12 Things We Wish We Knew Before Playing Potionomics

Summary

• Close deals before patience runs out to avoid stress and make money.
• Interested customers boost potion value, prioritize relationship upgrades.
• Spend money on shop upgrades, send out adventurers for better ingredients.

Potionomics is the first major outing from indie developer Voracious Games, and its six-year development cycle more than shows. With excellent modeling, superb animation work, and a fun potion-crafting gameplay experience, it's well worth experiencing. There's just one problem, though: the game, quite frankly, is pretty hard.

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In the deck-building crossed with store management that is Potionomics, there’s a lot to consider if you want to determine the profit of a potion.

If you don't know what you're getting into, one wrong move can potentially spell disaster and set you back by days of progress. Knowing the dos and don'ts will give you a huge leg up in crafting the best, most high-quality potions, so this list includes tips to help you step up your game.

Update on November 7, 2024 by Sharnelle Earle: Potionomics will take you by surprise and is actually very easy to lose. Understanding the foundation of how to balance Stress, competitions, and visiting cute friends will make or break your playthrough. So, we've added some more beginner tips to help you get familiar with the game.

12 Close The Deal Before Patience Wears Thin

Each action during the card game will consume a customer's Patience. During a potion deal, you want to avoid getting overly stressed and avoid getting to the end of a customer's Patience.

If Patience gets to zero, and you do not sell the potion, you will make no money and become more stressed. Pay attention to the Patience cost of each card and action. Ending your turn is an action that consumes Patience.

11 Kinda Interested Is Good Enough

The customer doesn't have to be thoroughly happy and convinced in order to close out the deal. The only reason you want to aim for Moderately Interested or higher is to increase the value of the potion.

If you are out of Patience or good cards, you can still close the deal and sell as is.

Customers will be easier to impress. Increasing their Interest makes them Very Interested at a faster rate than appeasing Robin during a competition.

10 Plan Ahead When Visiting Friends

Time spent planning is never wasted, and that applies more than anywhere in Potionomics. Your time is limited on a day-to-day basis, and you only have so many days to craft the award-winning potions needed to win competitions. Wasting too much of that time can spell disaster. As such, planning ahead and thinking about what you're going to do is essential. Some actions take up your precious time, but others don't.

It's always good to have potions brewing, for example, since it doesn't consume time, and you can do other things while waiting. This means preparing your potions well in advance and making decisions, such as traveling to an NPC, worth your while. However, if you want time to pass to get your hands on some new potions you're making, then you should make it a point to visit your friends. Hanging out with NPCs on your travel map serves to pass time, gain access to resources, and to relieve Stress.

Customers can increase your Stress levels, which will give you debuffs and decrease the effectiveness of your cards.

Visit any NPC on the map andselect the 'Hang Out' option. As you progress in the relationship, more hangout options will be available to you. Each new Hang Out will take up more time than the last. Ending the day early passes time faster when you're brewing potions and decreases some Stress.

9 Save Often To Avoid Game-Ending Mistakes

Potionomics offers you a generous number of save slots, on top of an autosave at the start of every day. You should remember to not only save often, but try to save in different slots, to give yourself 'reset' points if you feel you've mismanaged your time recently.

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You don't need to save scum to beat Potionomics by any means, but having the ability to undo your mistakes is a huge boon. It's all too easy to make a minor mistake and realize you want to take it back, but have no saves ready to do so. Try to make a habit out of saving often.

8 Spend Money To Make Money

As tempting as it is to hoard your gold like a potion-crafting dragon, there's really no reason to. Remember, you'll be paying off your debt with the money you win from competitions, not the gold from your day-to-day work. As such, you should be spending it, not hoarding it.

Unless you're saving for a big purchase, you should make sure to spend as much of your money as you possibly can. Don't blow it on meaningless purchases, but instead, think about what ingredients and upgrades for your shop you can spend at any given time. Having less than 100 gold on hand might sound risky, but it's worth it.

7 Prioritize Upgrades

When spending your hard-earned money, you should ideally be prioritizing upgrades from Muktuk and Saffron. Muktuk will allow you to purchase better cauldrons for potion-crafting and shelves for selling them, while Saffron will give you more space in your shop for cauldrons and shelves.

These upgrades are essential as you move into the later stages of the game. Better cauldrons allow you to make more potions at once, and stronger ones at that. More shelves, meanwhile, let you sell more of your potions at once to make more money. Be sure to prioritize these upgrades whenever possible.

6 Get Better Ingredients By Sending Out Adventurer's

Over the course of the game, you'll unlock a number of adventurers that you can send out to battle monsters and bring back the ingredients they find. You can also give them potions to improve their odds of success and give them a number of buffs.

Mint is the first adventurer you will have access to, whom you can send out to gather ingredients.

These adventurers are essential to your success, as they're your primary way of getting your hands on new ingredients. New ingredients mean ingredients that come with buffs or which have a higher number of magimins. Try to always have a stock of health and mana potions on hand to aid them in their quests. Remember, sending them out doesn't cost time, so there's hardly any reason not to do it.

5 Prioritize Expanding Quinn's Shop

Once you've gotten new ingredients from your adventurers, your number one priority should be giving them to Quinn. Quinn will consume the ingredients you give them, but in exchange, those ingredients will become permanently available in their shop starting the next day.

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As expensive as buying ingredients can be, it's always a superior option to relying on the chance of getting them from monster drops. Quinn's shop will provide you with an infinite supply of any ingredient without having to wait, so make sure you bring them every new ingredient you get as soon as possible.

4 Improve Your Relationships To Gain Better Cards

As you interact with your friends, you'll be able to rank up your relationship. Ranking up will either provide you with new cards for the bartering, or a discount on their services. Not to mention, you'll get treated to charming dating sim-esque visual novel segments.

Each NPC's 'advice' and cards will offer different playstyles. Saffron's cards decrease Stress and Baptiste's cards increase Patience. Plan which cards to unlock to create the deck you need before the day of the competition. Ranking up isn't always an option, as it costs a time slot, but it's one you should consider whenever possible. The cards you get from your friends will be a huge boon when selling your portions, and since you'll be using their services so much, the discounts will pay off in the long term.

3 Give Out Gifts To Increase Friendship Faster

When it comes to improving your relationships, there are few better options than giving out gifts. Hanging out with your friends costs time, but giving out gifts costs none, instead taking one of your ingredients. That's a small price to pay for an increase in your relationships.

The purpose of this is to increase your relationship levels with that NPC faster. It is beneficial to maintain good friendships with the NPC's whose cards you want. With a high level friendship, you can get better cardsmore quickly.

Since moving between your friends and giving them gifts doesn't cost any time, you can give each of your allies a gift every single time you head out. You can only do this once per day, but it's well worth the time.

Every friend also has a preferred ingredient, so try to figure that out while you're handing out gifts.