Ultima Online Healing - what a bandage heals, how long it takes, and the two gates

What a bandage does

uo.com describes the use in one sentence: “The skill is employed by using a bandage and targeting the damaged character’s lifebar.” In practice that is a double-click on the stack, a bandage self or bandage target macro, or a hotbar slot in the Enhanced Client.

Three functions, all shared with Anatomy:

• Repair damage — from the first point of skill.
• Cure poison — from 60 Healing and 60 Anatomy. uo.com: “you must have BOTH skills at this level”.
• Resurrect a player ghost — from 80 Healing and 80 Anatomy, “though it will take several tries at first”.

One hard limit: Healing works on players only. It cannot aid animals or monsters — that is Veterinary, which is why a tamer carries both or neither.

How much a bandage heals

uo.com publishes no formula. The unpublished one [!] has both skills in it:

Minimum = ( Anatomy ÷ 6 ) + ( Healing ÷ 6 ) + 3

Maximum = ( Anatomy ÷ 6 ) + ( Healing ÷ 3 ) + 10

Healing is worth twice as much at the top end as Anatomy is, and the same at the bottom. Selected rows from the full unpublished table [!], which runs in steps of ten:

Healing ↓ / Anatomy → [!]	0	60	100	120
0	3–10	13–30	19–43	23–50
60	13–20	23–40	29–53	33–60
100	19–26	29–46	36–60	39–66
120	23–30	33–50	39–63	43–70

So the two ends of the scale most people care about: 100/100 heals 36–60 [!] and 120/120 heals 43–70 [!]. Both skills are on the Power Scroll list, so 120 in each is reachable.

How long it takes - and a figure that is not settled

[!] This is the one number every bandage template depends on, and it is published two incompatible ways.

• uo.com: “Maximum heal duration is 8 seconds, at 100 dexterity the self-heal duration is 6 seconds, healing another character, 2 seconds.”
• An unpublished formula [!]: Healing time (self) = 8 − ( Dexterity − 80 ) ÷ 20, the subtraction applying only above 80 Dexterity, with a stated minimum of 3 seconds [!]. At 100 Dexterity that gives 7 seconds [!].

Six seconds against seven, at the same 100 Dexterity. They are not reconcilable and neither is obviously a typo; the 6 is uo.com’s figure. Worse, the unpublished 3-second minimum does not follow from its own formula — at the 150 Dexterity item cap the formula yields 4.5 seconds [!], so the minimum never binds.

uo.com’s 2 seconds to heal another character is the only figure for healing somebody else. It is the reason paired healers are strong in group fights.

Interruption

Taking damage mid-bandage is the counter-play, and uo.com describes only the symptom: “your fingers slip” messages that reduce success rates, which higher skill negates, with slip damage scaling with dexterity. Unpublished figures put numbers on it:

• Interruption occurs if the healer is hit for more than 26 damage by a monster [!], or more than 19 damage by another player [!].
• Each interruption reduces the amount healed by 35% [!].

[!] How uo.com’s “slip damage scales with dexterity” relates to the flat 26 and 19 thresholds [!] is not explained by uo.com. They may be the same mechanic described twice, or two different ones; nothing published says.

Poison and bleed removal at 80

From 80 Healing and 80 Anatomy, a self-bandage does something extra: at half the heal duration it attempts to strip poison and bleed effects. uo.com notes the trade — it halves the heal duration and reduces the total amount healed.

uo.com publishes no chance. The unpublished formula [!]:

Removal chance = ( ( Healing + Anatomy − 120 ) × 25 ) ÷ ( Poison Strength × 20 ), with a bleed counted as a level 3 poison

The two skills are interchangeable in it, so what matters is the pair total: 160 combined is the floor, 240 is the ceiling. This is how a warrior answers a poisoner or a Bleed Attack without a mage standing behind him.

[!] How much the half-duration attempt reduces the healing by is not published as a number — uo.com says only that it reduces it.

In PvP

• It is the mana-free heal. At 120/120 a bandage returns 43–70 [!] hit points and costs nothing but the bandage and the time.
• It answers poison from 80/80, at half duration, on the formula above — the whole reason a dexxer can fight a poisoner alone.
• It resurrects in the field from 80/80, which turns a fighting template into a support piece in group PvP.
• Healing somebody else is far faster than healing yourself — 2 seconds against 6, on uo.com’s figures. Two players bandaging each other are much harder to kill than two players bandaging themselves.
• Interruption is the counter. More than 19 damage [!] from another player interrupts and costs 35% [!] of the heal, so pressure beats bandages even when the bandages land.
• Mortal Strike is the hard counter. 30 mana, and the victim cannot heal at all for 8 seconds — bandages included. Every weapon skill has access to it on at least one weapon.

Against monsters

• It carries manaless templates. uo.com lists Healing among the warrior support skills as the “essential ability for staying alive”, supported by Anatomy.
• Monsters interrupt you less easily than players do — the threshold is more than 26 damage [!] from a monster against 19 [!] from a player, each interruption still costing 35% [!] of the heal.
• Monster poison is cured from 60/60, which removes the need to carry cure potions for everything.
• It does nothing for your pet. Healing cannot be used on animals or monsters; a tamer needs Veterinary for that.

Bandages, and how to stop paying for them

uo.com publishes the supply chain with costs, which is unusual and useful:

Source	Cost	Yield
Healer shop	5gp each	uo.com’s own word for it is “expensive”
Bolts of cloth, cut by a tailor	from 100gp a bolt	50 bandages a bolt — 2gp each
Wool from sheep	0gp	1 pile of wool = 3 balls; 5 balls = 1 bolt
Cotton, south of Moonglow	0gp	1 bale = 6 spools of thread; 5 spools = 1 bolt
Looted	0gp, at a profit	Mummies, juka lords, savage riders, female savage warriors, cu sidhe, troglodytes

Cutting cloth into bandages is a Tailoring action, which is why so many fighters keep a few points of it.

Enhanced bandages. Dropping bandages into a Fountain of Life enhances them: they “give a healing skill bonus of 10 skill points in terms of amount of damage healed”. uo.com is explicit about the limit, and it settles a common misunderstanding: the bonus applies to the amount healed only. It cannot unlock poison curing at 60 or resurrection at 80 — those need real base skill.

There is also a quest reward, the blessed leather gloves Healer’s Touch. [!] The size of their bonus is not published.

What nobody publishes about Healing

Several of the numbers people most often ask for are not published by uo.com, and this page will not invent them:

• [!] The bandage success and failure chance. uo.com describes the “your fingers slip” message and says higher skill negates it, but publishes no percentage at any skill level.
• [!] The poison cure chance at 60+. The unpublished formula above covers only the half-duration removal at 80+; the ordinary cure has no published chance.
• [!] The resurrection success chance. uo.com says only that “it will take several tries at first”.

No mastery, and the caps

Healing has no Skill Mastery. It is absent from uo.com’s mastery list, and Healing, Anatomy and Focus are the combat skills without one.

It is on the Power Scroll list: base cap 100, raised to 105, 110, 115 or 120 by a Wondrous, Exalted, Mythical or Legendary Scroll of Power. uo.com’s Healing page states the 120 maximum for both Healing and Anatomy. It counts against the 720 total skill cap.

Primary stat Intelligence, secondary Dexterity — so, as with Anatomy, training the warrior’s survival skill raises the warrior’s Intelligence three times out of four.

Training

uo.com’s published path starts in New Haven with Avicenna for Healing and Andreas Vesalius for Anatomy, plus the accelerated-gain quests, which will carry both to 50. Training with a partner gives faster gains. From 60, practise on poisoned players using lesser poison; from 80, practise resurrection on willing ghosts — and uo.com notes that the target does not have to accept for the gain to register.

An unpublished version of the same ladder [!]: 0–40 from Avicenna or quest completion; 40–60 healing damaged players; 60–80 curing poisoned players; 80–120 resurrecting dead ones.

Train the pair together. Every gate and every point of heal is a function of both numbers, and a bandage character with 100 Healing and 40 Anatomy heals less than one with 70 in each.

Where these come from

uo.com Healing · uo.com Melee Fighting · uo.com Archery · uo.com Special Moves · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.