I've found that I end up spending a lot of time running back and forth to rest, or quicksaving and then gambling on a sleep, etc. Usually once every 1-4 encounters. This seems like a lot, but is it? If I really knew what I was doing, could I even attempt a whole dungeon on a night's rest?

It seems sort of cheesy and going against plot plausibility to spend "weeks" at a time in the enemy's camp just resting once every 15 feet. But I don't know if that's more or less unavoidable, or if it just means that I'm being careless with spell use and taking hits.

I'm playing on normal.

What's your party composition? If you're running a full party, you'll be levelling somewhat slower and have fewer spells at your disposal, and your characters won't all be kitted out with the best gear so you'll take more hits and damage, which means you'll likely have to rest more.

I'm running a 3 character party through right now and find in most dungeons, I'm okay without resting more than once on each level. But there has been the odd one where I've had to go out and rest several times. I installed the sleep anywhere mod though, to save the tedium of having to run back to a 'safe' resting spot, so that takes a lot of the ho-hum out of it.

Oh, I should look into modding like that. Good idea.

But on the other hand, it seems sort of cheesy. I mean, apparently no one ever wanders around. They spend their whole lives rooted in one place, so that usually you can rest before going into the next room. Really, if you killed some stuff and then left, you should expect to see the entire army coordinated and ready for war when you come back a few days later.

But if that's just how you have to play, I guess I won't care too much.

I have 5 party members. I just posted on the "what's your party?" thread.

Aye, I just saw your post in the other thread.

I generally tend to leave the dungeon level I'm in and go up (or down) to the previous one to rest. Resting right outside the door is too cheesy even for me. I can kind of justify going to the other level by thinking of it as my party finding a nice quiet out-of-the-way room to hole up in for a few hours. But no matter how you slice it, if your party left to go rest up and came back several hours later, the places you cleared would be at least partially repopulated and the remaining denizens would definitely be on high alert.

That's just one of the things you have to kind of gloss over.

Yeah. It might be interesting to hack them up a few levels and then try to ironman the whole dungeon, but it seems it would change from impossible to trivial on a dime. I don't know, if resting more than seems plausible is what you have to do to have a fighting chance, then that's just how the game plays.

The beginning can be rather rough. The dungeon right after entering Chapter 2 (trying to avoid spoilers) was a bitch for me. I kept having to run up to previous levels and ask folks I had previously rescued to watch me while I slept. Nothing else really came close to that for me.

That said, I don't think I have rested too often on my current playthrough. I just started Chapter 4 and am on day 42 or 43. I only rest when I am 90% out of spells on my mages and my party is half dead without any healing spells left on my clerics (so every time I rest it is for 16 hours). Cutting it close, maybe, but I HATE resting.

The party I am using is on of the first in the party thread, iirc, in case you wondered. It seems I have two clerics and two mages, while you have 1 cleric, a bard, and an early-dual-class mage. Whether one's party is more melee or more spellslinger shouldn't matter too much though; there are certain places that having more big damage casters can significantly speed up battle resolutions, but, generally, melee is just as good. However, the difference in number clerics, probably forces you to rest twice as much (give or take), just to heal up at the same rate that my group does.

When your bard reaches level 11 he'll be able to sing a healing song, so you won't have to rest that often any more.