Healing is a staple of any soulslike. From the very beginning, Demon’s Souls introduced healing items to the genre to fight off the dangers of the world. The healing items were consumable, however, forcing the player to either get good enough to use fewer healing items or find spots to farm the various levels of healing items to have a stash.
Dark Souls ditched the types of consumable grass and instead introduced the Estus Flask - the healing item that comes with several healing charges which auto-refill when you rest at a bonfire or die.
Apart from Bloodborne, which had Blood Vials (controversial), Estus Flasks or similar have become a mainstay of the genre. But which of these are better for the game and which do you prefer?
Estus Flasks come with limited charges, but they refill automatically, so you don’t have to farm healing items and can just focus on the boss fight that’s giving you trouble. Consumable healing usually comes in larger quantities (20 Blood Vials plus a couple extra if you use specific runes), so you have more healing at your disposal in a boss fight, hence you can be more aggressive and reckless, but you run the risk of running out of healing at some point, so you might have to farm them at some point.
Thoughts?
I am all in on the flasks resetting at a bonfire. In fact I wish all consumables were like that.
One of the few things I really liked about the Witcher 3’s mechanics was how (if I remember right) the consumables reset in a similar way estus does. You found or crafted the thing and then the items you find around the world were used to upgrade them. It was a nice balance - you still search the world for the upgrade materials but once you have the item you can use it knowing you can easily refill it.
Biggest reason for me is that it is annoying to have to farm for items and I could see myself trying out a wider variety of builds based around the various consumables in the games if I didn’t know I’d have to grind to replenish the supply however often. I am also the kind of player that never uses consumables because ‘what if I need it later?’ and this would rectify that problem too.