I hope they really make it, the game is becoming bland and easy compared with the original/first version.
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I agree violently with this post. I just made an account on this forum specifically to complain about this one issue. I can’t have fun with NRFTW anymore because the utility heal takes all of the challenge out of the game. I don’t even bother dodging most enemy attacks anymore; I just trade hits with them and heal afterwards. All of my food sits unused in my house. I beat every boss on my first try. I don’t even bother allocating half of my attribute points because I don’t need them.
It used to be exciting to find good food ingredients but now they’re worthless clutter.
Focus charges way too fast, the heal costs too little, it heals too much.
It has completely ruined the experience for me and I passionately hope the devs will address this.
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Personally i just unequipped the heal rune at Eleanore once i got to Sacrament because otherwise the game difficulty becomes trivial.
I agree, it’s too strong as it is. A few possible solutions or improvements.
- Remove scaling with plus healing stats. This thing should be an early game carry, then plateau.
- Increase focus cost (although I don’t like this one)
- Different scaling in combat vs. out of combat, heals for less with longer animation in combat
- Cooldown, or limited number of uses in combat, like food.
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Same here, I haven’t touched the game for a while after “Refinement”.
Just don’t use it then. It’s like complaining about spells, or summons, or bleed, etc being op in Elden Ring. Just don’t use the op thing then. The player’s that aren’t as skilled might need it just to be okay at the game. The devs added in difficulties so clearly the goal is no longer to make the game hard on everyone. Set the game up how you want. Just use food, set the game to the hardest difficulty. Put on a blindfold and play upside down. Play the game how you want.
Just because someone might find it fun to beat the whole game level 1 with just their fist and no dodging, doesn’t mean that’s for everyone.
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@DakotaDust 
Bro, you just found the solution to every balancing problem in the entire gaming industry. Maybe even beyond – like, “Here’s your lunch, my son.” – “But Mom, I don’t like it.” – “Then just don’t eat it.” 
No offense, man – and hey, if that’s your approach, that’s totally fine. I respect your point of view, and we don’t need to go any deeper into it. But seriously, I don’t think that’s what ‘game design’ is about… like “Let’s just throw all the crap into the game… someone’s bound to have fun with it… and the others? Well, they just don’t have to use it, right?”
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Is this nerfed already? lol I never used it ever and just cooked and ate the whole time, looks like I missed a lot.
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I’ve spent a lot of hours watching a gf, little sister, etc play games that they just don’t get in the way I do. A boss that might take me 45 minutes, takes them 10+ hours across multiple sessions. In those games at least you get your heals back on death. In NRftW if you only had food, it would mean that players with that skill level would have to go farm food many times before they beat that boss.
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this is why theres an easy mode
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I totally understand… Since I’m more of a casual gamer and not a Souls or ARPG expert, the same thing happened to me. Right after the EA launch, I even believed the version was bugged in a way that food ingredients didn’t respawn once you had gathered them - unless you had reached Sacra or passed Warrick. Only the chests would respawn (see Resources not respawning before Warrick is defeated).
After 4 or 5 failed attempts to beat Warrick, my food was gone - but the damn mushrooms just wouldn’t respawn. Not during the same game session, not after restarting the game, not even the next day.
I ended up grinding gear from chests for hours and selling it just to buy food from Fillmore! It got ridiculous - I was one step away from quitting the game… but I finally managed to beat Warrick.
Since then, many things have changed: respawn rates were increased, enemies were nerfed, I got better 
- but it’s still not an easy game, especially in the beginning. This is where the art of game balancing comes in. You can’t please everyone. NRFTW is not a game for the masses. If you water things down too much, the game will start to lose its identity and uniqueness.
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yeah i couldn’t agree more.. i think the way it is right now its too strong unless they start having skill ranks or make it so you can get a full health bar and low focus cost IF you have affixes for it in your gears.. right now it is way too forgiving.
but im pretty sure thomas already knows and this will either get brought in line with other stuff..
altough i wonder why they didn’t do this as a heal over time sort of thing .. like you pop it and it takes 4 to 6 seconds to heal the full amount.. so its not like you can use it in a fight to insta heal and save yourself. but with correct affixes and gears it could get better and heal you for more per tick therefore making it a way to save allies or yourself if you have armor and defenses and get to parry etc..
my guess would be they don’t want the fight to be running around waiting for life to heal… but then i think that’s sort of inevitable unless you got to combo something in order to heal.. a bit like the expedition 33 fights where you have to press right button at the right time while fighting to end up healing your life.. that could be interesting.
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One parry fills the focus bar almost entirely, without any augmentations to focus gain. Playing defensively gives you lots of focus. It’s basically how I have played all 200+ hours of the game so far, as a mage that parries constantly.
If a mechanic that is optional is taking away your fun…..unequip it.
Saying you “can’t have fun with NRFTW anymore” because an optional mechanic you don’t have to use, exists, seems like a personal issue. Remove it from it’s slot, don’t use it. Go back to having fun.
EDIT: Removed inappropriate word
Parry is still high risk high reward. Whiffing a parry, especially on a boss/mini boss/large enemy usually means you eat the next 1-2 big hits.
If you’ve mastered parry than congrats, that’s awesome.
“If a mechanic that is optional is taking away your fun…..unequip it.
Saying you “can’t have fun with NRFTW anymore” because an optional mechanic you don’t have to use, exists, is moronic. Remove it from it’s slot, don’t use it. Go back to having fun.“
~~~~
This is a vapid argument that people make constantly against every game that closes loopholes and eliminates exploits or balances overly-powerful mechanics.
Let’s take this argument to its logical endpoint.
The devs put in an item that all vendors sell for 5 coppers that gives your player invulnerability for 5 minutes.
Many players would choose not to use this, because it clearly ruins the game. Many players would use it only against particularly difficult challenges, not realizing how much happy dopamine they are depriving themselves of by not practicing and working hard and strategizing to overcome the challenge themselves.
And most importantly, for many of the players that choose not to use the item, the feeling of victory from overcoming challenges without the item would be cheapened, knowing that many others overcame the same challenge easily by using the broken item, and they had to nerf themselves in order to make it a challenge at all.
It’s not the fault of those players that their fun is ruined by the knowledge of the exploit existing. There’s nothing they can do about that. That’s the way their brains are wired.
Stop trying to invalidate my experience because your brain doesn’t work the way mine does. It’s narrow-minded and obnoxious. I can’t help the way the existence of exploits spoils a game for me even if I don’t use them, just as I can’t help whether I like the taste of watermelon and I can’t help my sexual orientation. There’s nothing stupid about taste and preferences, as they’re a consequence of how our brains are wired, and it’s generally not something that can be changed. Otherwise we wouldn’t need games to challenge and stimulate us in the first place. We could just rewire our brains to get all the stimulation and joy that we want just from bouncing a ball up and down.
And trust me, there are many others who share my experience. There’s a reason game developers balance broken mechanics even in single player games. Devs who do this are not morons, and players who appreciate this are not morons either. It’s just subjective preference.
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You can like the taste of watermelon, and make the decision to not eat it.
So you’re comparing an optional game mechanic to your sexual orientation??? That’s a pretty insane extreme.
I do apologize for calling it moronic, bad choice of words.
And you knowing that this mechanic exists, and that OTHER people MAY have used it, would affect YOUR enjoyment of the game, so therefore it should be reworked/removed?
Wow, this is a single player game, how other people decide to play should not affect you at all.
That IS their problem though. Your brain is wired that way, so therefore the devs need to remove this mechanic?
I do admit that this mechanic can be overpowered, and it needs some balance, and there are some good suggestions here (limited use, increase time to activate, less HP recovery etc).
Not using a strong mechanic isn’t that difficult, as long as it’s something you can unequip and never use again. If the problem were something like “maxed weapons are too strong” or “The enchantments are too strong” or “Leveling up is too easy/strong” then it would be a serious problem because there’s a conflict between completionism and difficulty adjustment. But here there’s no such conflict; it’s comparable to the case of summons in Elder Ring.
I didn’t use summons in Elden Ring, my experience wasn’t degraded because others used them, And I didn’t equip them only because I was facing an obstacle.
I have almost 600 hours on NRFTW. The game got a lot easier when they removed the food cooldown, but I prefer the new system even though I love the difficulty, because now it works more similar to other Souls-like games I’m used to.
The healing rune is strong and makes the game easier, but it’s not nearly as strong as food.
I think the Food + Rune combo is a bit too strong, but it’s not terrible, especially considering that the 50 focus you used to heal yourself could have been used to do more damage. But considering how OP is food (especially high-level food), I’d say it would be best to nerf that instead of the rune.
The thing is, you have to gather ingredients for food. But gathering ingredients is a completely combat-dependent action, yet fighting with high-level food compared to fighting with medium-level food is a huge difference. Meanwhile, the rune has a real cost in combat and isn’t exclusively dependent on preparation (although obviously, if you have more Focus gain and increased healing, it will be stronger).
They have now implemented the difficulty options in the game so I don’t think this point is related to the issue anymore
Also If you go fishing, you can make the food that provides you with Focus, and you can beat bosses using runes alone.
If you use buffs before each fight, it’s like dropping the difficulty from hard to normal. The same goes for a well-optimized build with all the enchantments synergizing.
You have to accept that it is impossible not to have difficulty options within the game (depending on the items you use and not on the settings) when it comes to a complex RPG like NRFTW or Elder Ring, if you are looking for an experience with a difficulty perfectly balanced by the developers you have to play games like Sekiro, Hollow Knight, Nine Sols, etc. not an RPG with a lot of Weapons, Armor, Spells, Objects, Runes, etc. all different from each other it is unrealistic that there are no strong combinations and strategies, you have to regulate yourself and not use the strong things if you want to increase the difficulty
Edit: I recommend you watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmsS1jF9_EE (dark souls 3 spoilers: boss names and appearance), especially if you are interested in game design and philosophy, and if you have difficulty understanding the point of view of people who have a different opinion than yours in this topic.
I want to point out (in case it wasn’t clear from the rest of the post) that even though I’m a bit more on the “if you don’t like it, don’t use it” side, I also think that since most players will end up using both food and the rune, it’s important that when they’re used together they’re not too strong, and that’s why my suggestion is to nerf the high-level food (and maybe even slightly nerf the mid-level food), my reasoning is that nerfing the rune isn’t very viable since the moment the rune becomes weaker compared to the other runes it will no longer be used because it’s seen as a waste of focus, and would therefore become an option only in desperate cases of emergency instead of the fun mechanic it is now. I also think that even if the effectiveness of the food should be decreased, the ingredients should be more abundant and it should also be more common to find whole food as drops from chests and enemies.
Damn, just don’t use it lol
Leaving disproportionately powerful items in the game without balancing them will appeal to some types of players, and turn off others. In the end, the devs should do whatever leads to the most success for their game. Given the niche this game appeals to, I think balancing items so nothing is overpowered will lead to players having more fun and a better reputation for the game.
The way you imply that my opinion is ridiculous is not consistent with the reality that developers very commonly balance overpowered items and strategies in their single player games to protect players from themselves and foster a reputation of being a challenging experience for their game.
You keep straw-manning my argument. Yes, it’s my personal preference. That’s what I’m here to share. Preferences are not right or wrong, and my preference is not ridiculous. I’m not the only person who has this preference. If I argue that I think the devs should make the characters sexier and make them wear less clothing because I enjoy that more because that’s the way my brain is wired, or visa versa, and you say “well you think the devs should change their game just because of how your brain is wired?”, it would be missing the point. I came here to share my preference and opinion. The devs can choose to hear it, and decide what they think will lead to a more fun experience for the largest number of players.
If your prefer the game to have overpowered items available in case you want to use them to make the game easier, that’s your preference. Express it to the devs. And feel free to tell me that your preference is opposite to mine. But don’t tell me that my preference is invalid.
Ok let’s compare to the summons in Elden Ring. They could not be used in all bosses, and they could not be used in all areas. Generally, if you tried to hide and let the summon kill a boss for you, they would fail miserably and only take a small chunk off the boss’ health bar. When players found how to make some summons actually kill bosses for them effortlessly, the devs nerfed those summons heavily (and I’m very glad they did). I personally never found that using summons ever let me avoid learning how to dodge boss attacks and I still had to practice the bosses to learn how to beat them.
Not true with the healing runes in NRFTW. They have largely obviated the need for dodging and learning for me. I killed every boss on the first try, and I rarely needed to learn their attacks thanks to the healing rune.
It is related. I hate it when games add an easy mode. And so do some of my friends that I play games with. Go ahead and call us elitist gate-keeping jerks, but our experience always feels poisoned by the presence of a difficulty slider. It makes the challenge feel self-imposed instead of non-negotiable, and that makes a huge difference to us psychologically. When games add easy mode and overpowered items, we leave and find games in which the challenge is non-negotiable. You might find my preferences stupid and repugnant, but they are what they are and I cannot change them. It’s not a choice I can make.
As it is, the heal rune is so powerful that it makes all of the other offense-oriented runes seem like a waste of focus when you can just whale on the enemies with no concern for defense and use the heal rune to negate the enemy’s attacks.
Great video, and a perfect example of why it makes sense for game developers to protect players from themselves via incentives to play the game in a fun way.
“Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”
- Soren Johnson
If you give players overpowered tools, many will use them and ruin the game for themselves. If you balance those tools so they are still useful but don’t negate the need for learning and practicing to overcome challenge, those players will have a better experience, tell their friends about their great experience, and the game will be more successful. It’s as simple as that.
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