Healing mechanics seem like asking for a softlock. Very weird.

[Tamaster]

Having played Tower of Time and having liked it, I got this game seeing it was from the same devs.

I am just starting out, but after seeing the explanation of how healing works, it seems like not the best design decision to me.

I play classic RPGs of all types since 20+ years, and in none of them that I can remember I have seen healing workin in the way it does in Dark Envoy.

The main concern I have with this system is that since Healing Fountains are the ONLY way to restore damaged Max HP (Wounded HP), and they have limited uses, so there's a finite amount of healing in the game, it may very well happen, especially on the higher difficulties (I'm playing on Hard right now) that your party might be too damaged to beat a fight ahead, while there's no more healing to be had because, theoretically, you already used up all the fountains up to that point.

A scenario of this type would produce what is known as a soft lock.

I think there should be some form of healing other than fountains for damaged HP. Not free maybe, but a failsafe in case the above happens.

Otherwise you might very well have to restart the entire game or hours of progress because you need to re-do all fights to get less damaged, so that you can still have healing fountains to spare.

I'm really not a fan of this design choice. I will play the game and see how it goes. I don't think this makes the game harder, but definitely makes the game more annoying. Tower of Time didn't have any of this, no other game in my knowledge has this either.

Ah well. Hopefully I won't get softlocked.

[Njall]

Hm, I'm not sure what you mean. You heal to full when you travel, at most you'd have to restart the last map...

[Tamaster]

Originally posted by Njall:

Hm, I'm not sure what you mean. You heal to full when you travel, at most you'd have to restart the last map...

Ah ok thats good to know. Because im just at the start of the game so IDK about traveling yet.

So traveling on the map later on will heal you regardless of healing fountains? Alright.

[Luzgan]

Originally posted by Tamaster:

Originally posted by Njall:

Hm, I'm not sure what you mean. You heal to full when you travel, at most you'd have to restart the last map...

Ah ok thats good to know. Because im just at the start of the game so IDK about traveling yet.

So traveling on the map later on will heal you regardless of healing fountains? Alright.

Do you mean something like limited rations per dungeon that allow you to make a camp? Something similar to BG3?

[Tamaster]

Originally posted by Luzgan:

Originally posted by Tamaster:

Ah ok thats good to know. Because im just at the start of the game so IDK about traveling yet.

So traveling on the map later on will heal you regardless of healing fountains? Alright.

Do you mean something like limited rations per dungeon that allow you to make a camp? Something similar to BG3?

Well i have to see how traveling works first, as the other user above pointed out. In case i'll make another post here later on.

[picklesgrr]

I don't think it will be an issue there are plenty of healing spires on all the maps. Try not to heal if you have only taken a little bit of damage if you do feel low.

[Frostfeather]

The way healing works does make Adept more desirable for the Mana Shield spell. Between that and the control and burst damage, I often clear whole maps without taking any damage at all with my all-Adept group.

Of course I'm not saying people should necessarily run all Adepts (though it does work well). In a more typical group, I guess rotating party members based on remaining Magic Shield combined with abilities that restore it, on top of good use of control *should* be enough to prevent a soft lock?

I suppose if you ran into that issue, it'd be a sign to lower the difficulty.

[Event Horizon]

Other specializations also have ways to get Shield, either for themselves or for the entire team and there are ways to reduce Wounded HP generation - Heavy Armor and some unique items reduce it.

We placed healing fountains quite generously and each has 4 charges. Without resource management like health the game lost a certain tension/challenge - this is why we introduced it.

[Alan]

Necro, but just coming to this game and finding that I have similar first impressions. I have to agree with the OP. So long as health has diminishing returns as damage is taken, the inclination will be to avoid taking health damage at all. This makes healing skills and classes feel weak compared to alternatives which either buff other mitigation options or just avoid damage through the classic method of killing your enemies faster. The only way healing would seem viable is on a character where dmg > wounds is reduced to near zero.

[Charlie]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.