With a drought of healing trinkets and potions in low level quests, it seems necessary that there would be a 2-6 solo quest that drops dissipating healing items and maybe the occasional yellow ash or two. I've found the last few characters I've made run out of all healing items within the first reset and I'm stuck having to heal them with gladiator arena placeables.
I have my own suggestions on the opinion on the matter as well. I believe the change was done because of too much ash in the module, which, is a fault of a certain quest.
Dirty Ash Alley.
It has four ash piles, and usually, people two man it for a ridiculous amount of ash. An ash pile gives two dity ash, two regular yellow ash. With four piles, that's eight dirty yellow, and eight regular ash. That's a lot, especially split between two players.
My suggestion is to create a quest that is 2-5, with a quest limit of 3, that has a pile of ash inside of it. It's enough to keep players satisfied, and to survive the low level circuit.
The trade off? Ash Alley takes a big reduction. It should only provide two ash piles, for a total of four dirty ash, four regular ash. The quest should be an 'okay' resupply of ash, not an egregious amount of ash that is provided. Also, people don't seem to realize that Deep Pools is in the module, albeit very rarely, and that is also a good resupply of healing trinkets, if it is around.
Mostly, it seems like the DMs have had issue with too much healing supplies, and to that, I can agree, because I played a wizard recently that had well over twenty pounds of ash. It's to a point that it's a bit unseemly, though I would prefer to not go back to the days where we're having to take heal as a skill, and spam herbs on everyone.
Ok so my opinion of this is the complete opposite. I think there is way too much consumable and healing bloat. But I will try to be objective about this since it was recently changed.
So I did a test run with a fighter and I found out a couple of things. Healing is absolutely bloating plentiful. I started a character and played it until just below level 4. So I didn't do too much. After uses; I'd found 93 cure minor charges, 29 Cure light charges, 26 cure moderate charges, and 2 cure serious charges, and 5 healing kits. In like 30-40 minutes of play. That's staggering. Things to note there are crumbled statues everywhere and Ticker quests have blur that will last you though most of it not to mention runes. I did not put any points into search or heal(not that I would need it).
(https://i.ibb.co/RjcNN4p/healingtest.jpg)
However! There has obviously been a reduction in ash recently and I 100% believe KoP's frustrations and this is probably why; 97% of those healing supplies came from ring 100. Ring 100 also has the crumbling statues everywhere. Thus if you choose the new awakening start you will be stocked in healing supplies. If you choose the Ticker start, and probably Peerage, you will notice a large decrease in healing than before. I would say it's probably something that needs more experimenting with to determine if the Ring 99 starts are too low on healing. You can also buy cheap cure minor trinkets in the start area, as I did, I could have bought much more, that accounts for 58 charges of cure minor.
I personally like the change for a variety of reason which I won't go into great detail but I will just throw some things out there; you cannot sell healing, players will not buy anything below cure serious for the most part. Players don't pick up dirty ash for the most part starting at mid levels 6+, they don't pick up light healing potions, only specialised healers pick up healing kits and a lot of the time don't because they already have full stock, this stuff is just left on the ground. Cure minor trinkets are completely worthless, not worth their carry weight, my mages just pop cure moderate charges outside combat, or cure light if I'm trying to spare charges. There is/was complete bloat. Things might have changed a little now but will have to see as its a recently change.
Some thoughts as the player of a character with fairly ridiculous Heal skill (30+, 3hp a round regen).
Herbs
- Even with more cure moderate around, the Heal skill is more useful than ever. And that's before we add in the SF and perk. Nice work.
- Healing herbs are in good supply, but weight is a limiting factor. I run low or out of herbs on tough quests, but neither half my weight allowance nor half my cash is going on medical supplies. Which is a vast improvement over EFUM. I'm not pillaging every single corpse for every single herb.
- A general oversupply of herbs is a good thing. It means your herb supply varies day to day. Even with kits, I don't want to have 9lbs of herbs on me. So sometimes I run out and start desperately scavenging mid quest. It's good to have uncertainty, but bad to make the Heal skill a gold sink. I'll do Morghouls and be flush with herbs, then go somewhere and burn up a load.
- I like how herbs are common in some places, rare in others. Herb bundles are often a strong reason for me to do certain quests.
- Bundles are the best idea, all hail bundles. They save me so much inventory space and let my PC's mates bring him herbs easily, or let me buy them off PCs in bulk.
- Only specialised healers pick up healing kits because it's a 4-5lb item that needs a specific skill to use. Even as a healer, you only need one. Or two if you can spare the weight and want to go absolutely wild with herbs. It's similar to why few people pick up +1 dmg battleaxes.
- Superior herb bundles often just end up going into the kit to save on weight, as I tend to run out of damage to heal before I run out of healing ticks. :P
Trinkets
- Cure minor trinkets are still pretty good when you don't have a Heal skill PC, as they generally have 20-40 charges and are light weight. Cure Light(2) is about twice as powerful, but the power:weight ratio is bad. With the higher level compared to earlier chapters, you have to carry more to have meaningful healing.
- Trinkets are more common than potions IMO. Especially when it comes to Cure Serious.
- Trinkets arent bound to a class. Which makes crafted healing wands even less valuable as they need class or UMD.
- Overall, a bit of Cure Moderate bloat isn't a bad thing. It means people who aren't wand users learn to use healing, and you don't face the No Healing Death Spiral as much. You get more exciting fights when it's desperately swinging between if it's worth using your actions on healing or trying to kill things.
Potions
- Cure Light potions are a bad risk in any combat above maybe L4, because the damage you are likely to take from an AoO is more than the damage you'll heal. THey are carried sometimes for a top up. The main downside there is taking game away from healer PCs.
- Cure Minor potions aren't usually worth the encumbrance but they're actually nice to have in the module as a flavour item and crafting reagent.
- Cure Serious potions are still uncommon enough as a drop that it's worth buying them. I like this, more power to the PC economy.
Ideas
- It's probably worth clearing out a load of the Cure Light things that aren't either Dirty Ash, or in lowbie quests. That means there's shortage of cheapo healing, and the Heal skill is a better plan than "down 5 Cure Lights, they are essentially free".
- If you want to make player healing wands worth it again, jack up the caster level. or lower the cost on Cure Light and Moderate. I'd suggest make it Cure Light (5) and lower the cost of Cure Moderate.
- Boosting PC Cure potions to make Cure Light (5) and Cure Moderate (6) potions might keep those useful. Makes them higher quality than drops, like for offensive wands.
- Yellow ash quality could be lowered in general (More Dirty and Filthy, less Yellow), but ash refiners made more common. This makes Dirty Ash worth picking up. You can refine it easily, but it's a burden and you can't carry loads at once. As it is, it's not worth picking up Drity Ash for most PCs unless you already found a Refiner this reset. Ash then becomes more of a parts-collection game.