaced with this. At present I find myself selling most of my potions because I can just run away, wait a few seconds, and return to battle fully restored. That is poor gameplay design and it seems to be catered to the casual gamer.

Anyway, I'm not sure if this has been discussed on here much, because I only visit here maybe once every other day, but I haven't seen any threads on it and it seems to me to be a weakness of Skyrim's combat, which is otherwise much improved over Oblivion.

Sort of.

I understand why it is there. In previous games after a battle you jsut 'waited' to heal yourself after every battle....or re-cast heal until you were good again.....the regen is there to save us having to do that constantly.


Its not perfect, but neither was the previous system.

Oh, it has been discussed. Fact is combat regeneration is too slow to be depended on to "turn the tide of battle" and out of combat regeneration is a godsend, it is this way to alieviate a minor annoyance of the previous series.

Lets say you get in a little fight, and take 5-10 points of damage (or some minor amount) in all the other series you would have to bandage all your little cuts and scraqes by stopping, chugging, healing, or waiting 1 hour ect.. for every single engagement, or risk not being at full capacity. The little regeneration removes this annoyance.

Once again the choice this time around is given to the player. If you feel you need to treat every boo-boo you recieve by stopping, healing or chugging 50 times a dungeon crawl, that is certainly still doable - and totally your option to do so, but for many others, it was an annoyance that now can be ignored. If you find yourself taking advantage of it- guess what? it is taking away some of the annoyance you used to have to deal with.

Oh, and it has been discussed on here much- since before the games release, quite a bit actually.
I totally argee that potions are too common this time around.

I am pretty glad there is health regen. I didn't want to waste a potion for hurting on clutter like baskets or bones on the ground. -.-

health regeneration is the worst addition to every game, not only skyrim, in my opinion

"it makes a mockery" I don't think that means what you think it means. It doens't mean "I don't like this mechanic" which is how you're using it. Like most of the mechanics in the game, you're free to ignore it and rely on healing potions or heal spells or even life leach.

In my opinion the health bar isn't a measure of injury but how close the character is to dying (if that makes sense). The amount you get clobbered with warhammers and blasted with fireballs it's a wonder your character doesn't give up because of all the injury you receive, if you look at it that way, so I sort of see it as an accumulation of close scraqes leading to death if you aren't careful.

That's how I justify it, anyway.

If you never put any points into health as you level and do not give yourself health boosting potions or enchanted items... the regen really won't matter much as you hit level 30 or so... you'll die so quickly you won't have time for regen. Problem solved.

''Oh hey I got two arrows in my face let's just drink a few potions so I'm good to go again''

Health generation in general is stupid: if someone severely injures your arm, realistically you would have to wait for months in order to be at full strength again. Wouldn't really improve gameplay, would it?

If you go so far, If someone hits your arm with a sword it would be shattered and would hardly heal out correct. If you get an Arrow to the Head it is more or less Game over. So you can't really talk about realism in these games.

Well why is it unrealistic? Tamriel is a land filled with mysterious magical forces.

Why are you fighting? Chickens? I have never experienced health regeneration making any difference in a battle. It's just too slow. It takes a lot longer than a few seconds to recover if your health gets knocked right down. I suppose you can run round a corner and wait if you like spending your game time staring at a wall while your health bar slowly creeps up. What fun.

I quite like it, I no longer have to obcessively heal every friendly NPC after a battle if it's the last encounter, I don't have to keep waiting or healing if a wolf gets a nip in before I roast it, and it's generally a time saver. It's not like resourse-free healing wasn't available in other games. What's the difference between "waiting" one second to get fully healed, and waiting for real-time slow health regeneration out of combat? Vulnerablity, you can never be attacked when waiting with the wait command, but you're open to attack if you're waiting around. I thought you would prefer that to an instant, risk-free, heal anywhere solution.

Nothing is more boring to me than looking for a heath potion or waiting/sleeping to heal.

I like what they have done, in a fantasy game it's not hard to believe that you could naturally regenerate your health.

Its a question of balance.

So how would you ever get through a single room with mutilple enemys? Or even a series of rooms of them?

Even with the help of a follower early in the game you have to keep a stock of health potions handy - for even IN battle - otherwise it would be much like others have mentioned - go in an try to kill a little - leave and regen - go back and try to kill some more.

I assume both the melee and mage type players have to do some of the same things - hit and run - or -hit and hide- enough times to kill off the enemys or allow your follower enough time to work through all of them. I suppose the designers accounted for some of this as a few of the longer crawls have escape elevators 1/2 way through so you can get out to dump off your 'treasures' or restock your potions.

Without regen health or potions to hurry it along you'd have to be so powerful that a single hit will kill any opponet and any hits you take are fairly meaningless. There are alot of places where there are multiple boss-level enemy's to fight through that would be impossible without nearly god level abilities or a handfull of health potions.

Play Dead-is-Dead. Now that's realism.

yeah, I bet in real life if you get shot you just sit down and wait and your wound magically heals...

I really really hope we don't bring realism into the whole argument here, since neither regeneration nor magical potions or spells has anything to do with that.

So you're suggesting that even though health regen has made sure the precious bar is replentished for role-playing purposes and effects one should keep on drinking health potions or casting healing spells?

This would be a laughable statement.

I'm not tto sre about this whole issue. Conceptually, I dislike it. But it's not really intrusive.
I also think that Justice would be served if evryone - not just the PC - would get health regen, which currently is not the case.

So, I'm ok with it, maybe toning it down a bit wouldn't hur, as long as everyone gets the same benefit.

Personally, I don't often notice the health regen in Skyrim. If my health is down just a sliver, I ignore it because it'll be healed before I switch to a heal spell and cast. And if my health is down any further, I switch to Heal and cast it.



Depends entirely on the game's design. (That said, Skyrim doesn't really seem like it needs it.)

They do actually.. next time let a bandit or draugr near death sit there for a little while. They regenerate.

Never really thought about it. It doesn't regen enough to really help in a fight. I still need potions for that. Not a big deal and it doesn't need to be removed.

I love health regen in Skyrim. Face it, in all other games, you heal up some way anyway, especially after a fight. THis just helps make it so you can continue adventuring without lumping through menus, spellsl, use up resources, etc for small damage. The health regen is so slow, you can't really take advantage of it in combat, unless the enemy is doing minimal damage to you to begin with.

Health regen keeps me adventuring, instead of stopping to patch up after every single encounter. I'd rather play more than bookkeep.

bandits and other human enemies can use potions too

Do all creatures have Health regen?