One of the keywords players are coming across is the Wound keyword. A lack of an explanation means there’s some concussion on what its rule does. However, a Wound in Darktide appears as a white health bar on your character.

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Wounds is the game’s keyword for health bars. See, our Ogryn freind has more wounds than the rest of us rejects.

What is a Wound in Darktide¶

The Wound keyword is simply a reference to the amount of health bars your character has modified. A typical game has three wounds for most characters. However, certain modifiers can affect the amount of wounds a character has. Some items have buffs on them, granting extra wounds. This means you get an extra health bar in game/

Some modifiers in the game may grant you more wounds, while attacks, going down, and or buffs can grant you more wounds, or take a wound from your character. This is done in the form of corruption. Corruption is the purple bar that eats away at your wounds. If you go down, you will lose a full wound. Meanwhile, Grimoires can take a wound or even more from you as a risk versus reward penalty.

If you happen to lose wounds in your game through natural damage you can heal using the med stations you find on the maps. These will restore all your HP, and remove corruption from your wounds. If you heal using medkits from player equipment, then you will restore as much HP as you have with wounds and health remaining. If the purple bar is there, thanks to Grimoires, then you cannot get your wounds back.

The reason why health bars are called Wounds in Darktide seems to reference the tabletop version of Warhammer 40K. Each model has wounds, which are essentially how much health is. If damage passes, those models take wounds, depending on the rule and outcome of the damage source. The nod seems confusing at first since you’re largely looking at HP bars as HP rather than Wounds, but it somewhat makes sense when you take into account the game mechanics.