The point of the energy drain is not that you fight someone, but is that you spent some time moving form one place to another. I don't really like the idea 'you can travel and fight until you get bored' in the game, where resource and time management are in the center of everything.
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tbh i dont really feel like the energy managment aspect is even a thing really. it feels like more of an annoyance in its current state. which, that is probably because it doesnt feel aggressive enough to me.
like ok... here is my example of what i see in game.
main character: 115 energy (i have elven armor with +15 energy equipped)
there are 5 steps to a zone.
proceed (leave encounter): -1
proceed (attack): -1
so given this attacking and leaving how many zones can i go through to find what i want? 23 if everyone is at 115. they arent though so i have to watch them. they are at 100 so its more like 20.
actually the only things that make any differences here are
-supplies (energy refill)
-lock picks (less of a hit for chest open)
-torches (access the secret area in the forest so its not just a wasted 1 energy)
my opinion is energy consumption should be more like:
leave encounter: -1 (you just did some traveling)
attacking: -5 (you did some work)
..and what they changes is you can still walk around looking for whatever you want. however, attacking will cost you. it probably isnt the case that you would attack every encounter in a zone even though ive done close to it when gathering essences. think about what that costed me in the current energy setup.
if i was fighting many packs of wolves say in every encounter for essence. the cost is a measely 5 energy out of my total 100+. big deal. if it was increased to 5 though and i did that it would have costed me 1/5th my energy.
this is why i say it feels more like an annoyance than anything else. it doesnt really feel like the energy system has a real point. it needs to either be completely removed in favor of doing something else, or it needs to be more aggressive to go along with the idea of 'managing time and cost'.
In my opinion, right now the problem with energy management=time management system isn't how little energy gets depleted in travel, it's how there's no real consequence even if we hit 0 energy across the party. All it does is stop my character from opening treasure chest (20 without lockpick and 5 with) and using special attacks, which is negated by having a character with about 6 magic affinity and acid spit special attack since that move doesn't cost energy.
-33 damage sounds like a lot on paper, but with a party fully trained, modded with enhanced muscle and decked out with hammer it is still very easy to steamroll through most enemy encounter in mid to high level areas. Only bandit encampment encounter will give you trouble if you have no high magic affinity character who can acid spit (insanely high damage with a high magic affinity character, apply -armor debuff without energy cost, I feel it'll get nerfed in next build) but that's about it. And assuming you are at the point where you can safely travel through the marsh you already have high enough awareness to sneak through this encounter so once again there's no consequence.
Personally I think it might just be better to cut the lose, and embrace the idea there's no real way to limit how a min/max type of player want to adventure per day. A huge revamp on how to limit adventure a player can do this stage in the development will more likely unbalance the game and make it not fun to play. Once again, just my humble opinion.
33% reduction in damage and the lack of combat skills won't stop a well geared main character from massacring lv11+ bandit camps even if there are 13+ enemies.. (in which case the ui doesn't even let the player target the last few enemies directly with skills)
Stamina is no issue once invigorate is unlocked as long as the main char is combat ready (cause for some reason invigorate can be used on the main character who doesn't get any stress problems from it, and benefits twice from it at the same time, as it gives the main character 100 energy on use).