Survival - Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue & Rest¶

"You can be the finest sword in the city, but go three days without bread and water and a child with a stick will put you down. Eat. Drink. Sleep when you can. The road forgives nothing else so slowly." - Harlow Penn, caravan quartermaster

Your character is a body, not just a stat block. You get hungry. You get thirsty. You tire out swinging a blade all afternoon, and you go bleary if you stay awake for two days straight. Ghelmyon tracks four separate things under the heading of survival, and each one is fed and fixed differently. Ignore them and you'll find yourself weaker, slower and dimmer right when you can least afford it.

This is the reference for staying on your feet. For wounds and the HP bar, see Wounds, Healing & Infection - that's a different layer.

At a glance¶


Four needs	Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue, Sleep (drowsiness) - separate clocks
Hunger / thirst	Drain slowly over time; faster in a fight, slower at rest
Fix them	`eat <food>`, `drink <beverage>` - meals refill more than snacks
Fatigue	Physical exhaustion from fighting, walking, crafting, casting
Fix fatigue	`rest`, sit, take a bath, or sleep
Sleep / drowsiness	Builds with hours awake - only sleeping clears it
The penalties	Empty needs sap your stats, your combat rolls, even your HP
The cure-all	A night's `sleep` in a good bed resets nearly everything
Check yourself	`/hunger` for food & water, `/fatigue` for exhaustion

Hunger and thirst - the slow clocks¶

Hunger and thirst each run down on their own over time. Every stretch of the day they tick a little lower; thirst falls a touch faster than hunger (you need water more often than food). How fast they drain depends on what you're doing:

Fighting burns through both fastest - hard work.
Walking and ordinary activity is the normal rate.
Resting or sitting still slows the drain down.

As a need empties it passes through a ladder of states. For hunger:

Well Fed → Peckish → Hungry → Famished → Starving

and thirst mirrors it:

Hydrated → Dry → Thirsty → Dehydrated → Parched

What each band does to you climbs sharply:

Well Fed / Hydrated and Peckish / Dry - no penalty. At the middle band you'll just get the odd stomach rumble or a glance at the nearest tankard in the narration. A nudge, not a problem.
Hungry / Thirsty - real stat penalties kick in (your Strength and Dexterity take a knock). You're not crippled, but you're off your best.
Famished / Dehydrated - a heavier penalty to all your combat rolls, and crucially your HP stops regenerating. You can't rest your way back to health on an empty stomach.
Starving / Parched - the worst band: a severe combat penalty and your HP actively drains each stretch of time. Dehydration bites harder than starvation. This is a slow death if you keep ignoring it.

The game warns you as you cross the lines - "You are getting hungry," then "Warning: you are famished!" - and nearby innkeepers, healers and friends will start telling you to sit down and eat. Take the hint.

Eating and drinking¶

Fixing this is simple: eat <food> and drink <beverage>. You eat from what's in your pack, so keep some food on you - check /inventory to see what you're carrying.

How much a thing refills depends on what it is:

A snack (bread, an apple, jerky) tops you up a little.
A proper meal (stew, a roast, a pie) is a solid refill.
A feast (a full tavern spread) is the biggest single bite.
A sip (tea, a small drink) nudges thirst; water, milk or juice quench it properly.
Ale and wine do wet your throat, but alcohol is a poor thirst-quencher - don't try to live on it.
Soups, broths and stews count as food and quench a little thirst - efficient road fare.

One nice touch: a meal cooked by a skilled hand feeds you better. Food crafted by someone with high Cooking skill carries a bonus that makes it more filling and more refreshing than the same dish thrown together by an amateur. A good cook is worth keeping around.

Use /hunger any time to see exactly where both clocks stand.

Fatigue - the body wearing down¶

Fatigue is physical exhaustion, tracked separately from hunger, thirst and HP. Think of it as your stamina reserve. You start a fresh day rested; the day's exertion grinds it down:

Swinging a weapon in combat (training dummies are lighter work).
Taking hits.
Walking from place to place.
Crafting.
Casting spells.

Two things change how fast you tire:

Your class. Trained fighters - Warriors, Knights, Paladins - tire slowly in combat. Jacks-of-all-trades like Wanderers and Bards tire at a middling rate, and the bookish (Scholars, Herbalists) wear out fastest when forced to brawl. A Monk's discipline and a Warrior's conditioning both stretch their reserve further.
Your weapon skill. The better you are with a blade, the less effort each swing costs. A master fights all day on the stamina a novice burns in a few exchanges, and fighting unarmed without the skill is the most tiring of all.

Fatigue runs its own ladder - Rested → Mildly Tired → Tired → Exhausted → On the Verge of Collapse - and the game flags it as you slide down ("exhausted - you should rest"). Mostly this shows up in the narration: laboured breathing, trembling arms, sluggish moves. Let it bottom out and you're a much less convincing fighter even if the dice don't always say so. Check it with /fatigue.

Recovering fatigue¶

Fatigue comes back when you stop pushing - and where and how you rest matters:

Standing around barely recovers anything.
Sitting (a tavern bench, a rest) gives a steady recovery.
Lying down recovers faster.
A hot bath is the quick fix - bathhouses exist partly for this. (A cold plunge recovers fatigue more slowly but does more for your HP.)
Sleeping wipes the slate clean - a full reset.

A couple of classes get an edge here: Monks recover extra fatigue every time they rest (and at high unarmed rank, rest does double duty), so the monastic life really is restful.

Sleep and drowsiness - the clock you can't snack away¶

This is the one new players miss. Drowsiness is sleep pressure, and it is not the same as fatigue. Fatigue is your tired body; drowsiness is your tired mind - and it builds purely from how many hours you've been awake, no matter how much you sit, bathe or rest. Only sleep cures it. You cannot drink coffee your way out of two days awake.

Stay up long enough and you climb a ladder:

Alert → Mildly Drowsy → Drowsy → Severely Drowsy → On the Verge of Collapse

and unlike fatigue, drowsiness carries real mechanical bite:

Mildly drowsy - your Perception and Willpower start to dull. You miss things; you're easier to sway.
Drowsy - the dulling spreads to Intelligence and Charisma too, and your attacks get harder to land. You're noticeably off.
Severely drowsy - heavy penalties across all of those mental stats; the world starts to blur. The narration turns hallucinatory movement in shadows, mishearings, edges fraying.
Collapse - you can barely stand. Sleep now, before your body makes the choice for you.

The fix is to sleep. There's no halfway cure - a meal, a bath and a sit-down do nothing for drowsiness. Plan your nights.

Sleeping and resting - what each one buys you¶

There are two ways to recover, and they're not the same.

`sleep` - the full reset¶

Sleeping advances you to dawn and is the single best thing you can do for yourself. A night's sleep:

Restores HP to full, and mana to full.
Fully resets fatigue.
Clears drowsiness - the only thing that does.
Heals light and moderate wounds (severe and critical ones still need a healer - see Wounds & Healing).
Tops up hunger and thirst partway - you wake a little hungry, not stuffed, so eat with breakfast.
Resets your daily and once-per-rest class abilities.

It also wakes your knocked-out companions and heals the party. Sleep is the cornerstone of staying alive; build your day around getting one.

`rest` / camp - the partial top-up¶

If you can't (or don't want to) sleep the night through, you can rest for a shorter recovery. A quick rest is one stretch of time; making camp (a longer rest, with food if you carry it) does more. Resting:

Heals some HP (scaled by your Constitution) and some mana.
Recovers some fatigue - more for a long camp than a quick breather.
Eats a healing ration from your pack if you have one, for extra HP.

Resting does not clear drowsiness - only sleep does that. Use rest to patch up between fights; use sleep to reset the day.

Rest quality - where you sleep matters¶

Not every bed is equal. The quality of the place you rest in multiplies how much you recover:

Sleeping rough outdoors or in a dangerous spot is the worst - you'll recover a fraction of a proper night.
A tavern floor is noisy but serviceable; a proper rented room at an inn is the reliable standard, and inns give a little bonus on top.
A peaceful spot - a temple, a quiet garden - rests you well.
Your own home beats an inn, and a well-furnished, decorated home with a good bed is better still. The nicest noble rooms and velvet suites give a luxurious recovery.

A good bed in a home you own is the best rest in the game - one more reason to put down roots. See A Place to Live for how owning and furnishing a home pays you back every single night.

A note on earning a living¶

If you're working shifts and jobs to make coin, remember they're physical labour - a day at the forge, down the mine, or out hunting drains you the same way adventuring does. Don't roll straight from a double shift into a fight without eating and catching your breath, or you'll go in already half-spent. Pack a meal, keep your waterskin full, and plan a sleep at the end of a working day.

Quick reference - "I'm hungry / tired, now what?"¶

Situation	Do this
Stomach rumbling (Hungry)	`eat` a meal - don't let it reach Famished
Famished / Dehydrated	Eat and drink now - your HP won't regen until you do
Starving / Parched	Emergency - `eat` and `drink`, you're losing HP
Throat dry (Thirsty)	`drink` water; ale won't cut it
Arms heavy, breathing hard (Tired)	`rest`, sit, or hit a bathhouse
Worn out, no time to sleep	`rest` / make camp for a partial recovery
Bleary, missing things, awake too long	That's drowsiness - only `sleep` fixes it
Seeing shadows move (Severely drowsy)	`sleep` immediately - you're about to collapse
Want the best recovery	`sleep` in a good bed at home or an inn
Just checking	`/hunger` for food & water, `/fatigue` for exhaustion