How to Recover and Restore Your Health in "Call of Duty: Warzone"

You will have your vengeance, in this life or the next.

If you’re anything like us, you spent most of the weekend mastering Call of Duty: Warzone, the brand new battle royale add-on to rival the likes of Fortnite and PUBG.

(And with self-quarantine and isolation on the rise, we expect to spend even more time dropping into CoD’s warzone of Verdansk—and its surprisingly big sports stadium—over the coming months.)

Call of Duty: Warzone has a nifty feature that differentiates it from other battle royale games: the Gulag. When you first "die" in Warzone, you get captured and sent to a prison where you and one other fallen player battle to the death. The winner can return to regular gameplay, and the other, well, can’t. (Since you fight in trios, your other surviving mates can potentially buy you back. Otherwise, you just gotta watch them as a spectator.)

However, something frustrating happens before you get sent to the Gulag but after you get mortally wounded: your body goes limp and throbs in agony as your health meter winds down.

And thus, the last thing you see is this, which is a complete bummer: 

The game offers you the opportunity to "give up", or you can call for help (by pressing the down arrow) so that any surviving teammates can come revive you. But apart from that, all you can seemingly do is scoot your little butt away from oncoming attackers, in extremely undignified fashion, until your health runs out. It is, honestly, a terrible way to die.

For many first-time players, you may wonder what the point of this is if you can’t even save yourself.

But here’s the thing: you can. Here's how you can recover and restore your health in Call of Duty: Warzone.

The best defence is a good offence.

First and foremost, when you start the game, you’ll want to make sure you find some plates of armor while you’re looting the various locations in Verdansk. Don’t simply find the biggest gun and jump into battle. You can carry up to five plates at any one time, and use up to three for protection. However, picking them up isn't enough. You'll need to hold triangle on PS4 and Y on Xbox One to add one onto your person. That’ll at least help you survive the first few shots your avatar inevitably takes.

You can also find medical syringes, which you can use on yourself to restore your health during battle, as well as those of your fellow fighters should they require the assist. (You can either drop it for them and get them to pick it up during regular gameplay, or, when they’re injured, use it on them to give them the gift of second-life.) Press L1 on PS4 or LB on Xbox One and your health bar (on the bottom left hand side of the screen) will fill up.

Buy your way back to life.

You can’t take it with you, so you may as well spend all that money of yours. Find a Buy Station as soon as you have $4,500 of in-game dollars and purchase a self-revive kit. (You can also buy armor plates too.) That way, next time you’re downed by an enemy’s bullet, you can return to full-health and jump back into gameplay by using the kit (if you’ve got one on hand, you’ll be given that option alongside "give up").

Similarly, Buy Stations can be used to purchase "redeployment" for your fellow soldiers. They too can "redeploy" you once you've died, so don't just immediately leave the game if you expire in the Gulag. Spectate for a while and keep on bugging them to bring you back.

So there you have it. You will have your vengeance, in this life or the next.

Call of Duty: Warzone is now available for free on PS4, Xbox One and PC. (However, you'll have to pay for your Xbox Live Gold subscription to play online.)

Header Image: Activision