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Stamina

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Stamina is a separate resource that sets the pace of your running, fighting, and hard labor. It is not a “second health bar” but a reserve of energy: it lets you sprint through a firefight only briefly, while calm movement and standing still let your strength return. Run the reserve dry and your character literally cannot run until they catch their breath.

Where your energy reserve comes from

Maximum stamina depends first and foremost on your character’s Endurance stat. The base reserve is 40, and each point of Endurance adds another 6. So with Endurance 5 your maximum is 70, and with Endurance 10 it is already 100. On top of that, modifiers (abilities, conditions) affect the maximum, but even under heavy penalties the effective maximum never drops below 25 — this floor guarantees you can always climb out of exhaustion.

The takeaway is simple: a hardy hero holds the pace longer and runs out of breath less often, but nobody can run and fight forever without a pause.

What drains stamina

Energy is recalculated once per second, and its main consumer is running in combat. While you run in combat mode, the reserve drains by 2 per second. Sharply repositioning under fire is useful, but doing it constantly drives your character to exhaustion fast.

  • Running in combat — minus 2 per second.
  • Running in stealth mode (sneaking) — a separate energy cost, counted independently of combat mode.
  • Abilities — some combat skills also spend stamina when they trigger.

Important: calm walking outside of combat does not spend energy — on the contrary, it restores it.

How energy recovers

Recovery also runs once per second and depends on what your character is doing:

  • Calm walking outside of combat — plus 1 per second.
  • Standing still outside of combat (no cooldown) — plus 2 per second, the fastest recovery.
  • Standing in combat with no attack cooldown — plus 3 per second.
  • Standing in combat during an attack cooldown — plus 1 per second.

From this follows a key tactic: outside of combat, ordinary walking returns energy better than a panicked dash across the whole map. And pausing works differently depending on the case — a standing character recovers, but only if they are not pinned by cooldowns and not in a situation where every second demands action.

Remember the reverse too: food does not restore energy. If a group is already worn out, it needs not a snack but a pause, a safe spot, and less strain.

Exhaustion

When the energy reserve sags too low, the Exhaustion condition kicks in. It begins when stamina falls to 9 or below, and is lifted only when the reserve rises back to 20 or above.

Exhaustion hits your character’s core stats right away: Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, and Perception — minus 3 each. Worse, an exhausted character cannot run — until energy recovers to the removal threshold, only walking is available. In the nuclear winter, where retreating often matters more than the loot itself, losing the ability to run is a signal that your pace is already broken and it is time to find a pause.

What matters for the player

  • Energy is a finite resource. Conserve it for the moment when it decides the outcome: sometimes it is better to move calmly and enter a fight fresh than to reach your target faster only to find you no longer have the pace left to retreat or save a wounded ally.
  • Leveling Endurance expands the reserve and at the same time boosts your health and its regeneration.
  • After death and respawn, the energy reserve is restored to maximum.
  • Some creatures have no stamina at all, but for the player it is always part of the route.