PEAK Stamina and Food Guide: Hunger, Afflictions and What to Eat

How the stamina bar works

Scouts roasting marshmallows at a campfire · Screenshot: PEAK Steam store page © Aggro Crab & Landfall

Everything in PEAK comes back to one bar. It holds 100 points of stamina, and climbing, sprinting and jumping spend it. Sprinting costs 5 per second, a jump costs 5 and a sprinting jump costs 15. From Ascent 6 upward everything costs 40% more.

Stamina refills at 20 points per second once you are standing on solid ground: one second after you stop using it, or two seconds if you ran it all the way to zero. Hanging on a Piton or Pickaxe also lets it refill, which is why those items are lifesavers on long walls.

Afflictions shrink the bar

Status effects fill the bar from the right and take space away from stamina. A bar that is one quarter Hunger and one quarter Injury leaves you only half a bar to climb with. If afflictions fill the bar completely, you pass out. Effects can stack past 100 (shown with a dashed outline), up to a cap of 200.

Weight is easy to forget. From Ascent 3 every item weighs 2.5 more, so a full backpack quietly costs a big slice of your bar.

Bonus stamina

Some foods and the campfire Morale Boost add bonus stamina, shown as a separate bar underneath. It is a reserve: it only drains once your main stamina is empty, it cannot be used for sprinting, and it never regenerates. Petrify is the one effect that eats into it.

Hunger and eating

Hunger rises by 2.5 every 50 seconds. That is 30% slower on Tenderfoot and 60% faster from Ascent 2 upward. Eating does not reset the timer, so you can gain a tick right after a meal. Holding the Ancient Idol or drinking Fortified Milk (Invincibility) pauses it.

Eat before a long wall rather than halfway up it, and save big meals like Airline Food for those moments.

Common foods and what they do

Values are raw / cooked. Bonus stamina from cooking is 1.5 times the raw value, or 10 if the food gave none.

Mushrooms are a gamble: each type has a poisonous lookalike, and unlike berries, cooking does not remove mushroom poison. The Napberry removes 100 Hunger but replaces your whole bar with Drowsy and knocks you out for a while.

Food by biome

• Shore: Half-Coconuts, Crispberries, Medicinal Root and mushrooms.
• Tropics: the richest pantry. Kingberries and Clusterberries on willows, Berrynanas on vines, Scorchberries, and Honeycomb from beehives. Today’s beehives shows where they are.
• Roots: Shroomberries (random good or bad effects), Honeycomb in tree trunks, mushrooms, and Mandrakes hiding among Medicinal Roots.
• Alpine: Orange and Yellow Winterberries, plus Napberries in caves.
• Mesa: Prickleberries on cacti, Yellow Winterberries at the oasis, Half-Coconuts and cooked Scorpions. The sun adds Heat, so berries that remove Heat are doubly useful.
• Gloom: Eggs, Cooked Birds, Hot Dogs among the cattails, Berrynanas on vines, Frog Legs and the Early Worm.
• Caldera: Eggs and Cooked Birds only.
• The Kiln and the Citadel: no natural food. Arrive fed.

Items that restore or protect stamina

• Big Lollipop: infinite stamina for a while, then a Drowsy crash unless cooked.
• Energy Drink: removes 50 Drowsy and 30 Heat and gives a speed boost, then 25 Drowsy afterward unless cooked.
• Sports Drink: 30 bonus stamina and removes up to 200 Heat.
• Fortified Milk: 15 seconds of Invincibility that blocks new afflictions except Weight.
• Bandages and First Aid Kits: heal Injury; the kit also clears Poison.
• Scout’s Ambition and Scout’s Tenacity: the amulets for infinite stamina and healing. Each appears once per island; today’s amulets shows where.

How luggage helps

All packaged food comes from luggage, and so do most healing items. Opening the luggage on your route keeps a team fed, especially before the Kiln or Citadel. The luggage types guide explains what each kind holds, and today’s luggage locations shows every box on the island.

One catch: eating any packaged food rules out the Naturalist badge for that run. If you are going for it, live off berries, roots, eggs and campfire food.

Campfires and cooking

Lighting a campfire, which needs every scout within about 19 meters, gives everyone nearby a Morale Boost of 25 bonus stamina, heals 20 Injury and clears 20 Petrify. Hunger and the fog stop while everyone stays in the camp area. One Marshmallow or Hot Dog spawns beside the fire for each player.

Hold food near the fire to cook it:

Pull food off at Cooked or Well-Done. The Kiln and the Citadel have no campfire, so cook everything you plan to carry up at the last fire. The Portable Stove works anywhere, and in the Caldera and Kiln the hot ground cooks dropped items.

Sharing food as a team

• Pool the big meals. Hand Airline Food, Kingberries or Honeycomb to whoever is about to lead a hard wall.
• Spread the Weight. One scout carrying everything climbs on half a bar.
• Huddle. Scouts within about 3 meters of each other warm up, which matters on the Alpine and on cold-night Ascents.
• Save healing food. Clusterberries, Winterberries and Medicinal Root are your Injury fix between campfires.

Common mistakes

• Eating raw poisonous berries. Green Crispberries, Pink Berrynanas and Yellow or Green Kingberries are safe only once cooked.
• Burning the marshmallow. Burnt food restores less, and incinerated food poisons you.
• Ignoring Injury. It never heals on its own, so a few bad falls permanently shrink your bar until you heal.
• Climbing hungry into the finale. The Kiln and Citadel have no food and no campfire.

For biome-specific hazards, see the Gloom and Citadel guide and the Mesa guide. New players can start with the beginner’s guide.