Health

All Survivors begin with 100 health. As they receive damage from Infected, their health decreases. Once their health is depleted, they fall to the ground and must be helped up by teammates. It is impossible for a wounded Survivor to permanently restore health back to 100. First-aid kits and pills cannot heal past 99 health. Movement speed is reduced when below 40 health, and is significantly reduced at 1 temporary health.

Health can be restored by first-aid kits and pain pills, which can be found in first-aid stations, safe rooms, finales, and throughout the game.


 * First-aid kits : Restores 80% of a survivors fixed health. Also resets the number of times a Survivor can be incapacitated before dying. To heal yourself or someone else it takes exactly five seconds.
 * Pain pills : Provides a temporary health boost equal to 50 lost health. Temporary health is represented by vertical lines on the health meter rather than a solid bar, and decreases over time. Pills heal instantly which is a big advantage when under attack

Health bar color
The color of a Survivor's health bar depends on their amount of fixed health. Thus, a Survivor who has not been healed with a first-aid kit since being incapacitated would always have a red health bar.

Death

 * Unlike most other games, survivors get knocked down when their health falls to 0%. The incapacitated teammates can only shoot with their pistols and must be helped up by a teammate to continue.
 * Downed survivors have 300% temporary health, when this goes to 0%, the survivor dies.
 * Survivors can only be knocked down to the ground twice. The third time a survivors health drops to 0%, they die.
 * Medkits reset the knock down counter, pills will not.
 * Dead survivors will respawn if they are found in the Rescue Closets further in the level, or if the rest of the team completes the map.
 * Dead survivors appear in rescue closets about 60 seconds after the survivor dies.

Health Management

 * Never use First aid kits if you have green health unless there are spare kits available and your teammates don't need to heal more than you do.
 * Heal teammates. Do not hog the medkits, if one Survivor dies, that's one less gun killing the infected.
 * If all your other teammates die because you are too greedy to heal them, suddenly you're by yourself on the ground, with a hunter tearing you to pieces and nobody to help you.
 * If you are in a Safe Room with Health Kits and you have one yourself, use it to heal yourself then take the one on the table, it is better than leaving it. Don't take more than one kit though, unless one person is at full health and someone else needs more than one kit.
 * On expert, medkits almost never spawn outside of safe rooms and campaign finales. Save medkits until a person's second knock down, or until the team reaches a safe room where they can, hopefully, manage health pack distribution.
 * Pain pills are great in a pinch. If a Tank comes by or you get vomited on and have too little health to get away, take the pills.
 * If you feel that it isn't the right time to heal your teammate with a medkit, give them some pills instead. This should help them move along possibly to a point where more health items are located.
 * Ask for healing. If a person says no and can't give a good reason why, he/she may not be the best person for your team.