Effective cap on long rests : difficulty implications.
The game may be locally easier or harder, depending on the exact distribution of food, combat encounters, how well we fared in the past few fights, etc. Standard resource management.
But globally, within a closed area like a whole Act, there will likely be a finite amount of food available. And thus a maximum number of long rests that can be taken in this area. That basically means : you must beat this area using at most this many long rests.
So this mechanism really has an impact on difficulty. I mean, that's quite probably one of the goals. But that means it should be accounted for in the difficulty options.
I don't mind resource management, but this isn't fun. The last thing we need is a shortage/limited amount of in-game food; this is not a survival sim. Give food to various merchants so you can buy and stock up before heading out, or allow you to craft food if you have the ingredients, which can also be purchased or gathered from the environment. Optionally, we can have "scrounging up food" as an integrated part of the resting UI, which allows you to make a dice roll and the result determines how much food you manage to scrounge up - so like a last-resort kinda thing if you've run out of food. Personally I don't need this optional bit but, it's just an idea.
