Anti-Wastage Features

Most modern Role Playing Games are, to borrow a term from Zarf's Cruelty Scale of Interactive Fiction, pretty Merciful. You only really need one save file to win the game, it's just that backups and save scumming are nice to have.

And to keep being nice, games tend to "protect the players from themselves", to keep the game fun and not irritating. One of these ways is to prevent menuing mistakes. In this case, using up consumable items like Healing Potions when they're blatantly unnecessary, i.e. on fully healed characters.

This is such a fundamental bit of gameplay that certain Game Engines do this by default, such as the RPG Maker engine that also gives a Sound-Coded for Your Convenience buzzer sound, and this trope is ubiquitous enough that the aversion of this trope is also of note.

A type of game that's unlikely to have this, is anything that involves Scoring Points, since not picking things up no matter what, means losing out on points, presuming that all pickups give points that is. Since losing out is a negative thing for the player, while this trope is supposed to be a positive thing, this trope is thus not used. Shoot 'Em Up has Scoring Points as a genre staple.

Also, games where you're possibly in combat all the time, such as Action RPGs or Metroidvanias, usually have Heal Thyself skills and abilities always usable, even at full health, even when it's guaranteed to be useless, such as with Concentration-Bound Magic so that trying to charge up heal before or right after the attack hits is pointless because the heal will just get interrupted. This pattern of game mechanics may be due to the development cycle such that pickups are easily defined and programmed while the specifics of spells are not, such that making the spell stop when it's useless, might itself be useless, if the spell is unused or changed too drastically.

This is a subtrope of Anti-Frustration Features, for the subset that are about preventing the player from wasting comsumables, Mana, currency, or other things. Artificial Insolence may overlap and occur if a character themselves prevents wasting the item.

Under the Keynesian economic theory, this is the opposite of Anti-Hoarding due to its "saving vs. spending" dichotomy, where Anti-Hoarding is over-saving prevention, anti-wastage is over-spending prevention, where spending is converting any resource into any other. Selling stuff for currency would still be spending.

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Examples

Straight Examples:

Action RPG

• Dungeon Siege: Potions are not fully consumed when used, where extra healing may be used when activating the potion later.
• Hades: Food, which heals 30% of Hit Points, can be attempted to be bought, meaning immediately used, even when at full health, but it just shakes and Zagreus says "Don't need that right now".

Platformer

• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: Trying to use healing items to restore full meters doesn't work.
• Iji: Walking over red Nanofields at full health gives a "Health full" message and it won't be used. Same with green "armor" nanofields and ammo, including unknown ammo.
• Lost Ruins: The Another Side, Another Story mode's HP restoration pickups won't be used up if you're at full health and touch them.

Roguelike

• Beacon (2018): A "Full" message is given when health pickups are walked over at full health, and the pickup is left on the ground.
• RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore: If Remi tries to buy a health restorative, she gets a "Your health is full." message in red text when so. Also she can't use the health and mana restoratives dropped by enemies if she's full up.
• The Sealed Ampoule: A special sound for trying to use items that can't be used, plays if the player tries to use a restorative when the value is at its maximum.

Turn-based combat Role-playing Games

• Honkai: Star Rail: When your given character's HP or Energy are full, the game will make you unable to give them consumables that recover HP or Energy respectively.
• LunarLux: Trying to use Healing Potions at full HP requires going through a confirmation dialogue, and even then it will stop you:
  Tetra: HP is already full!
• Pokémon Red and Blue: The two types of healing items are only consumed when there's Hit Points to restore or Status Effects to remove, respectively.
• Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: Trying to use Healing Potions when at full-health outside battle, is blocked, with a buzzer sound that's Sound-Coded for Your Convenience to indicate that it's blocked.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: When outside of battle, trying to use restorative items when there's no need, results in a buzzer sound that's Sound-Coded for Your Convenience to indicate that it's blocked.
• Workshop In The Ironwood Grove: Healing Potions cannot be used at full HP and there's a sound that plays to indicate failure if you try.

Other Video Games

• Animation Throwdown: the Quest for Cards: The Mythic cards, the rarest and most powerful cards in the game, cannot be recycled, and the game actively admonishes you for even trying to recycle them.
• The Borderlands series, starting with Borderlands, players can immediately buy back any weapons or items that they have sold to vending machines to avoid accidentally selling a valuable product.
• Command & Conquer has a resource Cap. Harvesters for a resource will pause when the limit is reached.
• Control: Jesse must be damaged for health restoration pickups to be both drawn towards Jesse and absorbed on contact.
• Dragon Age: Origins: If you try to give a character a plot gift that is obviously specific to someone else. (For example, giving an item called "Alistair's mother's amulet" to Morrigan.) Each character will refuse the gift with their own customized snarky comment, from "No, bad idea, terrible idea" to "What? Are you out of your mind?"
• Endless Sky: The player can freely buy and sell ships and equipment and trade goods so long as they don't leave the planet, so mis-clicks and changes of mind are less of an issue. The one case where a sale can't be undone is when outfits are sold, via the goods trading screen, on a planet that doesn't have an outfitter to buy them back. As soon as the player lifts off, though, anything sold to the planet will disappear, and anything purchased will start to depreciate in value.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Opening a treasure chest containing a rupee when your Wallet of Holding is full will cause Link to put it back, which keeps you from wasting money.
• Makai Kingdom: Attempting to delete a unit/vehicle/facility equipped with items (or holding characters) will yield an error message, preventing the player from deleting the items they're holding too. This also applies to trying to delete equippable items - a confirmation pop-up will remind you that someone's using it then sending you back to choose another item, if you want.
• Minecraft: When you're full, you can't eat anything except foods that give you a Status Buff, such as golden apples.
• Neopets: Does this for multiple consumables, yes, books are consumed when read.
  • Your pet won't eat if they're already bloated, a.k.a Max Fullness.
  • If you try to make your pet read a book they've read before, they won't read it.
  • If you try to give your pet medicine when they're not sick, they won't take it, but instead say, "Why are you giving me medicine? I'm not ill!".
• In Pokémon Sleep, you can't discard Master Biscuits due to their rarity and cost — there's only one in stock every 30 days, and they cost 4,000 Sleep Points.
• River City Girls: If a character moves over food at full health, the health-restoring food is not consumed and wiggles instead.
• Stardew Valley does not allow you to plant crops out of season. You can plant them any time during the growing season though, even if the seasonal transition is shorter than the time it takes for them to grow.
• Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life won't let you plant crop seeds out of season. You can freely plant them at the end of the growing season and thus cause them to wilt, but if it's completely out of a growing season, they won't be able to be planted.

Averted Examples:

• Hollow Knight: Focus is the Concentration-Bound Magic of Heal Thyself, which also spends Soul just in the "concentration" phase before any healing gets done. It can still be used at full health.
• Myriad Cypher: Firing a burst of three missiles at an enemy uses all of them, even if there's only firing messages for less than three due to it taking fewer to destroy the enemy.
• Shantae series:
  • Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Life restoration pickups are attracted to and absorbed by Shantae no matter the state of her Life Meter.
  • Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: Healing items can be eaten no matter the state of Shantae's meters.
  • Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Healing items can be eaten no matter the state of Shantae's meters.
• Touhou Lost Branch Of Legend: Trying to draw cards into your hand when it's already at the limit, just doesn't do anything, instead of offering to discard a card to replace the newly drawn one or some other mechanic.
• The World Is Your Weapon: Averted. Herbs, the game's version of Healing Potions + Antidote, can be used even at full health, and unpoisoned, which is just a waste.

Mixed Examples:

• Din's Curse: Healing and mana potions can be used freely even when at full health, but since almost all potions provide an effect over time, taking them in advance of damage is a reasonable way of avoiding death by starting the healing early.
• Knights of Pen and Paper: Using an item requires a confirmation dialogue, but nothing prevents the item from being used, even if the target is at full health.
• Monster Hunter: From inception up through its fourth generation of games, the Player Character would obediently use any item if the button was pressed, even if doing so would achieve nothing but wasting the item and leaving the player immobilized and vulnerable for a moment. The fifth generation games (Monster Hunter: World and Monster Hunter: Rise) change this so that trying to use a common item with no purpose, such as a potion with full heath or a nulberry while not blighted, instead triggers a quick animation of the hunter pulling the item out, reconsidering, and putting it away unused.
• The early Resident Evil games are a rare instance where the ability to waste some items is actually preferred, due to the limited inventory space and inability to drop things anywhere except storage boxes. The first game had the feature of not letting the player use healing items while at full health, but it would be removed in the sequels for this reason.
• Sandcastle Builder: Stretchable Chip Storage and Stretchable Block Storage Cap Raisers that unlock after the player loses 1M chips at once due to the storage limit. Once purchased, surplus chips are used to automatically expand the limit.
• Science Girls!: Individual healing items can be used even if the target is totally fine, but ones that affect the whole party, when used when outside battle, do prevent use, with a "No party members need healing." message.
• Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: Auto-potions can't be used at full health, but if the inventory is entered at less than full health, they can be used as many times as you want. Regular Health Potions have no limits on use. Monster Milks don't allow overwriting the same milk with itself.
• Sunset Overdrive: Maps for the collectibles categorized as just "Collectibles", are removed from the purchase list if all of a type are collected beforehand, but the "Currency"-type collectibles' maps still are purchasable even if they're all collected before purchasing any map, at least for Fizzie Balloons, Overcharge Signs, and Cameras.
• Terraria: Potions and healing items can still be used if even if your buffs are still active or you are at full health/mana, respectively. However, if you try to heal at the Nurse while you're at full health, she'll refuse, so you don't waste your money.
• Titan Quest: Health and Magic Potions can always be used as long as they're off Cooldown, but they heal via Gradual Regeneration over-time, so they can be used in anticipation of an attack.
• Vermintide II: Zig-zagged. A hero can't pick up an ammunition pouch if they're completely full on ammo (and can't touch them at all if their ranged weapon doesn't use ammo), but they're free to waste healing items. This can be used to clear the inventory slot, though party members can also just exchange items other than ammunition with each other.

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