Recursion

Ok I have some fundamental understanding of recursion. Basically it’s a loop. What I don’t understand is for example in the following code is how does the return keep updating its calculations without refreshing itself with every loop. In other words how does it not lose its value after every iteration through itself? Also with the following code eventually the value will count down to 0 so why does it not return 0 being that the first statement is set to return a 0 if 0 is detected.

For example if I pass the value 3 as the parameter the method returns 6 which is the correct return. However after each iteration the value of the parameter is reduced by 1 eventually reaching 0. Now after it reaches 0 shouldn’t the Base case statement be processed and the return be 0?

FYI this isn’t for a school project it is for my personal understanding. The semester is over but I still feel I need to increase my understanding of how and why recursion does what it does before I am able to be comfortable with using it.

public static int mystery (int n) 
   {
	 
	  if (n == 0)
		 return 0;
	  else
		 return n + mystery(n-1);
	  
	  //The following is an exampler of what recursion looks like using a loop instead
	 /* int intCount = n;
	  if (intCount == 0)
		 return 0;
	  else
	  {
		 while (n != 0)
		 {
			intCount = intCount  + n-1;
			n--;
		 }
		 //return n + mystery(n-1);
	  }
	  return intCount;*/
   }

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