Potionomics: How to make Super Potions

A potion’s stars and tier increase solely based on the total amount of Magimins put inside, with a bonus applied only after that brew has been established. A potion’s stars aren’t determined by the ingredient’s rank, specific combinations of different types of ingredient do not (yet) provide a buff, and yet at specific values of Magimins, a potion’s rank suddenly shoots to the maximum amount of stars in their tier. What’s going on?
The specific Magimin values at which a potion shoots up to max stars in its tier is always 1 before the next star is hit.

As cheezy52 put it; “This feels like it’s almost certainly a bug – looking at the trend of where the star threshholds are, all of these are exactly 1 before where it “should” be. I suspect someone used a “<” in their if-else block where they should have had a “<=”, so when it’s right on those thresholds, the game just defaults to the last “else” in the block, which is the 5-star quality for that tier.”

Okay, it’s most likely a bug, should you really play the game this way? And to that, I say, especially in this case, that every bug is just an unintended feature. If not for examining the game and experimenting, one would just gloss over the high value, see it as a bug, and move on.

So here we are, an easily exploitable bug that instantly makes the game way too easy by giving you potions way above your rank for free. Or not?

We’re making a Super Potion in a couldron with a maximum of 320 Magimins, barely enough for a low-star grand health potion without balance buffs.
The specific values for Super Potions are listed below:
1->2: 9, 19, 29, 39
2->3: 74, 89, 104, 114
3->4: 169, 194, 214, 234
4->5: 314, 344, 369, 399
5->6: 504, 544, 584, 624

Once any of these targets are hit, you’ll gain the maximum stars of that potion’s tier, even though the Magimins aren’t at that high of a level in the tier.
It looks easy enough, but you’ll soon realise that actually getting these values can be trickier than it seems.

The trick to getting the most use out of Super Potions, is to get a boost from the lowest amount of Magimins to the highest stars, without disrupting the balance bonus too much so you can even get to the next tier. A full tier upgrade just by hitting a specific value, truly a secret mechanic! However, hitting these specific targets can be tricky, which will be covered in the Ingredients section.

One of the most important things to have, is a cauldron that’s able to barely hit the first super potion value of the next tier. For this demonstration, I’ve used an ocean cauldron which has a capacity of 8 ingredients and 320 Magimins.
This cauldron perfectly fits the criterea, and is available after the first competition. Do note that it needs to be upgraded twice to achieve a 320 Magimin capacity.

Ideally, the amount of potions should also be maximized. Every 2 ingredients, an additional potion is created. Since this cauldron can contain 8 ingredients, 4 Grand potions are created after Balance buffs. This means that cauldrons which can only contain 7 ingredients produce less, and you’ll have to have better ingredients to hit the 314 Magimin target with such cauldrons. Upgrading your cauldron is key with Super Potions, as upgraded Cauldrons usually bridge into the next tier of potions, which also happens to be the place Super Potions are most effective.

I see you’ve finally arrived to truly master the craft of super potions. The best super potions are hard to create, since you’ll need top tier ingredients and generally be lucky. But you can stay ahead of the curve with a few tricks you’ll learn here

The values of the Magimin targets are not divisible by 6. You might have noticed this already, but most ingredients, especially in early game, only grant magimins in multiples of 6. This means you need to prepare ingredients that do not divide by 6 to even create these super Potions. For strictly even-numbered super potions in early game, (2->3: 74, 3->4: 194(not possible in lower-tier cauldron), and 4->5: 314), stacking up ingredients such as these is important, in particular the ones with a single element:

Fairy Flower Bulb – 4A,
Impstoll Mushroom – 4B,
Rotfly Larva -4C,
Kappa pheromones -4A -4C,
Pixiedust Diamond -4B -4C
River Calamari -8A

In addition, the hardest to hit Magimin targets is the odd-numbered one,169
For this, you’ll need to have odd-numbered total Magimin ingredients. Immediately fill them in Quinn’s store, they can be bought again pretty cheaply the next day, and you’ll need them if your cauldron’s maximum is just above 169.
The odd-numbered total Magimin ingredient available early on and usable are:

Cubic Ooze – 3A -3B -3C,
Bog Beet -27B
Hydra Vertebra -9A -9B -9C

The 2 routes I’d recommend for 169 Magimins, are:
5 ingredients 169: 40+40+40+40+9 (Cubic ooze) or 60+40+18+27(Bog Beet/Hydra Vertebra)+24
6 ingredients 169: 30+30+30+30+40+9 (Cubic ooze) or 30+30+40+18+27(Bog Beet/Hydra Vertebra)+24

For 314 Magimins, I’d recommend these routes:
5 ingredients 314: 168+60+40+40+6
6 ingredients 314: 70+64(early game luck)+60+60+30+30 or 168+40+40+30+30+6 or 168+60+30+24+24+8
7 ingredients 314: 60+60+60+60+40+30+4
8 ingredients 314 (extra potion): 60+60+40+40+40+40+30+4 or 60+40+40+40+40+40+27+27
9 ingredients 314 (no >40): 40+40+40+40+40+40+40+30+4 or 30+30+40+40+40+40+40+27+27
(5->6:504).

Of course, if you want/need to add ingredients,

Super potions can really only be called super potions when they jump a full tier from their original starting point. However, the this can be called the trickiest part of making one. Multiple factors influence the balance bonus of a potion.

There are 2 ways to go about balancing one, the first is to simply aim for “Balance of magimins is stable”. This gives you a chance to receive a higher tier potion, but it isn’t guaranteed.

Of course, aiming for that secured extra star and thus a tier upgrade with “Balance of magimins is very stable” is difficult enough.

Let’s take 314 with 7 ingredients, A tricky but possible creation, one without requiring extraordinary luck like the 5-ingredient creation. This superior potion can only really be created with formulas that include 3 different elements. With 2 elements, the 60 Magimin minerals and gems you could have obtained in early-game will produce too much of the other elements (>15 in a single one for 314 Magimins).

Since recipes utilizing element E are not available yet if you’re at this tier/competition, I’ll focus on the creation of the Superior Sight Enhancer. This recipe needs the following according to my sheet:
7 ingredients 314: 60+60+60+60+40+30+4(Fairy Flower Bulb)
However, this recipe works great for insight enhancer, a slight modification can let it work with the possible materials we got from the new regions our adventurers could conquer. According to the ingredient guide by Princess Félicie:
7 60 total Magimin ingredients can be acquired, and all originate from these 3 second-tier regions. Since we need to add in total 4 60 materials, and with either D or E empty, respectively E and D cannot exceed 15. So we already know this would require at least 3 thunder quartz. If we add 4 thunder quartz, whatever we do, we’ll have an excess of element A. So 3 thunder quartz, 1 Copper Dollop, add 70 of element B with 40+30, and 1 Rotfly Larva -4 producing -105A -115B -79C -15D. Damn, still not good enough.

Luckily, we also possess some Squid Vine (Ocean Coasts), this reduces the need for 4 60 Magimin ingredients to 2, but requires 2 extra 40 Magimin ingredients:
7 ingredients 314: (60+10)+60+60+(60-20)+40+(30+10)+4(Fairy Flower Bulb) =
7 ingredients 314: 70+60+60+40+40+40+4(Fairy Flower Bulb)
1 Squid Vine, 2 Thunder Quartz, 2 Banshee’s Bloody Tongue -40B , 1 Spriggan Antler -40C (both gotten from Baptiste, always, always take Baptiste trades and put them in Quinn if they’re affordable enough), 1 Fairy Flower Bulb to produce -84A -120B -95C -15E. Within limits and gotten the “Balance of magimins is very stable”, it’s gonna be a guaranteed Superior Sight Enhancer.

In conclusion:
1. You now know what Super Potions are
2. Can look up the table of values and exploit it to drastically increase the stars, tier, and consequently the value and potency of your potions.
3. You know that ingredients non-divisible by 6 are very good in the early stages of the game to get to super potion Magimin values.
4. Understand the importance of correct balancing of potions.
5. Know how to balance a potion through trial and error
6. How to absolutely obliterate the game with this knowledge, a true min-maxer’s mindset
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As a note, discovering this bug/mechanic was actually a ton of fun. People can complain however they want that things like this aren’t patched out immediately or aren’t introduced in the game. But personally, this is the kind of joy I was exactly searching for. Imagine playing a game, finding something interesting, and instead of instantly googling or saying it’s bad, you try to investigate further and find this cool mechanic. People call the game stressful, and that’s because this game has attracted 2 kinds of gamers. The casual “Romance” gamer, the one who pursues all relationships and sees potion making as a sidequest. And the “Optimizer” gamer, the gamer who tries their best to produce the best results and focuses mostly on that aspect.

For now, I believe that the Romance gamers can use this mechanic to skip most hard sections if they wish to until multiple difficulties are released. A tip to them: keep buying Baptiste’s expeditions, take on adventures a bit later to be truly profitable with them, and add ingredients to Quinn whenever you can. Guides for specific potions using Super Potions will most likely come out soon by others, so no worries I guess.

For the Optimizer gamer, this process of choosing which ingredients to use in the potion with limiting factors is pretty cool in itself. Acquiring only a specific amount of Magimins while balancing the elements as optimally as you can is such a STEM thing to do it’s insane. I’m personally a chemistry student, and this potion mixing has such a same vibe, I can’t describe it. Tiny bits of inginuity, math, and general sense to create something very specific. I truly hope a similar system to this bug in the code is made, and that until then, this isn’t “Fixed”. It doesn’t hurt gameplay and increases creativity. There are now multiple ways to ” the best product”.

I truly hope that both types of gamers can have their own space in this game. It offers so much, but due to conflicting wants and needs, both types are now suffering through balance changes.

This is my personal take on the current state of the game/feedback to devs:

Please actually explain in game how the modifiers like smellyness etc are determine when ingredients are conflicting. Does the more present modifier take over (2 smelly, 1 smells god = smelly?), or is it by chance (2 smelly, 1 smells good=33% chance of smells good)

For people who want to enjoy the romance, please set less strict time consumption on simple actions like hanging around and increasing their relationships. Although there should be a constraint, tying relationship so tightly knit to actual game progress is gonna be very tricky. Cards in themselves don’t participate too much, but cost too much time to get for the optimizing players. Either increase the influence cards have on the game, or decrease time spent somehow. (Maybe 1 timeunit/2 interactions?) It seems you’re genuinely trying to retain these players by lowering the difficulty of the entire game, but this lessons the challenge for the optimizers even more, who are already basically playing on easy mode..

Fixes/difficulty settings for a Hard difficulty:

Even without Super Potions, the current bosses are not challenging at all for optimizing players. Bosses can be beaten while having potions almost 2 whole tiers above theirs. I couldn’t do the big card battle with Robin because I instantly already won… Please let me choose if I still wanna do the card battle, even if my potions are already worth 10x than my opponent’s, I still wanna convince Robin that my potions absolutely crush my opponent’s.

Increase the amount of days it takes Quinn to add a new product to his store to 2 or 3 days. This feature is by far the most broken thing for optimizers, excluding Baptiste’s “Rare ingredients”. which are way too overpowered in the beginning of the game, and even in the middlegame contribute a lot to the diversity of offerings which can then immediately be put in Quinn’s store.

Set a limit to the amount of expeditions you can make at Baptiste in the beginning of the game, maybe tie it to relationship.

Decrease the markup/set a decreased sellingprice on the vending machine autoseller, or sell potions way slower. This is just too overpowered.

Decrease selling price of potions in general

Decrease amount of influence Luna does.

Increase selling price of custom orders if/when you increase their difficulty, They’re just not worth it right now, even selling potions with influence through the vending machine is better than custom orders most of the time+they don’t give you anything special. Tie getting ingredients to fulfilling custom orders maybe, since Baptiste needs to be nerfed.

I’m currently doing a synthesis week (8:46-17:15+preparing beforehand+writing reports) and my sleep schedule has been absolutely wrecked by this game. Through my ingame hours you can see that every waking minute of free time I’ve had, I’ve spent it on this game, slowly working through it by optimizing, building relationships, getting rich, and researching stuff like this. This is genuinely the game I’ve wanted to play for the last few years, and since it seems you’re taking community feedback to heart, I figured I’d write this piece.