Pass the Fear Growth Guide: Health That Deals Damage

Growth is max Health, and that is only half of it

Each stack of Growth increases your max Health by 1. Take twenty stacks and you have twenty more health. That is the entire base effect, and by itself it is a survivability stat rather than a build.

What makes Growth interesting is the group of relics that read your stack count and pay damage for it. Once two or three of those are in your slots, every point of health you added is also a damage increase, and cleanup that used to be worthless starts feeding the build.

The base definition is on the Growth entry.

Where the stacks come from

The sources mirror Ember exactly. Vitality Flower grants 8 stacks while carried. Growth Orb banks one permanent stack every Embarkation. Alchemy Crucible grants a permanent stack every time you dismantle a relic. Shatter payouts run 2, 3, 8, 15, and 30 stacks from Common to Mythic, and forged relics double that.

Throat of the Hydra is the extreme case: 100 carried stacks, an Ember-style limit increase of +1000 Growth, and a Destination line that grants Growth equal to 5% of your current stacks. Forged, that is 200 stacks, +2000 limit, and 10% per Destination. It compounds, so it is worth far more picked up early than found on the last stage.

Acid pickups are your cleanup currency

Acid relics pay Growth on Shatter the way fire relics pay Ember. If your run is short on health, dismantling the acid pickups you are not using is a survival plan with numbers attached. Sort by element in the Relics database to see which of your current items pay which stack.

The conversion relics decide whether this is a build

Each of these reads your Growth count and turns it into offence.

• Flower of Life turns all Growth into Bloom, giving +1% Bullet Attack per stack. Forged, +2%. Bloom still counts as Growth.
• Vitality Orb gives 0.3% Acid Damage per stack, doubled at full Health. Forged, 0.7%.
• Tempered Steel Core raises your Bullet Attack Cap by 0.1% per stack, plus another 0.1% for each Physical relic you own.
• Rotroot Crown makes Corrosion inflict Poisoned for 30% Acid Damage per second, and each Growth stack adds 2% to its Final Damage.
• Combustible Poison adds 3% per stack to the acid explosion it creates when a Corroded enemy dies.
• Acid Mark gives 1% Acid Damage per stack, up to 20%, so it stops paying at 20 stacks.

Flower of Life is the payoff most Growth runs aim at, and Seed of Life is the ticket. It is a Rare relic with +20% Acid Damage that grows into Flower of Life once you hit 80 stacks of Growth. Picking up Seed of Life early gives the rest of the run a target worth planning around.

Two health thresholds change how you play

Growth interacts with health-conditional effects, and two of them are worth building toward.

Vitality Orb doubles its per-stack damage at full Health, which turns “avoid chip damage” into a damage decision rather than a safety habit. Hydra Necklace grants +2 Projectiles at full Health, and adds that if your current Health exceeds 100 you count as at full Health. Once Growth pushes your health pool well past 100, that condition stops being fragile and becomes close to permanent.

That is the argument for stacking Growth past the point where survival feels solved. The stacks are not just a buffer; they are what makes the full-Health conditions reliable.

Where a Growth build falls apart

It fails in three predictable ways. Taking the stacks without a conversion relic leaves you tanky and slow to kill anything. Taking a capped conversion such as Acid Mark late leaves most of your stacks doing nothing. And relying on full-Health conditions on a difficulty where chip damage is constant means paying for a bonus you rarely have.

Check the finished package with both weapon slots in the Build Planner before you commit ten slots to it. If the conversion relics have not appeared by the mid run, treat the stacks as what they are: extra health, which is a perfectly good outcome on a difficulty that keeps killing you.