From Brotato Wiki
Healing
In Brotato you can increase your Max HP
to increase the amount of damage you can take before you die. However, if you want want to survive the all the damage you take throughout a wave, you'll need sustainability rather than just more Max HP. This sustainability is found through healing.
For example you can take a tier II Max HP Upgrade to gain 6 Max HP, or a tier II HP Regeneration 
to gain 3 HP Regeneration. The 3 HP regeneration can heal you up to about 16 HP over the duration of a 60 seconds wave. This beats out 6 Max HP at long as you're not at full HP for the majority of the wave.
There are three main ways of healing, and several miscellaneous healing methods that can be found through items. The three main ways are HP Regeneration , Life Steal 
, and Consumables 
. Each way of healing have their upsides and weaknesses.
HP Regeneration
HP Regeneration is consistant and reliable. It always heals at a steady pace no matter the situation. But if things get tough, the healing stays the same.
The weakness of HP Regeneration is the backside of its strength: If you are full HP for the most of the wave and suddenly take a large amount of damage, HP Regeneration will only slowly heal you back up.
HP Regeneration has several powerful items that rewards you for going HP Regen, or pulls you into it: 
Medikit, 
Regeneration Potion, 
Fairy, 
Shackles, 
Sad Tomato
Life Steal
Life Steal is cheap and scales with the intensity of battle. Life steal has a chance to heal you 1 HP you when you hit an enemy, so you get more healing with faster attacking weapons, such as 
SMG, and when there are more enemies to hit. However, while life steal is great in battle, it doesn't do much outside of it. If you aren't hitting enemies, you're not healing. This can be troublesome for melee builds especially if you're forced to run with low HP and can't stay in battle.
The most efficient way to gain life steal tends to be through items, rather than upgrades. If you have a good amount of life steal, look for 
Bloody Hand as a payoff for the build.
You can scale your life steal by increasing the amount of hit you do. This can be done by increasing your Attack Speed 
Stat or by getting an item like 
Bandana, which grants additional piercing to your projectiles.
Consumables 
Consumables can be saved up for large bursts of healing. You can leave consumables on the ground until you need them. The downside is that consumables can be unreliable. Maybe you get unlucky and only a few consumables drop. Maybe the consumables dropped on the other side of the map and you can't get to them when you need to.
For consumables, you want to increase the amount of healing, which can be done by 
Lemonade, 
Jerky, 
Weird Food, and 
Chopper
If you want to increase the amount of Consumables dropped, it can be done by increasing your Luck 
Stat. The 
Garden item and 
Pruner spawns small gardens that produce consumable fruits over the duration of the wave.
If you're relying on consumables for your healing, you might consider increasing your Pickup range slightly with items such as 
Alien Tongue or 
Little Frog.
Secondary Healing Methods
Aside from the main methods of healing, there are several items that can allow you to heal by other means. Secondary Healing methods can be a nice addition to your other healing, and can be especially important for characters like 
Chunky, who can only make good use of Consumables otherwise, and 
Bull, who often is happy to take all the healing they can get.
Torture is Unique in that it replaces all your other forms of healing with a +5 per second.
| Name | Rarity | Effects | Base Price | Limit | Unlocked By | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 3 | +5 % Dodge 50% chance to heal 5 HP when dodging an attack |
60 | 1 | Dodge | ||
| Tier 1 | +8% chance to heal 1 HP when picking up a material -1 Ranged Damage |
25 | 13 | Pickup | ||
| Tier 3 | +15% chance to heal 1 HP when killing an enemy -3 HP Regeneration |
70 | 3 | |||
| Tier 2 | +3 % Crit Chance +20% chance to heal 1 HP when killing an enemy with a critical hit |
35 | 5 | Win a run with  Lich |
Crit Chance | |
| Tier 4 | +15 Max HP Restore 5 HP per second. Cannot heal any other way. |
100 | 1 | Max HP | ||
| Tier 2 | Spawns a medical turret that shoots bullets healing 3 (+5% ) HP |
40 | Engineering, Structure |
Strategy
It can be useful to determine which healing methods you plan on using already early in the game. Since having negative HP Regeneration or Life Steal has no consequences for going below 0, choosing one of the stats to dump, allows you to buy powerful items which has negative HP regeneration or Life Steal as a downside.
So the big question for many build is: Life Steal or HP Regeneration? Since HP Regeneration always works, it is a good idea to look at cases where Life steal doesn't work.
- Explosions can't trigger Life Steal. So if you're using
Plasma Sledge or 
Nuclear Launcher as your weapons, Life Steal won't be providing you a lot of healing. - Life Steal can't heal you if you're not attacking. Melee builds might find themselves not healing a lot with life steal during elite and boss waves, since they're only hitting a single target, and if they spend time avoiding projectiles instead of fighting.
- Slow weapons such as
Laser Gun or 
Hammer tend to kill enemies in a single hit, and attacks slowly. So they won't triggering Life Steal very often. - Engineering Builds using
Wrench and 
Screwdriver tend to do few actual hit with the weapons compared to most other builds, and like to run around while enemies are killed by Turrets and Landmines.
So if you're in one of those cases, you might want to go for HP regeneration. Maybe you get a powerful item early such as 
Shady Potion and the negative -2 HP Regeneration pushes you away from HP Regeneration. Or you could find a 
Plant and a 
Lure early and suddenly you're on your way to stack HP Regeneration.
Consumables drop for every build. And no characters except 
Gladiator have issues getting their Luck stat up. So consumables tend to provide a baseline of healing for most builds. Builds with tons of Luck and additional Consumable Healing can often entirely rely on consumables for healing.
Glass Cannon builds - Builds that neglect defenses for extra damage, often tend to not take a large amount of damage, since the damage output keeps them safe. So consumables offer enough healing for them, and provides healing in a nice burst that keeps you safe.
The Items that provide healing tend to have situations where they are great. They tend to be supplimenting your healing, but can in some cases be your main healing strategy in cases such as: Torture, Multiple Medical Turrets in engineering builds, and multiple Tentacles with 100% crit.
Adrenaline is very powerful if you're investing in Dodge. If you have 60% dodge, the 5 Healing likely trigger multiple times as your HP goes from 100% to 0% and you die. This is a lot of healing at a cheap price.
Tentacle provides healing on kill. Tentacles can be a great source of healing if you're doing a critical hit build, for example using Precise Weapons.
Cute Monkey tends to be a decent pickup for extra healing for builds that don't use Ranged Damage. Builds that fight in melee range especially benefit, since they have an easier time picking up materials during a fight. Note that the Cute Monkey is significantly weaker on characters with -50% Materials dropped.
Medical Turret is great for Engineering Builds, and can be an option if you're in need for more healing. However, the limited range of the turret can cause you to dance around the turret instead of being able to use the entire map to evade enemies.- Torture is a Unique legendary item that provides a large amount of Max HP and Healing - 5 HP per second. However it prevents you using any other sources of healing. It can be super powerful if you find it early and before you have invested heavily in other methods of Healing.
Characters
These Characters Have mechanics that include Healing:
| Name | Stats | Unlocked By | Unlocks | Item Tags |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max HP modifications are increased by 25% +1% Damage for every 3 Max HP you have +3 HP recovered from consumables -100% Life Steal HP Regeneration modifications are reduced by 50% Dodge modifications are reduced by 50% Speed modifications are reduced by 100% |
Die for the first time | Max HP, Luck | ||
| More trees spawn (+6) Gain 12 material and XP for every living tree at the end of a wave +3 HP Regeneration for every current living tree Dodge is capped at 70% +3 Attack Speed until the end of the wave when you dodge an attack -100 % Life Steal -100 Range -50% materials dropped from enemies |
Finish a wave with 10 or more living trees | Exploration, Dodge | ||
| +30% Life Steal with Primitive weapons You start with 1 Stick You can't equip weapons above tier 2 |
Kill 10000 enemies | None | ||
| +12 Max HP +25% Life Steal You take 1 damage per second (does not give invulnerability time) -100 HP Regeneration |
Reach -5 % HP Regeneration | Life Steal | ||
| +200% Attack Speed with Medical weapons +5 HP Regeneration HP Regeneration modifications are increased by 100% +5 Harvesting -100% Attack Speed Armor modifications are reduced by 50% |
Heal 200 HP in one wave | HP Regeneration | ||
| +10 HP Regeneration +10 % Life Steal 100% chance to deal 10 ( ) damage to a random enemy when you healDamage modifications are reduced by 50% |
Reach +100 Max HP | Max HP, HP Regeneration, Life Steal | ||
| +20 Max HP +15 HP Regeneration +10 Armor HP Regeneration modifications are increased by 50% You explode for 30 (300%  300% 300% ) damage when you take damageThis explosion has a 1.5x crit multiplier You can't equip weapons |
Win a run in Danger 1 | Armor, HP Regeneration, Explosive (Item Tag) | ||
| +5% Damage when you take damage until the end of the wave +10 Max HP +20 HP Regeneration +8 Armor -100% Damage |
Win a run in Danger 3 | Max HP, Armor, HP Regeneration, Life Steal | ||
| +20 Max HP Max HP modifications are increased by 33% Armor modifications are increased by 33% +40 % Attack Speed when you have less than 50% health +20 % Speed when you have less than 50% health You can't heal in any way |
Finish a wave with 1 HP | Max HP, Armor |
