This is a thread to discuss all games and all one-time-use items in them, how you feel about them, when you choose to use them, why, and so forth.

Let me start by giving an example: Borderlands 2 has one-time-use keys which unlock chests for great loot. Once you use it, its gone forever, and this is across all your characters. Knowing that it was a one-time-use item, I saved the key through multiple characters never using it. Eventually I got bored with Borderlands 2, and only then did I bother to use the key. This happens to me in most games: I stick onto a one-time-use item for way past normal sense, never wanting to use it. Same goes for limited consumables in for example Fallout 3, New Vegas, Oblivion and Skyrim. I have this great scroll of epic power, but I don't want to waste it. I have this stealth-boy, but I don't want to use it. Etc. Even poisons which cost more than 10 in oblivion and skyrim would never be used by me, simply because I didn't want to waste them.

I'd like to hear how you feel about one-time (or limited) items in games. Are you like me, cling on to them for 100 hours with a single character, get bored with it and restart the game with a fresh character, never using that stealth boy you found? Or do you perhaps think you'll always find more, in which case the first question is more relevant to you: How do you use one-time-use items?

I'm exactly like you. The mentality behind the design is that you'll really have to think about when you want to use it but the reality is that most people will never use them at all. That's why its important to make things scarce rather than one time uses.

Depends on the game.

Normally I don't use them but in Oblivion, I was able to duplicate some of them (Such as the scroll to summon Rufio's ghost).

I find myself never using them, because, "maybe... just maybe, there is a better use for it up ahead." I get to the end of the game and almost always have that one-use item still in my inventory

Ah, yes. The http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TooAwesomeToUse items. Gotta love 'em.

Elixirs and Megalixirs in Final Fantasy (and just about every other JRPG). Those "infinite attack spins if you can get the timing right" items in Shadow Hearts. Scrolls of super-ultra-doom in Elder Scrolls..... yeah, I end up never using those things. Get to the final boss fight, and probably forget to use them then. End the game with every one of them still in my inventory.

(Side note: Borderlands 2 keys? They've been releasing codes for more of those things constantly. I found a website that http://orcz.com/Borderlands_2:_Golden_Key, and ended up with like 75 of the things after doing some code entering.)

ha that's me all day, I hold on to special items so long that there's been times that I've finished a game or stopped playing and have never used the item

I'm trying to break this habit so recently in Skyrim I used Karstagg once which was hard to do even though I get 2 more uses.

I tend to collect unique things in games that allow me collect and store my loot. If it is a game where the inventory system is such that I have to use it or carry it around, it will get used at some point. However, that point is usually much farther along than the device was intended to be used.

I like them in the sense that limiting a resource ensures you use it wisely. First thing that comes to mind for me is the Master Ball in Pokémon games.

I save them only for the legendary I want the most. But since the newer ones have a couple in the game, it takes quite some thinking.

Save them and never end up using them.

Although I've used over a hundred Golden Keys and still have over a hundred left, those things do not need to be rationed.

Yeah, me too. I might use them more if I play a game more than once, since I'll know if they're necessary for the end or not.

I've been this way since I was a small child and I still do this in games, when things are rare or one-time I tend to hang on to them forever and never use them.

As a kid I had some coloured note paper that I never, ever used to write on because they'd get used up then.

As an advlt, I have a perfectly good new set of pans, never used. I still use my old ones because I don't want my new ones to become looking used.

I'm incredibly silly like that.

Like many others in the thread, I'm the same way. I can remember saving ultimate healing items as far back as the original Final Fantasy, getting all the way to the end before I'd use them...and then just not needing them(Has anyone else come up with the correlation that by not using the ultimate items earlier in the game, you inadvertently grind more so you don't HAVE to use them, so that the entire game you're one or two steps above what the storyline throws at you?). Just one of those things I guess. Hell, in games like Disgaea, I'll hold on to legendary items that I got in the beginning of the game, all the way up until I'm almost done all the optional content, just because it's legendary, LOL.

I've never cared about these types of items really, the only time I use something similar to them is when I use a race-specific power in TES that you can only use once a day before it recharges for another. When it comes to items in general (like in TES), I tend to collect too much sometimes and end up having to clear it all out.. when it comes to these specific items, I don't care enough about them to bother collecting them so I just gather the gear that helps me and stick with it.

I hoard almost all my items (In RPG's Especially), even things like armor/weapons. You never when that Rusted Iron Sword you found at the beginning of the game can be reforged with the Skystone of Amazingness to create the the Sword of Shattering.

One time use Items I'll save until the final/hardest battle of a game, usually just to see exactly what it does.

I have the usual "might need it later" mentality. On my original Morrowind character I still have the scrolls of icarian flight on the off-chance they would ever be useful. Same issue with Stealth Boys in Fallout. I'm constantly paranoid that right after I use it willy-nilly I'll encounter a situation where having that item would have been essential.