If you are to pay off your dear departed Uncle Oswald’s great debt and avoid indentured servitude in Potionomics, you’ll have to haggle and card battle with your customers. In this new addition to the potion brewing genre, you haggle with skill cards, dealing damage by increasing customer interest and taking damage by building stress.
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You have to select each card carefully if you want to maximise the prices you sell your potions for. Card skills are taught by the locals and townsfolk as you befriend them but don’t think you have to socialise constantly for the best cards as many of the early unlocks will serve just as well.
8 Scheme
As Uncle Oswald might say, “The first idea is the best idea!” And when it comes to card game haggling, that may be no different. Scheme is the first card you’ll receive, and it doubles the choices of cards you have by allowing a draw of three more cards.
Though this card may cost twice the patience that “Think, Sylvia Think” costs, drawing three cards rather than one is worth it, giving you more chances to price gouge before the end of your turn.
7 Sympathy
Mint’s first card gift is a treat. Balancing offense and defence, it may be the best shielding card in the game (at least for the early game) as it’s a direct upgrade over Sylvia’s Brace Yourself and applies the Sympathy debuff on top of giving Sylvia two points of shield.
The Sympathy debuff is just like a defence debuff and allows customers to take additional interest from your haggling cards. As most of your cards will work to gain interest, Sympathy can boost almost any hand you draw. It also pairs well with Keep Your Guard Up and Strike or Strike Later.
6 Plant The Seed
If you like to pass turns like Quinn likes to lay about then Quinn’s gift to you, Plant The Seed should feel just right. If you’re patient, the customer’s interest will rack up each turn, with a total of at least 24 points.
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Even better is that the effect stacks, so for two points of the customer's patience, you can play Set ‘Em Up twice and increase interest by 16 points for the next three rounds. This card goes hand in hand with Baptiste’s Captivate card, which increases the customer's patience — especially if used first each turn.
5 Enthusiasm
A hefty 16 interest points for three patience is not a bad deal, huh? You can quickly get your hands on this card after ranking up your friendship with Muktuk for the first time. Enthusiasm is among the highest Interest cards in the game, but unlike its competitor cards (like Emotional Intelligence and Pander), the only downside is the high patience cost.
Highly versatile, enthusiasm can be used to round off most deck types as a heavy hitter. It synergises best with the Sympathy debuff, Muktuk’s other cards, and Baptiste’s Captivate card, which can help offset the high patience cost.
4 Build Rapport
Increasing the customer’s interest by eight is nice, but there are many cards that do just that and more, what sets this card apart is its opener ability, which adds the Sympathy debuff for two turns. With Sympathy active, your customer's Interest gain will be boosted by 25 percent, and as most cards deal interest, you’ll quickly pile up enough interest to sell your brew for a high price.
If you’re feeling lucky you can use this in conjunction with the risky Shock Factor, Blitz, or Emotional Intelligence cards, but it’s recommended to simply use the more costly Enthusiasm or Magnetism cards in a well-rounded deck.
3 Flattery
If the goal of a potion sale is to get the buyer to pay the highest price possible, then Flattery’s 15 percent bonus is a stellar way to solve your money problems. Flattery does this via the Charmed debuff, which lasts until the end of the current turn.
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Generally, the best play is to use Flattery, then finish with a closer for a minimum price bonus of 20 percent. Having both cards in hand can be tricky, so it’s recommended you also have Draw cards like Scheme or Serenity of Mind in your deck, but if that fails, Flattery can also be used in place of a closer when needed.
2 Compromise
This two-cost card may seem counterproductive because after it raises the customer’s interest to the next level, it permanently blocks the last level, so effectively you could be cancelling out any profits and wasting two patience. And in standard selling it often does, making it abysmal.
On the other hand, during the competition matches the final level of interest is almost unattainable, and so Compromise is excellent. You need only one Compromise in your deck, but it should always be present if you’re going to battle the bosses.
1 Sleight Of Hand
All the game's closer cards add a bonus of five percent to the final sale price, but Sleight of Hand has the potential to add a bonus of 30 percent. It does this by cancelling out the minus five percent added by bad ingredient traits.
Now, that 30 percent may only be if you make a potion with outstandingly awful traits, but nonetheless Sleight of Hand is an excellent closer card if you’re planning on using some of the more noxious (and cheap) ingredients in your brews. And remember — you can check your brew’s trait by mousing over it during the sale.
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