Health is a statistic in XCOM 2 that determines how much damage a unit can take before its death; when a unit's health reaches 0, it dies and can no longer be used. Both Soldiers and Aliens have health, and although Alien health remains static throughout the game, Soldier health can be improved in a number of ways.
XCOM Rookie soldiers begin with a total health of 4. This can be improved through leveling up, equipping Armor and Armor-based Utilities, or using a Conditioning Personal Combat Sim. This is crucial, as the survivability of a soldier highly depends on how much maximum health they have.
There is a chance that an XCOM soldier will become critically wounded instead of killed when their health drops to 0. When this occurs, a bleed-out timer will appear above the soldier's corpse. When this timer runs out, the soldier will die. While bleeding out, a soldier can be saved by evacuating them by having another soldier carry them, or using a Medikit or Specialist with Medical Protocol to Stabilize them, which renders them Unconscious with 1 health instead of dying. Aliens and ADVENT troops cannot be critically wounded.
Wounds and Recovery Time
When a soldier has been wounded in combat, there is a period where they cannot be deployed until they are fully healed. The duration of this period depends on how much health a soldier loses during a mission. Any in-mission healing (e.g. Medikit) is without relevance to this computation. Based on this loss, Each wounded soldier is then placed in one of four categories:
- 0-20% health
- 21-50% health
- 51-75% health
- 75-99% health
Each wound severity category has a minimum and maximum value for the number of "wound points" a soldier can receive. A random number between those values will be picked then and converted into days needed for full recovery. Depending on those 'days until full recovery' the soldier in question will be labeled as "Lightly Wounded", "Wounded", or "Gravely Wounded".
Notes
- The range for minimum and maximum values per category is rather big and there is a significant overlap between categories. As a result, a soldier who lost a lot of health during a mission can get lucky and end up with a significantly shorter recovery time than a soldier who had taken minimal damage.