Also what was that joke about Mario?
If you've watched a mario 64 speedrun, this video isn't an exaggeration.
The thief enemy basically feels like he does that.
Anyway, apparently there a camp fires you can light that fully replenish HP. When you get the machete, exit the cave, go to the starting area where you probably saw a chest. It has matches in it, use it on a campfire and rest. Once I got this, the game was actually manageable again.
When it comes to criticism alot of people like to emphasize how good management makes the game better, but nobody brings up how backed into a corner you are if you didn't manage resources well. I think there's still take aways to consider when rebalancing in the future.
You can end up in a sort of soft lock type of situation. Too weak to take a hit, not enough stamina to retaliate. The slide is the closest to a dash you have.
Here's the loop of a weak player:
1 stamina, guy in the way, can only get two swings out, gets hit, knocked down, grappled, managed to escape grapple, zero sp, the enemy does not delay, gets up just as fast as you do, SWINGING, motherfucker is spamming his wake up DP, one hit is all it takes to knock you down again. You can't slide away, you have no sp. All you can do is take it, and die.
Respawn, you respawn with you measly 2hp, 1sp.
Here's the thing, games have solved this problem. Games who's whole thing is resource management and all that. You need to give the player a way to recover. Some way to "get back on their feet". You need to be able to let the player to get back in tip top shape, to handle the situations you throw them in. The campfire solves this, but I'm talking pre campfire discovery. I feel like people gotta understand, it's not about "getting good". In fact, this game actually offers decent challenge, and is well designed as far as levels, just not stamina. It's about perpetuating a bad set of events, and making things worse with no recovery. When you play a game like subnautica, if you die from starvation, you respawn with 30% food guage. Run out of oxygen in metro? You respawn with one oxygen mask. There's safety nets to avoid soft locks. No need to fully restart your save, we got you.
Anyway, campfire basically fixed most of it, but I would put those matches on the main path, probably next to a save point. Needing to look for them, kinda ass.
By the by, I basically copy/pasted my last complaint from here, to the itch.io page. Dolled up to be less rude, Figured if I wanted to give feedback, and see if he considers what I say, he'd probably actually read it there than here. That's how I learned about the campfires. Dunno if I want to leave this follow up here, or doll it up and post it there too. Seems like it came across more whiny than anything. It's coming from a well intentioned place I sweaaaaaaar. I don't wanna play back seat game designer but afew of my ideas should be takes seriously in consideration