Potions

Cauldrons

1. Any of these lets you practise and brew:

2. At the start of the year the Enrollment Supply List lets you collect a free Cauldron and Potion Starter Set from Newt’s Eye — that’s the cauldron you take to class.

How brewing works

1. You can’t brew a recipe the moment you learn it. First you practise, and as soon as your best score is worth one star, Brew unlocks for good. From then on brewing is instant: press it, the ingredients disappear and the potion lands in your inventory.
2. At any cauldron:
   1. Open it to see every recipe you know, with your best score and stars.
   2. Pick one and choose Practice. It’s free and uses no ingredients, so repeat it as often as you like.
   3. Once it has a star, choose Brew. The game takes ingredients from your inventory first and then from your chests, so you don’t have to carry everything.
3. During a class the cauldron only lets you practise that day’s potion.

The practice minigame

1. You get 60 seconds to finish as many cauldrons as you can. There are five, and each needs the whole recipe — one of every ingredient shown. Repeats count separately: the Potion of Hardiness wants Twigs and two Cut Grass in the same cauldron.
2. Controls:
   1. Aim and throw. A conveyor feeds ingredients into the main bowl. Aim with the mouse and throw the front one with left click (left stick and A on a controller).
   2. The side bowl. Right click or RB switches bowls. Park ingredients you can’t use yet in the side bowl, then switch over and throw them when a cauldron needs them.
   3. The hourglass. The round ends when it runs out.

3. The score can’t go below zero. Each Potionwork Proficiency skill adds 5 to the final result (see Brewing skills below).
4. A wrong ingredient is the expensive mistake — three correct plus one wrong costs 4 points and all that work. To avoid it:
   1. Park instead of guessing. The next ingredient is almost always wanted by *some* cauldron, just maybe not the one you’re aiming at. Drop it in the side bowl and keep the belt moving.
   2. Spread your throws. A finished cauldron bubbles for a few seconds before it empties and resets — work on the other four meanwhile.
   3. Empty the side bowl at the end, since every leftover costs a point.

Stars and quality

1. Your best score sets a recipe’s stars, and the stars set the quality of everything you brew from it: Poor, Average, High, Exceptional and Legendary. Each new star also gives 1 experience. These are the scores needed:

2. Every 5 points is one finished cauldron, so 65 means 13 cauldrons in a minute. With all three Potionwork Proficiency skills, 10 is enough.

3. What quality changes:
   1. Sell price. Each step up adds 20% of the base value. A Poor Potion of Speed sells for 334; a Legendary one for 598.
   2. Potion of Speed: lasts longer and runs faster — from 60 seconds at +25% (Poor) to 140 seconds at +75% (Legendary).
   3. Instagrow and Insta Ungrow: move a plant one stage at Poor or Average, two at High or Exceptional, three at Legendary.
   4. Potion of Hardiness: keeps soil damp for longer. Poor gives a 50% chance of lasting one night; each step adds half a night, up to two nights plus a 50% chance of a third at Legendary.
   5. Quests that check quality. Martha only accepts a High or better Potion of Hardiness in “The Sentinel Shrub”. Clearing the Gondola vines in “The Beekeeper’s Bees” takes two Insta Ungrow — or just one if it’s Exceptional or better.

All 14 potions

1. Garden potions and the Spore Neutralizer are used by equipping them and interacting with the target, or by dragging them onto it. Speed, the Mole, Fungal Transmutation and the Fire Art potions are drunk from your inventory. The rest are handed over in their quests.

2. In your first class Professor Sylvine sets Potion Homework: brew any five potions and show them. You keep them afterwards.

Where to learn each recipe

1. In roughly the order you’ll get them. Classes run 8:00–11:00 in the Potions Lab, so keep those mornings free.

Gathering ingredients

1. Hyla sells the ingredients you can buy at Newt’s Eye:

2. Pieter and Mel sell Salt Piles for 3 as well. Everything else you gather:
3. Where the rest comes from:
   1. Wild plants (Foraging): Fiddlehead, Morel and Wild Thyme all year; Dread Sorrel and Witchfire in Summer and Autumn; Ghost Shroom from Summer to Winter; Frostleaf and Ruby Bells in Winter. Morel, Dread Sorrel and Ruby Bells are especially common in the Ochre Woods.
   2. Crops (Crops & seeds): Moon Poppy, Spring Tuber, Snap Tater, Amber Dragon, Lavender, Marjoram and the Fire Art crops — Nocturne Squash, Frostwoven Nightshade and Quicksilver Cabbage — all grow from seeds sold by Kavita. Gloomroot grows wild in Winter, mostly in the Rosewheat Fields.
   3. Beaches: Mussel, Nautilus and Urchin wash up on Freshman Pier and near the Shell.
   4. Sea diving: Bane of Bard, Water of the Deep, Seastar, Mermaid’s Thread and Seaweed. Swim to the bubbles and interact to dive. Mel also sells Seaweed for 25.
   5. Twigs and Cut Grass: fell dead trees with Chant of the Woodcutters, and cut grass in your garden with the Scythe (Kavita, 65).
   6. Toxic Spores: catch them with the Bug Catcher in Nocturne Forest.

Making money with potions

1. The Magic Well pays a fixed price for each quality, and no selling skill raises it — you get exactly what the description says.
2. The Potion of Speed is the one worth brewing. The Bone Bundle and Hot Essence cost 280 at Newt’s Eye and Dread Sorrel is free in Summer and Autumn. A Poor potion sells for 334 and a Legendary one for 598 — more than double what you spent. Get your score to 98 before you brew in bulk. Sera sells the same potion for 400 at the Cup and Kettle, so brewing your own saves money if you want to drink it too.
3. The Fire Art potions sell for 200–360, but their crops are worth about as much on their own, so there’s little profit in them.

Brewing skills

1. One Potionwork Proficiency is open from the start. The second sits next to Seed Gatherer (also a starting skill), and the third next to Seed Collective, reached through Mana Enrichment. Apothecary only appears after you finish “The Potionmaster’s Ingredients”. Full tree on the Ability tree page.

Potion achievements

1. Brewmaster means five stars on all 14 recipes. They arrive across the whole year and the last, the Root Strengthener Tonic, only on Winter 2. Pick up Potionwork Proficiency early and perfect each recipe as soon as you learn it, so only a few are left at the end.