Healing Spring



"There's no need to rush / 5 seconds rejuvenates / Tunnel spring water."

- Tunnel Hot Spring haiku, Mother 3

As the title might suggest, a Healing Spring is a fountain, spring, or other body of water that has some magical healing properties.

Overwhelmingly common in video games. Usually characters will be able to quickly recover their health simply by immersing themselves in it. Often they can also bottle it and take it with them to drink and heal themselves later.

Although the water may look exactly like normal water, it may also be sparkly, be a weird colour, or have some other aesthetic quality that marks it as magical.

It's also common for a healing spring to inhabited by a goddess, a fairy, a spirit, or some other magical being.

Rarely is it ever explained how the particular body of water gained its healing properties. In a lot of cases it can be assumed that it was the work of the being that resides in it, or A Wizard Did It. Or the water is just so ridiculously "clean and pure" that it can heal the wounded back to perfect health.

In the cases of healing springs that are fed by rivers or waterfalls, it also isn't explained how the water suddenly gains its magic healing powers as soon as it flows into the vicinity of the spring. Some video game designers avoid this problem altogether by simply having springs that have no inflow whatsoever. With healing fountains, it can be usually be assumed that the same water is simply cycled through the plumbing indefinitely, also avoiding this problem.

If the Healing Spring is also a Save Point, that's a form of Healing Checkpoint.

A Fountain of Youth often does this as a side-effect.

Compare Healing Potion, Panacea, and for RPGs, the Trauma Inn. Complete opposite of Grimy Water.

Anime & Manga

 * In the Pokémon movie Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, part of the plot revolves around a lake with healthful qualities due to the purity of the water. The most extreme result is demonstrated at the climax.
 * Also seen in Pokémon Special where Red and Sabrina got serious frostbite due to the actions of Lorelei.
 * Also seen in the fourth movie, Pokémon 4 Ever. It's a magical spring that Suicune purifies. It can't cure grave injuries.

Literature

 * The Silmarillion features a lake that possesses healing powers (due to being blessed by Ulmo), most notably used to restore Turin from his Heroic BSOD. It is later destroyed by Glaurung.
 * Xanth does this often and by name: the characters of the various books frequently find themselves searching for/happening upon a Healing Spring, which they do in fact simply call "a healing spring" (there are quite a few). There are also "Love Springs" that, like this trope, do exactly what you think they do.
 * Walter Jon Williams' Implied Spaces features pools that can both heal and resurrect people. The "water" is actually a silvery, computer-linked nanotech soup.

Tabletop Games

 * Vampires in GURPS Fantasy can only heal their injuries by immersing themselves in baths of blood.

Video Games
""You forget how good the power feels....until you get to a pure source!""
 * Fallout 3
 * Mother 3, as the page quote indicates.
 * There's a Healing Spring in Mother 2/VideoGame/EarthBound's Saturn Valley.
 * Mother 3 also goes as far as including a hot spring in a present box, being the second-to-last spring in the entire game.
 * They've made sporadic appearances in the Final Fantasy games. Most frequent in III, but even VII had a few bizarre appearances of them.
 * Final Fantasy Legend has them.
 * The Fairy Fountain in the Zelda games. Also, the Goron Hot Springs in The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess.
 * In Breath of Fire II, there are rare pools of 'clear water' which the playable characters can drink from to restore their health.
 * Found in a couple of places in Ultima Underworld.
 * A mysteriously sparkling pool of water can be found in the hotel basement in Trilby's Notes. As this is a point-and-click adventure game without a health meter, it does not heal Trilby: rather, it restores his mental balance, bringing him back from the Dark World. The origin of this power is never explained, making it a slight case of What Happened to the Mouse?.
 * In Little King's Story, your workers can dig up hot springs from steaming cracks in the ground, which will restore your follower's health. The larger the pool, the more often it can be used before drying up, though once found a spring will remain a permanent fixture of the landscape and just requires time to refill.
 * Strange pools of bluish water found in Half Life's Xen slowly replenish health when stood in.
 * Super Adventure Island II has hot springs throughout the game world.
 * In Metroid Prime 3, Samus can immerse herself in large Phazon pools to regain energy once equipped with the PED Suit. Though there are only two or three such instances in the entire game.
 * Harvest Moon games usually include hot springs that restore large amounts of your stamina.
 * Diablo II has wells. A character can drink about half the water contained in one to restore a decent chunk of health, mana, and stamina. There are Rejuvenation potions, which use similar mechanics. While some of these might be bottled water from these wells, the only time they are actually manufactured in game, the raw materials seem to be obtained from the corpses of the various monsters that appear in the game.
 * Summoning one of these is one God Power in Age of Mythology. It works for whichever side 'controls' it, i.e. which side has units closest to it.
 * In Tron 2.0, where glowing water actually heals you, comes from the explanation in the movie that the glowing water is in fact "pure power":

"Pit: Wait, is this... Ha! It is! A hot spring!
 * Warcraft 3 has fountains of health, mana, and rejuvenation that heal both. They don't discriminate, so trying to keep your army between one and your enemy is helpful. The Night Elf Moon Wells also contain rejuvenating, presumably moon-empowered water.
 * In World of Warcraft, Holy Priests can summon a Lightwell, which works similiar (although it contains holy energy, not water). Warlocks have a variation in the Soulwell, which contains Healthstones players can use to heal themselves. Shaman have totems that periodically restore health or mana to nearby allies (Lifestream and Manaspring, obviously inspired by this trope). In fact, most of their healing spells are water-themed.
 * Funny enough, campfires essentially act like this on a very, very weak level. Standing near a campfire increases a players spirit, which in turn increases his health and mana regeneration slightly.
 * Every body of water is this in Super Mario 64. Since you drown when you run out of life, and there is only one life bar, "coming up for air" will fully restore your life. Possibly a Good Bad Bug. Except for that one body of water in Snowman's Land, which is simply so cold that it will kill you.
 * Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle had these in the randomly generated dungeons. In the first area they replenished your health infinite times, but in the later areas they only worked every few minutes.
 * Healing Springs appear in the Shin Megami Tensei games. However, you have to pay 1 macca for each HP and 3 for each MP.
 * The first Persona also has them, though the prices are far more reasonable. And they're run by a fairy named Trish. Though in Persona 2, she jacks up the prices immensely-first healing costs 5000 Yen. Further healings get more expensive by 5000 yen. Stacking up, permanently.
 * In the 2nd SNES game, in Makai, you could only use a specific spring based on your alignment, if you weren't that, you could still use it but you had to pay 1,000 Macca to use it in addition to the healing costs.
 * In the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time games, the Prince recovers health by drinking regular water. Then again, he lives in a desert. (And the musical string is quite, quite nice.)
 * Averted, oddly enough, in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire; there's a hot spring in one of the towns, but it doesn't do anything. (Of course, since you literally have to go through the Pokémon Center to get to it, it'd be pointless.) Played straight in FireRed and LeafGreen on One Island.
 * On the Isle of Teomora in Summoner 2, near Prince Neru's Lair, the is the Pool of the Healing Twins.
 * Age of Wonders has healing springs which can become dangerous poison springs if the land around is changed into wasteland.
 * Runescape has one in Oo'Glog which heals instantly.
 * Super Mario RPG has one in Nimbus Land.
 * In The Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogie's Revenge, Jack restores health by drinking the water from the fountain in the town square. He also has crystal bottles that he can fill there for portable healing.
 * Shantae recovers her health by bathing in large bath houses. Close enough.
 * Pokémon has this in all the Generation III games. Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald have one in Lavaridge Town, while FireRed and LeafGreen have theirs at the foot of Mt. Ember.
 * The Kid Icarus games have these. Pit really enjoys them in Kid Icarus Uprising.

Magnus: Apparently someone likes his spa time."


 * Ib has a variant to do with vases. The characters' Life Meters are represented by roses and dipping a rose into a vase heals them completely. These vases are normally one-use only, but there are some special blue vases that are infinite-use...for when you're REALLY going to need them.

Real Life

 * This is a surprisingly common belief in the western world as well. The idea of spa towns and sacred wells date back to ancient times. Germanic and Celtic peoples, in particular, considered wells and springs sacred sites for healing and would leave offerings in thanks. This is the reason for the supersition of tossing a penny into a fountain for luck.
 * The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes
 * A list of Scottish "sacred wells"
 * Hydrotherapy is most common for physical therapy and mobility rehabilitation. In the past, it was also a common treatment for alcoholism.

Web Comics

 * Zebra Girl went into one of these and remembered her mother for the first time in a long time.