For newcomers, Potion Craft may appear to be a quaint game about stirring pots, grinding herbs, and selling useful potions. And to be sure, this game is charmingly illustrated and pleasant to play– yet something more clever lies beneath the surface. A puzzle, management game with a complex and unique crafting system.
None of those funny crafting systems like “choose the right combination of items” here instead, your brewing is more like exploring a dungeon while your adventurer is hungry and drunk. As you progress throughout Potion Craft, more skills are needed and all the different systems will have to be used to succeed.
6 Use The Water Spout Skillfully
The humble water spout has a quiet introduction, you might learn what it does– it waters down your brew and moves your bottle marker back to the starting point on the map– but you’re not told how useful it is.
Beginners may think that unless you’ve messed up and need to go back you won’t need to use it, right? Not quite, in fact, the best players are using the water as a way to improve the accuracy of their potion making and sometimes as a way to maneuver through tough spots (I’m looking at you, Necromancy potion maze).
5 Brew Level Three Potions
Beginners may not even know level three potions exist as they’re devilishly hard to create. You may know that level two is achieved by accurately maneuvering the bottle into the potion outline– which can be tricky. To create a level three? Yes, you have to perfectly place the bottle within the outline, a task that often wastes herbs and mushrooms aplenty.
That is if you don’t make use of the water spout. If you plan your path so that you overshoot the potion outline, you can pour in water to accurately place your bottle inside the outline and achieve a level three potion. The question then is, are they worth the effort and spent resources? In fact, they’re completely necessary when it comes to the late game. A level one may net you twenty gold, a level two maybe sixty but a level three? Hundreds of gold!
4 Haggle Endlessly
The haggling mini-game is pretty minor and wholly optional and when you’re trading level one potions, you’re only netting a couple of extra gold. This may lead you to think it’s not worth the trouble; and for level one potions, it’s not. When you start making level twos and hopefully level threes, you’ll find out just how valuable it is. In fact, with a level three potion, you’ll be making hundreds of extra gold if you can haggle well.
So how do haggle? The instructions tell you to click when over an icon to tip the scales in your favor and avoid clicking when the pointer is over nothing. What isn’t said is that the scales are constantly tipping against you, and you have to click many icons quickly and then click the green icon while the client’s scale is piled with treasure. On top of this, you can use talent points to improve the haggling bonus. Don’t worry if that familiar, potion-loving witcher is getting a raw deal, no matter how many doubloons he spends on a sore-throat cure, you'll only lose a single reputation point at most.
3 Steer Clear Of Reputation Reducers
Reputation is a small system in Potion Craft: provide the potions the people want, and they’ll pay more next time. In fact, if you’re completing most requests, you’ll have no reputation troubles, unless you sell to the wrong person. A man looking to poison… well he won’t tell you, or an assassin looking for poison– In your blind love of pioneering you may overlook the severity of these requests but if you do, your reputation will suffer greatly.
And if your reputation falls too low, you’ll get paid less and even have the chance to haggle with your customer revoked. But if you have fallen to the depths of undesirability, fear not. You can still complete the game with a bad rep, and you’ll have the chance to return to good standing– so long as you avoid the assassin (and selling necromancy potions).
2 Always Buy Minerals
Once you’ve progressed far enough, you’ll start seeing minerals like the Cloud Crystal being sold by merchants. If you’ve got the gold, buy them! Unlike any other ingredient, minerals let your bottle teleport across the map– meaning you can cross to new areas. Like the other ingredients, they follow the game’s elemental directions; fire, frost, earth and cloud (there’s also the blood ruby which acts as a diagonal left).
In later chapters, minerals are necessary to make the more difficult potions so stock up and expect to grind many– There’s a fun detail where you have to smash the minerals with the pestle before grinding.
1 Make Multi-Type Potions
High-level potions aren’t the only way to make more money off your clientele. A client will always pay more for the potion they need if it has an extra, acceptable effect– using this well, you can double the gold you make on a sale. The question then is, which effects mix well? Frost and healing don’t sadly, even the cold beer brewer won’t have healing in his beer. But an explosion potion with added light? Perfect.
It can be hit or miss finding combos that work, but usually, a little common sense will see you through and have you making pretty profits in no time.