In a similar vein to Lies of P and Bloodborne, Lords of the Fallen features a Guard Regain mechanic where players can use the block button to negate incoming attacks. Instead of losing their health directly, the lost health turns into Withered Health that can be regained by counterattacking any enemy.
This is called the Wither mechanic in the game and serves to make melee combat much less passive than in similar Soulslike games. Unlike Lies of P, Withered Health does not decay, and you can take your time recovering it while avoiding making mistakes.
How Does Withered Health Work
If an enemy attacks you and you get your block up in time, you will not receive direct damage. Instead, however much damage you receive will be converted into Withered Health. You’ll know your health is Withered by looking at your HP bar and seeing the grayed-out section of health after the bright red section.
The degree to which your normal health converts into Withered Health when you are blocking attacks depends on how effective your blocking tool is. A tower shield, for example, is much more effective than dual daggers at keeping your normal health intact, but both can be used to block in Lords of the Fallen.
How To Recover Withered Health
You can recover Withered Health by dealing damage. Every slash you land on an enemy means you recover a little bit of this gray health back. However, if you receive any damage when there is even a smidge of Withered health you have yet to recover; you lose all the health that was Withered initially.
Say a character was at 100% HP and went down to 20% normal health and 80% Withered health due to tanking hits on their shield. They can then try to recover their Withered health by fighting enemies until they’re all the way up to 99% Normal Health and 1% Withered. But, if they get hit before returning to 100% normal health, their health will instantly drop to 20% normal health and 0% Withered Health. You only get one chance to recover, and if you mess up, you don’t get a similar chance again. The only way to recover at this point is to either use a Health recovery consumable or the Sanguinatrix, the game’s version of the Estus Flask.
If you’re still having trouble figuring out how Withered health works, here is a visual guide in the form of a short clip.