I'd like to thank Ironjar Aromatics

[River]

For being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing, and exactly what I needed to absolutely steamroll Malenia.

Seriously folks, don't sleep on the crafting. It's actually quite good.

[BurlsoL]

It's the big irony of this game... You can finally craft most consumables... And they're frequently useful. But nobody does because they're souls vets who never use consumables for fear of not having them when they need them.

Throwing knives are the big one early on. So many early fights can be made fairly trivial with just spamming knives. Crystal shard knives are silly good since the materials are easy to get.

[WhiteLezard]

I use the kukris so much I probably paid for that vendor's kid's college.
The food that restores utorrent's health is a godsend for mounted battles
You can make antidotes for everything on the fly

People are indeed sleeping on the consumables.

[[OTS]EchoZenLogos]

I used probably more than 20 of them while fighting Malenia, then never used them when I actually beat her because I didn't want to waste my last few rare Arteria Leafs for it.

They are quite good, but I recommend being just as sparing with their use as you would be with Rune Arcs typically. Don't use them on a boss unless you are very confident about beating them within a few attempts - such as after "nearly" beating them a few times.

[TripSin]

The crafting in this game sucks. Uplifting aromatic was the only thing I used that seemed worthwhile because of letting you take a hit without much damage. I tried ironjar sometimes to see if it could help not get interrupted when trying to channel meteorite/comet, but it didn't help.

And Rainbow Stones, mainly because it was hard to tell what falls were safe vs lethal and the difference between taking a small amount of damage and just completely dying outright was stupidly like a 5 foot difference in this game.