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Originally Posted by GM4Him
We wouldn't even be having this conversation if they had decent fights for low level characters because no one would feel the need to long rest often if the fights were more appropriate.
From the way you descibe it ... it seems more like that combats will be exactly the same, only enemies would look different. O_o

How wpuld that change the situation?

I mean ypu said it yourself those arent really intellect devourers ... in fact they are basically that giant rats with different skin to fit better to story tone.

Last edited by RagnarokCzD; 21/02/22 08:17 AM.

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Originally Posted by GM4Him
I mean, if you provided all these places as camp locations, you'd never have to really go back far to the nearest camp. They're naturally all over the game map.
Its a nice image to be sure ...
But comes with some technical problems ... mainly cliping.
Its a little odd but it seems like while Larian dont mind to provide Halflings ass piercings with their own weapons ... they do mind if Dwarf beards go through armor, or characters walks through objects.

Even tho ...
Now when i say this that could be prevented with minor changes on those camps, so every cakp have the same "acting zone" ... stage if you like ... where cutscenes are happening.
Hmmm hmmm ... maybe that is not as impossible as i thought.

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camping and supplies sure do make the game more difficult and thrilling but it may cause certain "point of no return" if players weren't aware. it will be great if larian decide to do so, then make sure there's a non deletable auto saved games checkpoint.

if i may name a game, pathfinder kingmaker has a location where it's entirely possible that may screw up players upon entering the location and it's get locked and won't be able to return to the world map until that location is completed. that is on a normal difficulty by the way. you won't be able to get out of that location and with 0 camping supplies with all your characters exhausted and all depleted spells and talents.

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Originally Posted by RagnarokCzD
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Lae'zel urgently wants to reach the Creche before she turns into a mind flayer; why would she be perfectly content with the party taking a long rest every hour?
Problem with this theory is that you dont "rest every hour" ... ever. :-/

Every time you Long Rest the day is ended ...
Since time in game is static rightnow no matter how much real time you spend between Long Rests that is allways and every time 24h from game perspective.

//Edit:
On the other hand she can just complain that the searching for creche in your company is just taking too long ... and both idea and story integrity remain intact.
That is not a problem with my theory. That is the point of my theory. After every hour of adventuring (some exploration + 1 combat), you can take 23 hours to rest. This turns a single full day of adventuring (8 hours adventuring, 16 hours eating&resting) into 8 full in-game days.

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Guys, allow me to remind you something about time in this game... The game has a running clock in its code, and that clock is disconnected from long rests. More details here https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=97909&Number=776950#Post776950
And they could just make things work exactly by the book using that clock to fix the whole imbalance problem. In the book it states that "A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period".

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Originally Posted by Zellin
Guys, allow me to remind you something about time in this game... The game has a running clock in its code, and that clock is disconnected from long rests. More details here https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=97909&Number=776950#Post776950
And they could just make things work exactly by the book using that clock to fix the whole imbalance problem. In the book it states that "A character can’t benefit from more than one Long Rest in a 24-hour period".
This is certainly an option for restricting long rests, but it has similar problems as other suggestions. How does Larian determine how much game-time has passed? Does 1 real-time second equal 1 in-game minute? Do they base it on events/locations reached/dialogue, where each event passes time by X amount? The latter has similar problems as the camp locations and/or exhaustion mechanic.

What happens if you're out of resources but only 16 hours of in-game time have passed? Do you just have to afk until enough time has passed? Or can you speed up time to instantly wait 8 more hours and then rest? If the latter, how is this different from the current system of unlimited long rests? And in either case, are there any consequences for doing so?

I think that long resting should govern time (game should only record days), rather than in-game time governing long resting. And various quests will progress on day-timescales, where e.g. the Tollhouse burns down if you long rest (a day has passed) after reaching it.

Originally Posted by Archaven
camping and supplies sure do make the game more difficult and thrilling but it may cause certain "point of no return" if players weren't aware. it will be great if larian decide to do so, then make sure there's a non deletable auto saved games checkpoint.
This is an important consideration, which is why it'd be *easier* to discourage long rests (companion disapproval, having to manually walk back to the previous camp instead of pushing forward to the next) instead of restricting them based on time-passed or events/encounters faced/locations reached.

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I think the best Camping Resting suggestions were these:

1. Short Rest = time passes from Morning to Noon; Noon to Evening. You are out of Short Rests. After that, you cannot Short Rest again and can only Long Rest. This would require a Day/Night cycle of sorts; a transition of lighting, but it would show the progression of time based on Short Resting. No animations even needed, really. Just fade to black, and when it fades back the lighting has transitioned, indicating the passage of time. If there is a camp dialogue, it can be triggered during a Short Rest too, so that the player doesn't feel encouraged to Long Rest in order to see different dialogues. Each Short Rest should require some sort of Camping Supplies cost because according to D&D rules, Short Resting is about eating, drinking, tending to injuries and repairing armor/equipment. Although it should, based on original rules, only equal an hour or maybe two, this is a video game. A simple approach to the transition of time is probably best. I also think just doing away with the short rest button is good, making it so you have to interact with some sort of Short Rest Point on the map to take a short rest. Thus, not EVERY location allows for a short rest, so you don't just auto-heal when dangerous spiders are right above your head, as in the PFH we just watched. When I saw that, I was like, "Come on now! You aren't even trying to make this immersive, and you're just laughing about how ridiculous it is that you can even short rest while stealthing under vicious spiders that want to eat you. There are plenty of benches, chairs, etc. in the game that could be used as Short Rest Points.

2. Long Rest = Call it a day. Again, provide some sort of Long Rest Points on the maps and make them frequent enough that people aren't backtracking unless they absolutely need to, but not so frequent that people can just long rest after every battle. So, again, as said above, there are plenty of places throughout the map that someone could use as a Long Rest Point. Think of these as Save Points in old school video games. You select a bedroll or fireplace or campfire or whatever, and you and your party set up camp right there for the night. Game world transitions to night. Dialogues at camp can now be done. Camp Supplies are required, but more than Short Rests.

I agree with mrfuji3. Real-time clock is not very good to limit this kind of thing. In fact, it only highlights and accentuates time, making it stand out more than it should. Passage of time is best handled via the Resting system. If I Short Rest while at Waukeen's Rest after I trigger the "Save the Counselor" quest, by all the Nine, I've just let an hour or so go by. The Counselor should either escape on her own or die. The fire could still be burning after a short rest, but the people inside should be rescued or dead at that point, no thanks to you. That just makes common sense. You don't take an hour rest when there are people to save in a burning building. Certain events like these should have SOME sort of time constraints on them. It's your fault if you lock yourself out of the "Saving the Counselor" quest because you short or long rested AFTER triggering the quest. Until you trigger it, by no means should it be timed, but once you've triggered it, that puppy should be OVER if you rest.

That goes for other moments in the game. If I trigger Mayrina's quest, is the hag going to stick around waiting for me to casually make my way down to her lair? Should I be able to short or long rest while making my way down to confront her? If so, there should be something, at the very least, like Ethel saying, "By the Heavens, Child! Took you long enough. Fortunately for you, I'm enjoying our little game, so I was willing to wait for ya to saunter on down here. Sheesh! Takin' yer sweet time. It's only a girl and her baby's life on the line, but what do you care? Eh? Take a little rest, sleep for a bit. You've got all the time in the world." Just something to indicate the passage of time has meaning in the game.

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Originally Posted by mrfuji3
This is certainly an option for restricting long rests, but it has similar problems as other suggestions. How does Larian determine how much game-time has passed? Does 1 real-time second equal 1 in-game minute? Do they base it on events/locations reached/dialogue, where each event passes time by X amount? The latter has similar problems as the camp locations and/or exhaustion mechanic.
Your questions are indicating that you didn't read that thread, the one I linked.
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
What happens if you're out of resources but only 16 hours of in-game time have passed? Do you just have to afk until enough time has passed? Or can you speed up time to instantly wait 8 more hours and then rest? If the latter, how is this different from the current system of unlimited long rests? And in either case, are there any consequences for doing so?
If 16 hours passed it means that you already can rest, you don't need to wait 24 hours BETWEEN the long rests. It's just 1 long rest per 24 hours. And the consequences are pretty obvious in how it's phrased in the book: you may rest right after the previous rest, but if it's not a new day you do not benefit from it (no healing, no spellslots).

In that same thread I already wrote all those options like deleting that clock and make the player push the time through actions (ideal in my eyes). But I also think we should be open to compromises here and maybe give Larian more ideas to think about.

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Originally Posted by Zellin
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
This is certainly an option for restricting long rests, but it has similar problems as other suggestions. [various questions]
Your questions are indicating that you didn't read that thread, the one I linked.
I read the thread when it was originally published, and I skimmed it to refresh myself. You provide some investigation of how it currently works, and then provide suggestions as to how it could work better. Your suggestions are 1.) x real time = y game time, or 2.) progress time based on events.

The rest of the thread discusses various implementations, issues, and benefits of your suggestions, which is essentially what I say in my post: these points need to be considered. And tbf most of the discussion in that thread was about making time passage make the most logical sense and immersive (which is important!), rather than explicitly balancing it with D&D's long rest system-encounter and class design. Am I incorrect?

Originally Posted by Zellin
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
What happens if you're out of resources but only 16 hours of in-game time have passed? Do you just have to afk until enough time has passed? Or can you speed up time to instantly wait 8 more hours and then rest? If the latter, how is this different from the current system of unlimited long rests? And in either case, are there any consequences for doing so?
If 16 hours passed it means that you already can rest, you don't need to wait 24 hours BETWEEN the long rests. It's just 1 long rest per 24 hours. And the consequences are pretty obvious in how it's phrased in the book: you may rest right after the previous rest, but if it's not a new day you do not benefit from it (no healing, no spellslots).

In that same thread I already wrote all those options like deleting that clock and make the player push the time through actions (ideal in my eyes). But I also think we should be open to compromises here and maybe give Larian more ideas to think about.
This is what I meant, but admittedly I phrased it poorly. I was counting time from the initiation of the previous long rest: 8 hours rest + ~4 hours adventuring + ~4 hours eating = you still need 8 more hours until you can get the benefit of a long rest. If you're out of resources, how do you pass that time? Just afk or can you press a button to skip 4 hours or other?

You suggest pushing the time through actions. But what happens if you've exhausted all the non-combat actions you can take (dialogue, exploring new locations, etc) and only have combat opportunities left, but you have no resources? This risks soft-locking the game.

Edit: I'm not necessarily categorically disagreeing with your suggestion to limit things by the game clock. I think it's possible that such an implementation could work, and it'd also provide nice immersion! I'm just trying to address any potential issues so that we can arrive on the best solution, because you know that some people will come in here and use any issues to say "this possible issue is bad and thus long rest restrictions are bad in entirety."

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Originally Posted by mrfuji3
You suggest pushing the time through actions. But what happens if you've exhausted all the non-combat actions you can take (dialogue, exploring new locations, etc) and only have combat opportunities left, but you have no resources? This risks soft-locking the game.
Ok. I'll explain more thorow how I see it. First of all did you play Dragon Age 2? If you did you may remember how time worked there: it had plenty of timeskips (and that's not very good for an RPG and immersion), but also a frozen world (which we already have in BG3 and we know that there are some players which love its convinience) and quite a lot of quest that were set at different time of a day (something some people want to see in BG3).
So I'm suggesting a hybrid of that with what we already have. Literal actions like walking, managing inventory, looting and smacking someone with your sword shouldn't change the time. Completing quests, considerable main story progress and long rests should change the time, but their time cost should be a bit bloated to compensate those time-free actions.
And if Larian would set certain quest for certain time of a day they can do what Bioware did in DA2: add special time-skip option that activates by player. In DA2 it literally worked like "now you have a quest for the evening while it's morning, either do something else or go to your mansion and time-skip".
So no one would be really soft-locked from anything. If you need to loot some resources you can loot for eternity, if you need to walk back to your camp you can do it, but you cannot pack all quests in one day.
Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Edit: I'm not necessarily categorically disagreeing with your suggestion to limit things by the game clock. I think it's possible that such an implementation could work, and it'd also provide nice immersion! I'm just trying to address any potential issues so that we can arrive on the best solution, because you know that some people will come in here and use any issues to say "this possible issue is bad and thus long rest restrictions are bad in entirety."
We have partial long rest and for all possible solutions a long rest even partial should skip 8 hours. We have teleports for convenient backtracking.
So I'm not seeing a scenario where a player would stumble on a wall of time, resoursless and not being able to progress further or time-skip.
And what I'm seeing in the suggestion to tie time to long rest that it solves only such things like inns burning for days (not really, because Larian would still need to write a separate script to tell the inn for how many days it can burn), but not things like balance around spell-slots and once-per-long-rest abilities, because you're still keeping the time flow right in the players hands.

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This is my suggestion:
Add a toggle in the options to select whether food is required for resting or not. If the player selects that it is required, either the amount of food required per rest or the amount of food available in the world (or both) could change depending on the difficulty or as a separate option.

This would let people who want to manage resources do so and those who don’t want to manage resources avoid it. It would also use a system they already created and so hopefully would not be as much work.

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Originally Posted by Zellin
Ok. I'll explain more thorow how I see it. First of all did you play Dragon Age 2? If you did you may remember how time worked there: it had plenty of timeskips (and that's not very good for an RPG and immersion), but also a frozen world (which we already have in BG3 and we know that there are some players which love its convinience) and quite a lot of quest that were set at different time of a day (something some people want to see in BG3).
So I'm suggesting a hybrid of that with what we already have. Literal actions like walking, managing inventory, looting and smacking someone with your sword shouldn't change the time. Completing quests, considerable main story progress and long rests should change the time, but their time cost should be a bit bloated to compensate those time-free actions.
And if Larian would set certain quest for certain time of a day they can do what Bioware did in DA2: add special time-skip option that activates by player. In DA2 it literally worked like "now you have a quest for the evening while it's morning, either do something else or go to your mansion and time-skip".
So no one would be really soft-locked from anything. If you need to loot some resources you can loot for eternity, if you need to walk back to your camp you can do it, but you cannot pack all quests in one day.
I think I understand. And yeah, I like this! I want there to be day- and night-time in BG3, with appropriate quests and potentially even different NPC availability for each. This would massively increase immersion and also allow for Larian to add night-specific creatures like vampires to excel at night but suffer during the day. (@GM4Him has suggested that short rests are these mini-fast forwards of ~2-6 hours).

But. This seems more appropriate for the "Day/Night Cycle" megathread, as it doesn't directly relate to long rest/camping restrictions (since you say that players can "time-skip" = no restrictions besides possibly timed-quests?). Or at least you're coming at it from the opposite end. Your suggestion prevents too many events from happening in the same game-day, whereas I want to prevent too few events in the same day. So I think a combination of your Day&Nighttime system and some other rest restriction system would be good. The former adds a reasonable sense of time progression and day-/night-specific quest opportunities, and the latter limits the player's ability to pass infinite time and bypass 5e's balance around long-rest-recharge abilities (namely spells). And either can be implemented separately.

DA2 worked very well with this system because abilities were cooldown based. Whereas in 5e, the different classes are balanced around assuming 3-6 encounters per day. If Larian wants to retain this balance (some players don't think this balance is important), BG3 requires either rest restrictions OR changing the classes' abilities to something closer to per-combat uses.

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Originally Posted by Icelyn
This is my suggestion:
Add a toggle in the options to select whether food is required for resting or not. If the player selects that it is required, either the amount of food required per rest or the amount of food available in the world (or both) could change depending on the difficulty or as a separate option.

This would let people who want to manage resources do so and those who don’t want to manage resources avoid it. It would also use a system they already created and so hopefully would not be as much work.
Difficulty options are good and food is already in the game so it's an easy fix. +1 for this suggestion, at least over what we have now.

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Originally Posted by Icelyn
This is my suggestion:
Add a toggle in the options to select whether food is required for resting or not. If the player selects that it is required, either the amount of food required per rest or the amount of food available in the world (or both) could change depending on the difficulty or as a separate option.

This would let people who want to manage resources do so and those who don’t want to manage resources avoid it. It would also use a system they already created and so hopefully would not be as much work.

I'm not opposed to that.

Still, I would very much like them to just let us camp at proper camp locations, having Long Rest Points as described instead of the weird Teleport to a place that doesn't exist thing. I mean, even IF they were going to do the Teleport to a safe place thing, it should be something like the Grove, because that makes the most sense as the safest location on the map... unless, that is, you tick them off and it's hostile. But then, you have other potential places, like the Dank Crypt if you cleared it, able to be ported to via the first Waypoint you find, the Harper Lookout, which is just as easy to get to via the Silvanus Waypoint, etc. At least having the camps on the map just makes it feel so much more appropriate. And even IF they wanted to keep all those mini-camps, which I totally understand why they would because they put a lot of work into them, at least give us some sort of map location for each of them. Even if that location is something like what is currently a blank wall that they now turn black and label "Mini-Camp" so people know it's a gateway to the camp like in other video games, I'd rather have that than not have any idea where the camp is located.

So, for example, they want to keep the Dank Crypt Mini-Camp. Fine. Add a door and have it labeled Mini-Camp. That would work for me. I'd be happy with that.

AND, why not make them unlockable, almost like something you need to collect in the game. You're going through the Dank Crypt. You find the door to the Mini-Camp. Now you can Long Rest in the Dank Crypt. Otherwise, you have to port back to the original camp that you found, let's say, near where you find the Harper Stash near Astarion's Pod or add it somewhere near the beach or something. So, you don't unlock the first camp until you go out and explore that little nook. Then you find a small cave labeled "Passage to Forest Camp" or whatever. After that, you can always go back to that camp via fast travel, or you can fast travel to any of the camps you've unlocked. You can then decorate your favorite camp however you want with items you pick up in the game.

I don't know. I'm just trying to compromise here because they DID build all those mini-camps. Granted, if they'd done what we wanted to begin with, they wouldn't have had to, but I'm all for not undoing something they put a lot of work into. Just attach them to something or drop them somewhere on the map or both.

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Originally Posted by GM4Him
I'm not opposed to that.

Still, I would very much like them to just let us camp at proper camp locations, having Long Rest Points as described instead of the weird Teleport to a place that doesn't exist thing. I mean, even IF they were going to do the Teleport to a safe place thing, it should be something like the Grove, because that makes the most sense as the safest location on the map... unless, that is, you tick them off and it's hostile. But then, you have other potential places, like the Dank Crypt if you cleared it, able to be ported to via the first Waypoint you find, the Harper Lookout, which is just as easy to get to via the Silvanus Waypoint, etc. At least having the camps on the map just makes it feel so much more appropriate. And even IF they wanted to keep all those mini-camps, which I totally understand why they would because they put a lot of work into them, at least give us some sort of map location for each of them. Even if that location is something like what is currently a blank wall that they now turn black and label "Mini-Camp" so people know it's a gateway to the camp like in other video games, I'd rather have that than not have any idea where the camp is located.

So, for example, they want to keep the Dank Crypt Mini-Camp. Fine. Add a door and have it labeled Mini-Camp. That would work for me. I'd be happy with that.

AND, why not make them unlockable, almost like something you need to collect in the game. You're going through the Dank Crypt. You find the door to the Mini-Camp. Now you can Long Rest in the Dank Crypt. Otherwise, you have to port back to the original camp that you found, let's say, near where you find the Harper Stash near Astarion's Pod or add it somewhere near the beach or something. So, you don't unlock the first camp until you go out and explore that little nook. Then you find a small cave labeled "Passage to Forest Camp" or whatever. After that, you can always go back to that camp via fast travel, or you can fast travel to any of the camps you've unlocked. You can then decorate your favorite camp however you want with items you pick up in the game.

I don't know. I'm just trying to compromise here because they DID build all those mini-camps. Granted, if they'd done what we wanted to begin with, they wouldn't have had to, but I'm all for not undoing something they put a lot of work into. Just attach them to something or drop them somewhere on the map or both.

Yep, sounds cool to me. You could even have 'camp' icons show up on the map when you've unlocked them. It also doesn't mean they can't use the big riverside camp for the celebration. Just make that a special camp for that purpose.

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Originally Posted by mrfuji3
But. This seems more appropriate for the "Day/Night Cycle" megathread, as it doesn't directly relate to long rest/camping restrictions (since you say that players can "time-skip" = no restrictions besides possibly timed-quests?). Or at least you're coming at it from the opposite end. Your suggestion prevents too many events from happening in the same game-day, whereas I want to prevent too few events in the same day. So I think a combination of your Day&Nighttime system and some other rest restriction system would be good. The former adds a reasonable sense of time progression and day-/night-specific quest opportunities, and the latter limits the player's ability to pass infinite time and bypass 5e's balance around long-rest-recharge abilities (namely spells). And either can be implemented separately.

DA2 worked very well with this system because abilities were cooldown based. Whereas in 5e, the different classes are balanced around assuming 3-6 encounters per day. If Larian wants to retain this balance (some players don't think this balance is important), BG3 requires either rest restrictions OR changing the classes' abilities to something closer to per-combat uses.
You're right that it's more appropriate for D/N-cycle thread on its own, but at the same time camping is related to D/N-cycle. You're not supposed to be able to maintain your effectiveness for 2-3 days without resting you're not supposed to be able to benefit from long rest too often. As result on one side you need to do things to move time, on the other side if you move it too far you're too tired to do more things, and if you don't move it far enough your long rest does nothing but time-skiping which is jeopardizing possible timed quests... you see how it's all building on each other?

Last edited by Zellin; 22/02/22 10:25 PM. Reason: typo
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Originally Posted by Zellin
You're right that it's more appropriate for D/N-cycle thread on its own, but at the same time camping is related to D/N-cycle. You're not supposed to be able to maintain your effectiveness for 2-3 days without resting you're not supposed to be able to benefit from long rest too often. As result on one side you need to do things to move time, on the other side if you move it too far you're too tired to do more things, and if you don't move it far enough your long rest does nothing but time-skiping which is jeopardizing possible timed quests... you see how it all building on each other?
I do! Camping and long rests and D/N cycles are all certainly related, and any good solution should address all of these together. Bracketing resting on either side would improve the game imo....if implemented in a good way of course. And I agree that time flow dependent on actions > X game-time corresponding to Y real-time imo.

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Originally Posted by mrfuji3
Originally Posted by Icelyn
This is my suggestion:
Add a toggle in the options to select whether food is required for resting or not. If the player selects that it is required, either the amount of food required per rest or the amount of food available in the world (or both) could change depending on the difficulty or as a separate option.

This would let people who want to manage resources do so and those who don’t want to manage resources avoid it. It would also use a system they already created and so hopefully would not be as much work.
Difficulty options are good and food is already in the game so it's an easy fix. +1 for this suggestion, at least over what we have now.
I hate toggles for every detail. Probably Larian does too. It's like game devs saying "we dont know how the game should play, you figure it out". They should just incorporate everything into difficulty settings. And then lock the settings so that when you run out of food on Hard you're not tempted to switch to Normal to Long Rest whenever you want.

As for the food mechanic specifically, it's not meaningful resource management. There's so much food available you don't have to manage anything, just take all. You're not limited by weight because you can send it to camp, and teleport there with the press of a button. It's just a tedious mini-game before resting. And if you were limited by weight, it would just get annoying because it would only make selling loot more tedious and make you do more trips to traders. I don't understand why they created the food mechanic in the first place, it can never be good resource management.

There are better ways to restrict the frequency of Long Rest which is really the goal here.

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Originally Posted by 1varangian
I hate toggles for every detail. Probably Larian does too. It's like game devs saying "we dont know how the game should play, you figure it out". They should just incorporate everything into difficulty settings. And then lock the settings so that when you run out of food on Hard you're not tempted to switch to Normal to Long Rest whenever you want.

As for the food mechanic specifically, it's not meaningful resource management. There's so much food available you don't have to manage anything, just take all. You're not limited by weight because you can send it to camp, and teleport there with the press of a button. It's just a tedious mini-game before resting. And if you were limited by weight, it would just get annoying because it would only make selling loot more tedious and make you do more trips to traders. I don't understand why they created the food mechanic in the first place, it can never be good resource management.

There are better ways to restrict the frequency of Long Rest which is really the goal here.
Optimally, the developers balance the game around 2-3 collection of difficulty options, which they then publish as the official "Story - Easy - Normal - Core - Tactician " difficulty modes. But then there's little reason to prevent players from changing individual difficulty option within those modes, with the caveat that "the game is not balanced for this combination of options - gameplay experience may vary". At the very least, allowing this is friendly to those with disabilities who have may have trouble with one or two specific mechanics, but don't want to change the entire difficulty mode. Locked difficulty settings should only be relevant for achievements and/or permadeath modes.

And yes, food in its current implementation is worse than useless - it's tedious to actually use. But the base system is already there, and there are ways to significantly improve it.
- Drastically limiting the amount of food turns it into actual resource management, but does risk soft-locking the game.
- Food types having different small buffs for the next day - +1 to Con STs, +1 to Persuasion checks, +2 temp HP - makes food more tactical.
- Put merchants in your base camp who you can sell items to directly from your storage box -> freeing up your inventory for food-weight. (Or get rid of trash loot so you don't need to make ten thousand vendor trading runs)

But yes I agree that other options (e.g., camping sites or companion disapproval) are better, or even combination of food + other options.

Joined: Feb 2021
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Food is a good Long Rest limitation as long as they limit it more. I honestly don't think they need to tweak it much.

When I first played the game, not knowing what to expect, I was hording food like I was playing a survival game. I was thinking that since food is in the game, and I just crashed with virtually nothing in an unknown wilderness, I am probably going to need tons of food to make it. Stinky fish sitting in the sun on the shore in a bucket? Yep. Gonna take it, and hopefully it won't spoil.

Then I realized it was, at the time, used for healing and not survival at all, and suddenly I didn't view it as important. With the Camping Supplies mechanics, we find so much, again it's useless. It's just extra junk we need to collect.

But, a few limitations could change all that. Food spoils. Some more than others. So, I think food should have the following characteristics in conjunction with resting:

1. Short rest cost camp supplies/food. The whole point of a short rest is taking a break to recover energy and stamina and mend wounds, eat food. It should cost less than long rest, but definitely something.

2. Water should be a camping supply. You need it, more than food, to survive.

3. Long rest cost based on character level and camp members. The more you have, the more expensive. So maybe think about who you really want to take with you.

4. Food should spoil. Nothing too severe, but fish after a long rest or two most should be no good. Fruits and veggies last longer, like a week or two, but meat and stuff should go bad after a long rest or two, thus potentially reducing your supplies more quickly and making some foods more valuable than others. Meat maybe provides more camping supply points, but you can't keep it around as long.

Do this, and you probably wouldn't need to change how much food you find currently in the game. Then, on top of that, limit all resting to designated rest zones, and resting would be good. Some limitations that make sense without limiting too much.

Last edited by GM4Him; 24/02/22 05:17 AM.
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