The wait time between using consumables feels unnecessarily restrictive. While I understand its intent to increase the intensity of fights and encourage tactical gameplay, I believe it detracts from the overall experience. Personally, I find myself more focused on when I can next heal rather than fully engaging in the fight. If the goal is to make fights more intense, perhaps utilising consumables strategically could better enforce tactical gameplay – for example, allowing players to use them when the enemy is staggered or at a distance, rewarding tactical play over all-out aggression.
Regarding the consumable system, I have some additional suggestions:
Allow players to set a preferred consumable so that when one is depleted, it automatically switches to their choice. Additionally, provide players with the freedom to customise the order in which consumables are replaced when consumed.
Introduce a mass crafting option for consumables, enabling players to craft multiple types simultaneously and streamline the crafting process.
Differentiate consumables by their usage time – for example, introducing “snacks” that quickly replenish health, while others might offer more significant buffs but take longer to use.
Consider adding consumables that provide temporary buffs to the player’s abilities, such as increased damage or speed, but also come with temporary debuffs, such as reduced defence or stamina regeneration. This introduces an element of risk and reward, where players must carefully weigh the benefits of the buff against the drawbacks of the debuff before deciding to use the consumable. This dynamic would add further depth to the gameplay and provide players with even more strategic choices during battles.
Would be nice to be able to set priority order on consumables.
That being said, I like the cooldown, honestly think it could afford to be longer. In similar games you have a limited number of heals you can use before resting, so you have to be mindful of when to use them. In this, you can carry hundreds of heals, but the cooldown forces you to be mindful.
Don’t forget you can also add two healing runes to your weapons to recover some HP during the consumable cooldown. Also just get hit less.
While I understand your point, I still believe that having the timer is restrictive to the player’s freedom of choice. If players wish not to use consumables, they can freely do so, but don’t enforce it upon others, making them have to wait. As I said, it takes me out of the fight as I am focusing on something that really shouldn’t need to be thought about.
Regarding your comparison to other games with limited healing, such as Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, it’s worth noting the differences in implementation. In those instances, healing tends to be quick and snappy, allowing for near-instantaneous recovery. However, in this case, players must wait for the timer to elapse before consuming the consumable. Additionally, the animation for consuming the item further extends this delay, which can feel more cumbersome and interrupts the flow of combat.
If the timer is to remain, I believe a workaround would be implementing runes or armour pieces that reduce this cooldown. Additionally, circling back to my buff vs debuff suggestion, potentially one of the variables that could be affected is the timer for consumables, again allowing for much more in-depth strategic play than what is currently at play and further allowing for player’s freedom of choice.
I think the timer is fine, personally I find it adds tension to a fight when you can’t just spam heals.
What I would like to see is quick slot belts, which ties into your point 1. It would allow players to select which items they want use and in what order, and prevent you from having to scroll past a dozen items like mushrooms or repair powder to get to the one you want. It also adds a tactical aspect where you don’t have access to every item on the fly and have to plan accordingly.
As I mentioned earlier, while I understand its intent to make fights more intense, personally, I find it has the opposite effect and takes me out of the action.
For those comfortable with the timer, an alternative approach could be introducing a consumable that gradually replenishes over time after each use. This consumable could reward players with fully replenished health or replenish their health over a duration of time, striking a balance and serving a distinct purpose for the timer mechanic. It encourages strategic decision-making, adding another layer of risk-reward dynamics to encounters. When players find themselves low on health with no other consumables, it intensifies the encounter, making it rewarding to strategically utilise the consumable and get back into the fight at the right moment. Additionally, it provides a balanced solution for players who prefer not to constantly grind for healing items.
This is the reason I ask. I’ll agree that the healing system is a mess at early levels, and far too punishing to new player who haven’t quite learned the feel of the game yet. Nothing feels worse than to lose a battle, then realizing youre out of heals and having to go back and gather ingredients.
‘Late game’ this isn’t an issue, everyone is flush with cash from the crucible and probably just buy from Gordon.
As you progress there’s plenty of options to ease your woes. As I mentioned earlier theres two weapon runes you can add to help out with healing, I rarely to never use consumables, prefer to use the runes instead. It’s also pretty easy to get your armor very high, mines just under 900 (with trying to keep balanced gear), and most enemies just kind of tickle, I imagine there are folks with well over 1k DEF. There’s also lifesteal builds, and stacking life regen was pretty viable mid-game (not sure late game).
Last I recall I’m about level 8. Whilst I understand you saying it get’s better later on, personally I don’t have a problem with how it is now, all I was trying to do was suggest many other ways that consumables could be incorporated. Just throwing out ideas.
Yeah… at those levels healing is a mess, I actually gave up on the game until a friend convinced me to play again. It does, fortunately, get better, but I know that’s little piece of mind when you’re slogging it through early game.
I think what could be helpful early game is buff the healing powers of raw ingredients, such as mushrooms.
Alternatively, even a temporary item that refreshes heals at waypoints and breaks after the first boss battle could be helpful.
I don’t have a problem with the current system of hunting for raw ingredients, I more-so have a problem with the timer itself and what’s why I thought of a couple workarounds. All it comes down to is preference and I don’t like the wait, or atleast I think it should be incorporated better, that’s why I suggested some consumables take longer or less time to consume which then invokes players to play more tactical during fights.
I really like idea number three with different types of food.
Short Meal: meals that have multiple charges, short consume timing, don’t slow combat down. But, with reduced effectiveness. Maybe a kebab skewer and each bite it loses a piece of meat.
Normal Meal: what we have right now.
Elaborate Meal: meals that require a buck load of ingredients to make, but consist out of various dishes; like a full course meal. The player needs to sit down at a table in Gordon’s restaurant or at home to eat this. It then shows a nice visual of the food on the table and the player slowly eating each dish. Before receiving a massive buff for an hour or something.
i was honestly thinking about suggesting help from the community to moderate the forum. i haven only been active for a few days now (before that i was a silent observer), but i notice, that there might be the need of moderation
yeah. and i have seen it with other early access projects, that it can help to get people from the community to moderate the forums. Since the devs should focus on coding, not merging threads
maybe one day i’ll throw another duplicate thread in there to suggest that.
i was honestly thinking about suggesting help from the community to moderate the forum. i haven only been active for a few days now (before that i was a silent observer), but i notice, that there might be the need of moderation 
