Devlog #1: three players won a fight, and left

Noctivore is a text RPG for your phone. You hunt by night, take gear off what you kill, level up, and take on rival hunters in an async arena. It runs in the browser at noctivore.app, with no install.

What happened

This weekend I posted the game on r/WebGames. Three strangers made a character, won one or two fights (12 to 24 XP), and never came back. None of them reported a problem.

What I found

I made a fresh character and played it the way a newcomer would. Then I simulated the first fights for every race, a few thousand times each.

With no gear, the first fight costs about 60% of your health.
If you just tap Hunt again, you black out within three fights 99.9 to 100% of the time, whatever your race.
A fresh vampire loses the very first fight 13% of the time.

The cure was already in the game. The starting town has a shop, and its cheapest flask costs 6 gold and heals 29. Nothing on screen said so. A new hunter started with an empty bag, so the fight screen showed no flask button. The main screen read Recovering · full in ~1h 22m above a Hunt button that still worked. To a new player that says: wait an hour and a half, or die. Closing the tab was a reasonable answer.

What changed

Every new hunter starts with three flasks: 87 health, enough to refill any race's bar. The flask button now appears after the very first fight, so fight, drink, fight teaches itself.
Below half health, the main screen puts your flasks right above Hunt. If you have none left, it says Badly wounded — flasks are sold here and links to the shop.
The achievement banner moved to the top of the screen. At the bottom, on a new hunter's first kill, it landed right on top of the Continue button.
The loss message no longer says The The Starving Warden overwhelms you.

What I learned

The game had the answer, and the screen never said it. A rule the player can't see looks exactly like a bug, and players don't report it. They leave.

Your turn

If you give it a try: how far did you get before your first blackout? And what made you stop? Tell me in the comments.

— D4rkF1r3fly