What Reduces the Will of Soldiers

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In XCOM: Enemy Within:

  • What effects/events can reduce a soldier's Will score? Gravely Wounded? Sustaining a critical hit?
  • How much is the Will reduced by? X per day or flat rate per event?
  • Is there any way to prevent this (either before or after the event)? Do any MEC or Cybernetic enhancements have any effect on this process?

I was told that a Gravely Wounded soldier would lose Will at a rate of 2/day while healing.

In a recent game, post-mission a soldier was listed as: Gravely Wounded (2 days). After his recovery, his Will was unchanged.
During the mission he was reduced to 1 hit point through 2 separate attacks (neither was a critical). Also that soldier had Adaptive Bone Marrow. I'm not sure if that made a difference.

Additionally, I was told that enlisting a soldier in the MEC program would negate injury-related Will loss (as it changes the description from Gravely Wounded (X days) to Wounded (3 days)). Is this true?

Best Answer

I'm not sure there are hard numbers on how many points of Will are lost for a given event, but here's a list of possible Will loss causes:

Temporary Will loss will clear up at end of mission assuming the soldier survives at all. On the down side, the only way to prevent the loss is to prevent the cause from happening in the first place:

  • Successful use of Mindfray or Panic by a Sectoid Commander or Ethereal
  • Failing a Will check and succumbing to panic
  • Taking enough damage to require healing in the infirmary post-mission
  • Death of another soldier or civilian. (Fun fact: Originally this was "death of an ally" and was also triggered if a mind-controlled alien died. Fortunately, that got patched out)

Permanent Will loss only happens when a soldier is critically injured during battle. This doesn't have to be a casualty; even just being knocked down to your last few hit points will trigger the chance (although becoming a casualty has a higher chance of causing it to happen).

There is no way to recover permanent Will loss, and only the Secondary Heart gene mod will completely prevent it from happening.

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