Nut

A Nut is a consumable item in the Golden Sun series. Like most consumable items, each party member can hold up to 30 nuts in a single inventory slot. When used, a nut restores 200 Hit Points to a single party member. Nuts can be bought for 200 coins and sold for 150 coins.

Analysis
Upon acquiring their first nut, most players will not likely have any party members with 200 Hit Points, making nuts effectively as powerful as vials and potions. Warrior-style Adepts may be approaching the 200-HP point by the time nuts become available in shops, but even then their price may make them impractical: Herbs cost a mere 10 coins but restore 50 HP, making them much more cost-effective than nuts. Eventually, though, enemies will deal more damage and party members will acquire more Hit Points, making nuts more practical for mid-battle healing than the equivalent number of herbs.

In the original Golden Sun, vials could not be purchased at item vendors, making nuts the most powerful HP-restoring item readily available to players. As a result, it would not be uncommon for players to have many nuts in their inventory while navigating the final dungeon. As of the second installment, however, vials could also be purchased by the end of the game, making nuts little more than an intermediate step between herbs and vials. Further driving the point home is that, unlike herbs, nuts and vials have the same cost-to-effectiveness ratio. For example, five nuts and two vials will both restore 1000 Hit Points, and they both cost 1000 coins. Also, depending on how quickly a player proceeds through a game, vials may become available by the time nuts would be useful, discouraging players from buying them in the first place. As a result, vials are more common end-game items while nuts would be better of sold for extra money - first game aside, of course.

Disregarding stronger healing items, the actual usefulness of nuts depends largely on a player's preferred style of combat. Herbs are as valuable as they are because they appear early in a game, while Djinn are still rare and Psynergy Points are a valuable commodity. By the time nuts become available, however, players will find themselves with ample PP for healing spells like Cure and Wish, and they may have acquired some healing Djinn like Breath or Flower. Therefore, nuts are more valuable to players who prefer using Psynergy for offense and keep Djinn set to improve their classes. On the other hand, players who unleash Djinn often or who conserve Psynergy for healing may find nuts (and other healing items) a waste of inventory space and would be better of spending their money on armor to reduce the amount of damage they take in the first place. Even these players, however, may find having a few nuts on hand useful should their designated healer get knocked unconcious or has their Psynergy sealed.