Staying alive in the Colony means managing two pools, HP and Mana, with no fast-acting health regen of its own. You top them back up by eating, drinking potions, or sleeping. Sleeping also doubles as the clock control, letting you skip the dangerous night or wait out a quest timer. This guide covers each healing route, the rested-hours rule that limits sleep healing, and where to lay your head in every camp.
Ways to Restore HP
There are three broad ways to recover health, and the right one depends on whether you are mid-fight, between fights, or just trying to save resources.
- Food: anything with a healing effect ticks HP back over time. Apples and Bread give a small amount in the early game, while cooked dishes such as
Grilled Meat restore noticeably more than their raw versions. - Potions: a healing potion like
Essence of Healing returns HP instantly, which is the key advantage over food's heal-over-time. Keep one or two on hand for emergencies during combat. - Sleep: resting in a bed restores HP (and Mana) for free, but is gated by the rested-hours system described below.
Cooking matters. Cooked meat heals more than raw, so run your kills through a cauldron before eating them.
The Healing Rune
Later in the game you can heal with magic. The Healing Rune restores HP but spends Mana to do it, so it is only practical once you have a Mana pool to draw on.
You can get it for free as a reward during the Price of Magic quest. If you took the Firebolt Rune from that quest instead, the Healing Rune can be bought from 
Torrez.
Sleeping and the Rested-Hours System
Sleeping in a bed recovers HP and Mana based on how long you sleep, but two limits keep it from being a free heal button.
- Sleep HP recovery scales with hours slept, up to a maximum of 8 hours. Sleeping longer than that gives no extra healing.
- Healing through sleep is metered by rested hours. After you sleep to recover HP, you must stay active for 3 in-game hours to bank 1 rested hour for your next sleep heal.
You cannot chain naps to keep healing. Because each rested hour costs 3 active in-game hours to earn back, sleep is best used for a single full top-up rather than as a repeatable combat heal.
Where to Sleep
You must use an unowned bed. Climbing into someone else's bed will get you woken up shortly after, so claim a spot of your own. Each camp has options.
| Camp | Sleeping Spot | How to Unlock |
|---|---|---|
| Old Camp | Vacant hut | Speak to Guy at the arena and ask for a free hut; he points you to it. |
| Old Camp |  Mordrag's hut | Becomes usable once Mordrag leaves to escort you to the New Camp, or if he is killed or knocked out. |
| New Camp |  Shrike's hut | Talk to  Gorn and ask where to sleep to start 'A Roof Over My Head', then beat Shrike to claim his hut. |
| Swamp Camp | Tree house bedroll | Free bedroll in the tree house above the camp entrance; climb the ladder on the right. |
| Swamp Camp | Training Grounds bedroll | Free bedroll by the stairs to the Training Grounds, south of camp near  Cor Kalom's Laboratory. |
Night exploration is risky thanks to low visibility, so sleeping through the night is usually the safer play. Grab a free safehouse early and use it as a recovery base.
Passing Time
Sleeping is also how you advance the clock, which some quests require. When you interact with a bed, a sleep selector lets you pick the duration. Each dot in the selector equals one hour.
- Find an unowned bed or bedroll and interact with it.
- Choose how many hours (dots) to sleep; HP and Mana recover according to the hours, up to full.
- Use this to skip the night or to wait out a timed quest objective.