Well yeah the monastery heals just fine and it's cheap too, but I kind of just gave up on the game because literally I was reloading 5 times to beat the dinosaurs then I would have to walk back allll the way back to the monastery after each fight and I was like -_- because literally it would take 10+ reloads due to werewolves ripping apart my one surviving guy. Lack of healing items was very lame. I just bought the morning star for 2500 so now I have 200 gold.
Maybe I shouldn't have started on hard, but on the other hand - I don't think I've really missed any big secrets. I've bought all the forge items up to the morning star, I've done some quests for decent items like snake armor. I have mountain cane equipped on the mountain and I take it off when I'm not on the mountain.
I did feel pretty good/strong in the swamp with the hunter trident and croc net, but every other time I felt like I keep getting massacred, have to run away whenever I can, and sometimes I can't even run because the enemies are too fast and it's just such a hassle. And it's not like LF3 where if you die you respawn, you just have to keep spamming save every 2 inches.
I remember my first impression was dying to some muskrats in the Gray Cave and I hadn't saved in like an hour and I was like nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I don't mind dying and I don't mind hard fights, but it's kind of lame that you have so little healing resources that either take too long to walk to or too much grinding to get money for it. Too much down time between fights in other words - I would rather spend time strategizing in battle, not running away and struggling to find a heal spot.