Returnal will make an absolute meal of your health bar in seconds, especially when the bullet hell attacks start coming and the enemies get bigger and badder. Luckily, there’s a way to increase your max health in Returnal, even if it’s only for that particular run.
To increase your max health, you need to find a resource in Returnal called Resin, which can typically be found on the floors of arenas or dropped by enemies after you defeat them. Resin is green, the same colour as Silphium, which you use to regain health.
There are two main pickups of Resin, Silphium Resin (1 bar) and Large Resin (2 bars). With three Resin, you can increase the maximum integrity of your suit, effectively increasing your health in the process.
You can also find Spoiled Resin, which will give you roughly a 50% chance of either a bar towards suit integrity or just slightly damaging you instead. It’s a risk and reward item, but you can use Ether to cleanse it and just gain a bar instead. As most of the pickups from the fourth level onwards are malignant, you may want to get used to parting with your Ether to cleanse items.
On top of Resin, there’s also Inert Reclaimers, which will heal you at the same time. These crypt-like beds can be found through the triangle doors on your map with one spawning per biome.
Finally, some parasites will increase your max health, but these do seem exceptionally rare — I only ever found one across all my time with Returnal. As with all parasites in Returnal, expect some negatives to go with the positive when you equip one.
However, and this is worth bearing in mind: there’s no way to permanently upgrade your health in Returnal, meaning that you will be back to default health should you die.
Returnal is available now on PS5.
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