In Star Wars: Zero Company, an Operator who takes a third Injury is Killed in Action and gone for the rest of the campaign. Permadeath is on by default, and Hawks is the only Operator it cannot touch. Everything below is about those three Injuries: how you pick them up, what they cost while you carry them, and how to clear them before the third one lands.
TL;DR
Health at zero means Downed, not dead, and every Down adds an Injury. The third Injury kills the Operator for good. Injuries carry over between missions and cost about 10% chance to hit each. Clear them in the Medbay: a bed takes a Cycle, the Bacta Tank is instant but works once per Cycle and does not exist on Hard or Expert. Everyone except Hawks can die, story Operators included. Never deploy anyone on two Injuries unless you have to.
How an Operator dies
EA's own help guide lays out the chain, and it is short:
- An Operator whose Health hits zero is Downed. They cannot act, but they are not dead.
- Going Down gives them an Injury.
- Another Operator can Rally them, spending Action Points to get them back into the fight.
- With permadeath on, the third Injury means Killed in Action: the Operator is permanently removed from your squad.
What catches people is that the count runs across the whole campaign, not per mission. Injuries stay until they are treated, so an Operator who ends one mission on two Injuries starts the next one a single Down from death. A Rally gets them back on their feet; it does not take the Injury away.
Fallen Operators go on the Memorial in the Den, with their stats and what they did. Bit Reactor also wrote conditional dialogue around who is still alive, so a death changes later conversations rather than quietly removing a portrait.
What an Injury costs before it kills
Each Injury takes roughly 10% off the Operator's chance to hit, and the penalty stacks. Two Injuries is 20% off every shot, on the Operator who is also one Down from gone. The Operator most at risk is the one least able to shoot their way out of trouble.
Healing: the bed or the Bacta Tank
Injuries clear in the Den's Medbay, one of two ways.
| Standard bed | Bacta Tank | |
|---|---|---|
| Speed | Takes a Cycle, and the Operator sits it out | Instant |
| Cost | Credits | Credits, and players call it overpriced |
| Limit | None | Once per Cycle since patch 1.1 |
| Difficulty | Every level | Story and Normal only; Hard and Expert disable it |
Credits are tight in this game, and the Bacta Tank is the price players complain about most: one of the biggest week-one threads called it "way too pricy" (the rest of that list). The rule we would follow: beds for anyone the next mission can do without, the Bacta Tank for the one Operator it cannot.
Before patch 1.1 on September 9, the Bacta Tank could be used more than once a Cycle. That was a bug, and it is closed. On Hard and Expert there is no choice to make: every Injury waits for a bed, which is one of the quieter reasons those difficulties bite.
Who can die
Hawks can't. If Hawks falls in battle, the mission fails and you restart it. Lead designer James Brawley put it plainly before launch: "an automatic mission failure if Hawks dies in combat."
Everyone else can, including the story Operators. That is where permadeath costs the most, because some of them carry a class nobody else can. Tel-Rea Vokoss is the only Jedi Padawan in the game, and the developers' advice was "be careful that nothing unfortunate happens to her!" Cly Kullervo is the only Mandalorian. Exotic specializations cannot move to another Operator, so losing either one loses the class too (what each class does).
Beskar Mode raises the stakes again. It is a separate switch from permadeath: one constantly updating save, no reloads, and hard campaign-enders if Hawks dies, another critical squad member dies, or a crucial mission fails. With both on, a bad turn is permanent and can end the run.
How to keep everyone alive
Check the roster before every deploy. Anyone on two Injuries stays home. You can hold 20 Operators and field four, so there is almost always someone healthy to send instead.
Bring a Medic when permadeath is on. The Medic's First Responder passive gives a permanent Medpac without using a utility slot, and anyone the Medic Rallies comes back fully healed and able to act. Community guides say a Rally from anyone else returns the Operator with only part of their Health, which is how an Operator goes Down twice in one mission and takes two Injuries from it. The Medic's ultimate, Morale Boost, adds health to nearby allies at the start of each turn on top of that.
Pull a hurt Operator back before they drop. As EA's guide describes it, the Injury comes from going Down, so an Operator who finishes a mission on low Health in cover has nothing to treat. Retreating one Operator for a turn costs you damage; losing them costs you the Operator.
Know that reloading is allowed outside Beskar Mode. Permadeath on its own still lets you load a save from before a mission went wrong, and that is how the default game is set up. Whether you use it is your call.
On a Beskar run, trust your machine first. A crash mid-battle can cost you permadeath progress. Patch 1.1 fixed a Beskar Mode crash and a bug that temporarily deleted Beskar saves, and our crash-fix guide covers the rest.
Should you turn it off?
Bit Reactor built the campaign around it. The team's pre-launch answer was that permadeath is on by default, can be switched off, and is there because loss is "a core theme of Star Wars." The options screen only promises that difficulty can change mid-campaign, and community wikis say the permadeath choice holds for the whole campaign, so make it before you start.
Our advice is to leave it on. On Normal it barely bites: we finished our review campaign without losing a single Operator, and PCGamesN reported the same. One week-one thread argued three Injuries is too generous even on Hard with Beskar Mode, where the poster finished with one name on the Memorial. If you want permadeath to feel like permadeath, Hard is where it starts, because Hard takes the Bacta Tank away.
Turn it off if losing a favorite would make you stop playing. That is a fair reason, and the rest of the game is unchanged.
The details
- The Downed, Rally, Injury and Hawks rules come from EA's turn-based tactics guide and Bit Reactor's pre-launch Q&A (July 21, 2026). The Bacta Tank's difficulty limits come from the in-game options screen, and its once-per-Cycle rule from the patch 1.1 notes.
- The 10% chance-to-hit figure, the Medbay costs, the Memorial and the partial Health on a non-Medic Rally are community documentation, cross-checked between the Fextralife wiki and Zero Command's wiki. Anything our own campaign contradicts gets corrected here, visibly.
- Current as of patch 1.1, which left the three-Injury rule unchanged. When a patch touches Injuries, this page changes the same day. The Zero Company hub collects everything else, including the starter guide.
