Is There a Downside to Long-Resting?
Long rests are a bit counter intuitive at times. It is generally considered ‘good’ to rest every 3-5 battles or so.
You will (as you’ve noticed) also miss out of a TON of side/companion dialog and cut-scenes (especially if you are of a certain background) if you don’t rest often/frequently. So I tend to rarely use short rests and just Long rest often as (especially in Act 1) there are just so many camp scenes that need to play out that you can miss out on a ton of narrative if you don’t.
Most things that will be an issue if you rest to much, are, for the most part, fairly obvious.
Are all the NPC saying something is actively happening and will ‘finish’ soon? Maybe don’t long rest too many times Druid grove ritual will complete in 10 long rests per what I’ve heard.. never needed that many but the ritual can be stopped a number of ways.
Did you just happen across a building on fire with people trying to beat down doors? Maybe don’t long rest Fire in the building in the north of Act 1s first map.
Note: There is one instance when you have the quest to rescue Nere in the grymforge, either long resting once or twice causes him to die, with the quest updating to tell you this. Haven’t found any other cases of long resting being detrimental as such. Do it as much as you need to.
The game is balanced around short resting after each encounter and the long resting on the third. You can easily stretch these numbers out and do the entire act 1 with out a longrest but in general do an encounter, short rest, do an encounter, short rest, do an encounter, longrest. Repeat.
The in my point of view most powerfull elixir (E. of Bloodlust) is somewhat limited in regards of ingredients. It (all elixirs do) lasts for the whole day, so one sometimes will want to think about when/if a long rest is a good idea. This ‘problem’ may or may not apply for other potions (Speed Potion mainly, but sometimes even things like Animal Speakings are tight in the early levels) as well depending on your playstyle/party composition.
In act 3 there is an opportunity to come by the most powerfull 1-day-limited buff in the game, ‘Rapture’, from a nymph or some dark elven couple in a brothel. To my knowledge it is not possible to aquire it a second time, so when you get it you will want to use the coming day to its fullest. I think I didn’t long rest for like two days of playtime, haha.