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What is the difference between Overheal and Bolstered Health in Back 4 Blood?

It can be confusing.

Back 4 Blood’s healing mechanics can be a little complicated for people not in the know because of how various atmospheres affect it. Whether your team is dealing with Trauma and knowing when you should use a healing item is much more complicated than just healing automatically in a game like Call of Duty. This is important stuff to know if you want to succeed in your Campaign runs. With that in mind, here is what you need to know about the differences between Overhealing and Bolstered Health in Back 4 Blood.

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Related: How to heal in Back 4 Blood

Overheal

Overheal applies to you only if someone on the team has the Well Rested card equipped and when a healing item is used on your Cleaner but did not use all of its resources. For example, if you are close to full health with Trauma damage, and someone uses a Medkit on you, you will be healed up until where your Trauma allows. However, a portion of what normally would have recovered without Trauma will be converted into temporary health (shown as a blue line on your health bar like when you take Pills). With each person who has Well Rested equip, you Overheal for 20% of what didn’t get used from that item.

Bolstered Health

Screenshot by Gamepur

Bolstered Health applies to your team when either the Fit as a Fiddle card is played or someone is playing as Sharice, who gives everyone 25% Bolstered Health. When your team is Bolstered Health, you will see a bluish-purple outline on the left side of your health bar. This gauge will extend the amount of temporary health you can have, so it actually makes your Overhealing better. It doesn’t matter if you have Trauma or not; you will be able to use temporary health even when you are fully healed. That temporary health will just be taken from this blue bar instead of your main health.

If you have a Sharice on your team and multiple people with Fit as a Fiddle and Well Rested equip, you can essentially have your entire team with a secondary health bar to protect them.


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John Hansen
John Hansen is a Full-time Staff Writer for Gamepur as well as a host for the YouTube channel Pixel Street Videos where he co-hosts a weekly gaming podcast and more. His favorite games include Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Breath of the Wild, Left 4 Dead 2, and Overwatch. He covers Overwatch 2 and other FPS titles, Minecraft, Sonic the Hedgehog, Legend of Zelda, and whatever zombie games are placed in front of him.