# Attributes > The handful of underlying attributes every avatar has, what they affect, and why they rise so slowly. Source: https://www.entropiacentral.com/guides/avatar/attributes Last updated: 2026-07-30 --- Alongside the long list of skills, your avatar has a small number of **attributes**. They are broader than skills, they rise far more slowly, and they affect your avatar generally rather than one activity. ## What they are The attributes cover physical and mental capacity: how much you can carry, how much punishment you can take, how quickly you recover, and how well you handle the mental side of the game such as Mind Force. Because they are broad, they are also unspectacular. No single attribute point changes how a session feels. Their effect is cumulative and appears over years rather than weeks. ## How they rise Attributes gain from doing the activities associated with them, in the same use-based way skills do, but at a much lower rate. There is no way to grind an attribute quickly through normal play. There are consumables and items that can raise attributes, and they are correspondingly expensive. Whether they are worth buying depends entirely on how long you intend to play, because the benefit is permanent and small. ## Health Health is the practical one to understand early, because it is the difference between surviving a mistake and paying for a revive. More health means more room for error while hunting: a bad spawn, a heal that lands late, a creature that hits harder than expected. Newer players die a lot for this reason and it is not a skill issue so much as a capacity one. Health rises slowly with play and cannot be rushed. The near-term answer to dying is better armour, better healing and smaller creatures, not more health. See [Armour and healing](https://www.entropiacentral.com/guides/hunting/armour-and-healing). ## Do not optimise for attributes The common new player mistake is treating attributes like character-creation stats to be planned around. They are not. They are a slow background accumulation that follows from playing, and there is no build to get wrong. Play the activity you want to play. The attributes that matter to it will rise.