OMG, man. You think I didn't play this game carefully when I first played it? I was trying so hard to play it in a way where whatever happened to my character happened. If people died, they died. If I failed rolls, I failed. I wanted the full blown experience of being immersed in this world and pretending like I was actually my character. For better or worse, I was going to play through without game over and whatever happened happened.
That's why I used as few Long Rests as possible, I collected and stored all the food and water and such so I could steadily use them to survive because I thought I had to. I was afraid if I used long rests the tadpole was going to turn me and/or goblins were going to attack the grove and/or the druids were going to kick the tieflings out any day and/or Lae'zel or Wyll were going to leave the party. Based on how the story went, as a First Time Player, I was playing this game thinking everything WAS timed and if I long rested too much I was going to fail everyone.
Yeah. Then I read some of the posts and realized that there was no time limit. It was all an illusion. You can long rest as much as you want. In fact, I missed out on all sorts of dialogue because I DIDN'T long rest a lot which is totally contrary to the whole story. So I was a bit pissed that that was the case. Not only was there no real time limits but the game encourages using lots of long rests. It's dumb and makes all potions and scrolls and pretty much EVERY item you pick up utterly pointless. There is NO strategy in that. This game is supposed to be about trying to manage your resources and use them wisely in strategic ways and such. Not limiting long rests and such just utterly destroys that. Why even bother making us pick up all the items we do if we're just going to sell them all anyway because we don't really need any of them because they're all only good for gold so maybe I can buy some +1 weapon or armor? I've gotten to the point in the game that I literally have to stop myself from just selling all the stuff I pick up so I can buy the best armor and weapons because it's all junk anyway. I can long rest whenever I want, so I don't need scrolls, EVER, and I only need a few potions for emergency healing during fights like the spider queen or hag, but hardly ever for any other fights. So why bother with food or drinks or potions or scrolls or anything?
All you need in this game is to learn how to cheese it. You don't need anything else, and that's what frustrates me so much. That's why I fight for the limits and consequences. I know some players are like, "We don't want limits because we want to roam the map and carefully explore everything and if you put limits on my long rests I can't do that," but that's simply not true. You can have realistic limits and timed events and such without inhibiting the game so much that you can't explore all the fun and incredible places on the map. There is an in between. I gave plenty of examples of what they could do. I even gave examples of them giving players like 15 long rests or more to complete certain quests. How many long rests do you guys need? If you are using that many long rests, I'm sorry but that's excessive. You need to learn to use items and short rests more if you are using that many long rests to complete the EA. On my first playthrough, I was able to save Halsin and do all the side quests on the map prior to going to the Underdark in 7 long rests (days), and I didn't even know all the Larian homebrew cheeses and such. I had to save scum a few times because of fights that were ridiculously hard like the spider lair, but I did it.
