Lesson 8: Healing Items
The Healing Items are a huge family of weaponry. The first of these, which doesn’t really heal, is Thyoras Tear. This is a weapon which, while it doesn’t heal, prevents any damage from being dealt to the pet using it (it will not, however, stop Drain Life). It may only be used once per battle.
The next in this family is Slime Potion and the Scorchstones, themselves representing two different groups; one characterized by the Jade Scorchstone and the Jeweled Scarab and the other by the colored Scorchstones up through the Rainbow. Slime Potion is a straightforward, inexpensive once per battle item that will heal a pet for 10 hit points. This progresses up through the Rainbow Scorchstone, which will heal 80 ht points. The group characterized by the Jade Scorchstone heals differently, adding to your hit points the difference between the pet’s potential full life and its actual life when the stone is used. The difference is actually profound, and needs to be elaborated.
If a pet with a full life of 150 hit points uses a Jade Scorchstone when it is at 50 hit points of remaining life, the Jade Scorchstone will not heal the pet back to 150; rather, it will heal 100 pit points. If the same pet uses the stone at 25 life remaining, the stone is going to heal for 125 points. If the same pet uses the stone at 1 life remaining, the stone is going to heal for 149 points. This stone does not negate any incoming damage from the round in which it is being used. What needs to be understood here, and the mistake many people make with this stone, is this: the pet that used the Jade Scorchstone when it was at 50 life remaining may believe that it can withstand a 199 point attack (150 points, full life from the Jade Scorchstone plus the 50 life remaining) for the turn. This is incorrect. The stone is healing 100 points, the pet has 50 points remaining, therefore it can only withstand a 150 point attack, not 199. This is a common point of confusion regarding this weapon.
The study of the Jade also reveals that it is a healing weapon which cannot be used to enable a pet to withstand an attack which it would not normally have the hit points to withstand. That is the difference between it and the other Scorchstones, typified by a study of the Rainbow Scorchstone.
The Rainbow Scorchstone heals 80 hit points. It can be used once per battle. If a pet with a potential full life of 50 hit points used a Rainbow Scorchstone when it had 10 life remaining, it could survive an 89 hit point attack. This cannot be done with a Jade. This works because even though the pet can only have 50 hit points, the 80 points added from the Rainbow are resolved at the same time as the damage. These stones can effectively heal and in some cases, as just outlined, act as damage absorbing shields. Because of the nature of the damage dealt in the Battldome at the various levels of combat, the Rainbow is actually, in most cases, a superior item to the Jade for pets with hit points as high as 200, perhaps a bit more. Past that point, there is no substitute for the Jade (or equivalent type).
Another class of healing items exists mostly within the species weapons category. These are generally once per battle items that heal anywhere from 30 to 100 percent of a pet’s remaining hit points or full health. Some of them are very inexpensive and practical alternatives to the Scorchstones, and some of them are not.