Make town fountains refill up to 30% of energy. That alone will fix a lot of the energy issues. Noobs unanymously limp their way into a town with 0 energy, so it'll be a guaranteed utilization.
Every town in the game presents itself as a haven. They have guards, buildings, shops, no hostile monsters, plenty of roads and decor... towns need to give a minimum energy boosts, and their fountains are a perfect way to do it.
It presents a perfect opportunity to replace the ebb in gameplay with a flow. An immediate boost to 30% energy means they can launch to the destination in town, whatever it was. A bank, a quest destination, a furnace... anything.
Making fountains an extremely watered down (lel) version of a house pool is pretty solid design in my opinion because it also familiarizes them with the concept of this future content.
It also incentivizes them to save their energy potions until after they give the fountain that much anticipated succ, which teaches resource allocation that remains useful all the way until endgame. GWD altars are a good example: players learn not to drink their prayer potion when the altar is primed for use and they have a single minion left because it's about to be refilled anyway.
Additional random complementary ideas:
- Give a bit of Agility XP when it happens. Chatbox can say something like "You relax and realize you've learned a bit about Agility..."
- This cap can scale with Agility level. Perhaps level 1 is just ~30%, but maybe it can approach or even reach 100% by level 99?
- This could work WITH pubs/fires rather than against them. Another x% could come from pubs and campfires.
- Road tiles could have an added perk of allowing regeneration WHILE running. Subtle but nice.
(I'm not criticizing energy potions on drop tables. They're good. But the issue needs to be attacked from all possible sides!)