Survival Basics

Survival in Wanderfolk is built on three separate bars: hunger, HP, and energy. Each has its own drain, recovery, and danger threshold — managing all three determines whether you can work, fight, and explore, or collapse in the wilderness when monsters spawn at nightfall.

Three-Tier Stats

The HUD displays three distinct survival bars with color-coded thresholds:

HP is separate from energy — taking damage in combat doesn’t drain your ability to swing a sword, and exhausting yourself chopping trees doesn’t reduce your health. Each bar has its own management strategy.

Hunger

Hunger increases steadily over time. As your hunger bar fills:

• Low hunger — no effect
• Moderate hunger — energy drain increases
• High hunger — movement speed decreases, energy drains rapidly
• Starvation — HP begins to drop

Eat food regularly. Bread, stew, cooked meat, and other kitchen recipes all reduce hunger. Raw ingredients provide less nourishment than cooked meals.

HP (Health)

HP is depleted by:

• Monster attacks
• Environmental hazards (lava, poison, spike traps)
• Starvation (when hunger is maxed out)
• Fall damage in dungeons

HP regenerates slowly over time. Healing potions restore HP instantly. Bandages provide a smaller heal. A priest companion can heal you during combat.

The auto-potion system activates when HP drops below a critical threshold during combat. It selects the weakest sufficient potion from your inventory, preserving stronger potions for emergencies. Companions share your potion pool, with healing prioritized toward the most wounded party member. Resistance potions deploy automatically at the start of boss encounters.

Energy

Energy is your resource for physical actions:

• Harvesting plants, ores, and crops
• Crafting items at stations
• Combat — swinging weapons
• Sprinting — holding Shift to run faster

When energy hits zero, you can’t perform actions until it recovers. Energy restores slowly over time, faster when eating food, and fastest when sleeping or resting.

Sprint

Hold Shift while moving to sprint. Sprinting increases movement speed but drains energy continuously. It’s useful for:

• Crossing open terrain quickly
• Escaping a bad fight
• Closing distance on a fleeing creature

But sprint carelessly and you’ll arrive too exhausted to do anything useful. Managing when to sprint and when to conserve energy is a core survival decision.

Weather Effects

Weather changes dynamically and affects gameplay:

Seasons

The world cycles through four seasons, each affecting weather probabilities and resource availability:

• Spring — frequent rain (30%), good for farming, moderate weather
• Summer — mostly clear (60%), warmest temperatures, fastest crop growth
• Fall — increasing storms (10%), varied weather, last harvest before winter
• Winter — snow (30%), coldest temperatures, no crop growth, 2x wood consumption for village heating

Plan ahead for winter. Stock up on food during warmer months through farming and trading, because villages consume more resources and produce less during the cold season.

Death

If your health reaches zero, you collapse. You’ll respawn at the last village you visited, losing some gold and inventory items. Your reputation with NPCs is unaffected — but losing progress hurts. Save often.

Related Articles

• Your First Day — a step-by-step guide to surviving the opening hours
• Weather & Seasons — detailed weather probabilities and seasonal effects
• Crafting Recipes — food recipes and potions that keep you alive
• Bestiary — the monsters that threaten your survival at night
• Farming — growing your own food supply for long-term survival