Health Pool, Damage, Recovery and Death
The party has four members, each of them obviously has a Health bar. Damage does not affect maximum Health. Whenever damage is taken, only your current health pool is taken into consideration. To recover health, use a potion. The health pool will automatically recover to maximum over time.
Health Reduction is caused when your Health gauge is fully depleted and your Hero enters the Danger status where attacks are impaired and the only thing you can do is slowly move. When you reach the danger status, your maximum Health bar will be drained and you will gradually lose Health based on the damage taken. To leave the Danger status, you need to either use a healing consumable, remain unharmed for some time or you need to be helped by another party member.
Enemies that you face during night are especially powerful. Demons for example will drain both your current and maximum Health.
When you’re taking damage, you can restore only the Health you lost there is no restoring above the cap. Your max Health is capped and to lift the penalty and restore to max, you need to rest at a camp or lodging or use a powerful consumable.
If you reach 0, you die. You have a few seconds window to use a recovery item, like Phoenix Down. If you don’t use it, you will see the Game Over screen. When resurrected, you will have little Health and need to replenish it with methods mentioned indicated above.
Magic Points (MP)
Exclusive to Noctis, Magic Points equal his magic energy pool. It’s his resource for attacks and anytime you use an ability such as warp-striking. When you use a MP spender (attack) the cost is deducted from the entire MP pool. There are several ways to replenish your MP gauge.
- Over time by not taking damage whereas hiding behind objects will increase the regeneration.
- Point-warping to a blue marker will instantly restore Noctis’ s entire MP pool.
- Once you learn Osmostrike Ascension ability and successfully complete aerial attacks, your MP gauge regeneration rate will increase which awards aggressive strategies.
- Similar to Health, your gauge can be restored with consumables whereas the amount of MP restored depends on the quality of the consumable.
When your MP gauge is fully depleted, Noctus will enter Stasis. During Stasis, your MP-based moves are disabled temporarily. Noctis will collapse for a short duration if you try to perform MP-based moves. You need to constantly monitor and pay close attention to your MP gauge, because some moves will consume a lot of it, especially warping.
Attributes
Parameters that strongly influence your combat efficiency. You can view them in the Main Menu.
Attributes increase with gear or by eating at restaurants or while camping. Gear is a little harder to come by, but the boys it provides is active as long as it’s equipped. Meal attributes boosts are easy to come by, the bonus they provide is temporary. It can be easily farmed.
Stat buffs are vital for doing battles. You should always make use of them. It’s useful to get elemental resistance buffs if you’re facing enemies with different elements. Having the entire party eat before an encounter can greatly increase your success.
Attributes (Stats) Overview
Here you can find all the different stats or “attributes” that you will encounter in the game.
Attack – Determines your melee damage done
Defense – Determines your damage taken from melee attacks
Health – Indicator of your HP status.
Magic – Affects your spell damage dealt
Resistances
Determine the damage dealt from specific resistance-based attacks. For example when fighting Fire mobs, it’s good to have some fire resistance that will decrease your Fire damage taken.
The following resistances are in the game
- Dark Resistance
- Ice Resistance
- Fire Resistance
- Lightning Resistance
- Shot Resistance
Spirit – A stat that affects your resistance to magical damage
Strength – Affects your melee damage dealt
Vitality – Determines the resistance of physical damage
Status Effects (Buffs)
Buffs will boost one of your attributes. You can get them mostly by equipping accessories or by eating meals. They are indicated by blue or green square-shaped icons.
Debuffs
Mobs will place debuffs on you that can temporarily reduce some of your stats. To mitigate it, a quick reaction is needed. You can again use consumables to dispel them.
Damage Types
Damage is of two-fold nature. Either physical or magical. Different stats or “attributes” come to mind when dealing with or enhancing your abilities. Strength is important for physical damage and applies to weapons, Magic attributes determine the power of or resistance to spells. All enemies have a set amount of affinities that determine their damage sustenance from attacks.
Combat
We’ve got a big section on Final Fantasy XV’s combat system here.