Potion Tycoon – Useful Tips, Hints and Tricks

Hints, Tricks and Other Helpful Things

There seems to be several people struggling with game so I thought I would collect and post useful things to keep in mind while playing the game.

Decor can be your friend if you have it and your enemy if you don’t.

• Room rating has impacts on customer action points and on efficiency of your workers. If your room rating is low, it will cost more action points from your customers. If customers run out of action points, they will leave without buying anything. Your workers will have complete breakdowns and thus lose efficiency in a room with a low room rating. Get the decor up and it will make everything better for workers and for customers.

Go easy on the promotions in the early game.

• I would recommend only promoting one alchemist for research and one clerk for marketing and limiting how much promotions they get until you can clearly afford it. Hold off on the rest until later in the game when money is more abundant.

Go easy on purchasing from the vendors.

• I get it. New shiny, must have. However in the early game that can lead to ruin as you can purchase before you can afford the item. Unless it will make a big difference in the game (i.e. a new element for your potions), you might be better off without the purchase.

Don’t feel that the VIP’s have to be accommodated right away.

• It may be better to decline and wait a different day for doing their quest. They should keep coming until you complete them so there is no harm in declining and waiting a few precious days to build up your reserve money.

Go easy on building up until you can afford it.

• If your customers don’t have enough action points to get to the second floor there is no point in building up the second floor for customers. Wait until your first floor is solid with plenty of potions and loads of decor before thinking of really expanding. Make sure you can afford the staff to manage the increase in production.

Lower the limits of the goods being produced.

• With every case of potions being produced costs money. If your workers are busy producing crushed, pickled items for potions that you have plenty of, they aren’t producing the items needed to create the stuff for potions flying off the shelves. Limiting the amount being produced through the entire production line will keep the workers focused more on what is being purchased and less on the stuff that is sitting in the inventory.

Keep up with the marketing.

• Ever wonder why after a time there seems to be less and less customers in the shop? The game gives a fame boost at the beginning that drops off. You need the marketing to help drive customers to your shop. Be careful using the sales one too often because that does lower the price of the potions and which can lead to ruin.

For VIP requests lock the potions

• If you go to the potion menu at the top of the screen, you will see a list of potions that you can produce. If you click the lock icon, this will allow you to stockpile the potion for the VIPs. This also means that those potions won’t be sold. See point #4.

Keep up with the research and upgrade your potions.

• Don’t forget to go back and upgrade your potions taking advantage of increases to arcane power, new materials for the potions and other upgrades. This will allow you to increase the price you are getting for same potions and thus bring more money to pay for shiny new objects, new staff, etc.

Don’t go crazy hiring staff.

• If you see your production line lagging because the workers are having a nap, don’t jump right away to hiring more staff. I would recommend the following worker amounts as a rough baseline – 1 alchemist per cooker and one more for the research lab, 1 operator per machine, early game I would recommend only 2 operators, 1 clerk per cash register +1, early game I would recommend 2 clerks, 1 greaser early game, late game keep hiring greasers if there are multiple flashing things demanding attention from the greasers. Greasers are cheap and the role they play is just as important.

Height matters!

• There is limited space to expand to. When you are starting out shrinking the height of the rooms will be cheaper. you can expand the size of the rooms later when you have more money. If you use large rooms exclusively you are limited to only 4 floors high and 4 floors deep. Consider the tradeoff if you are going to use taller rooms.

Multiple of the same type in cabinets.

• You can have multiple cabinets having the same potion. This is useful in the early game to allow as the game will have customers consider buying the potion each time they come across it. If they don’t like it the first time, they might the second time.

Specialize with a potion type

• There are three types of potions – Health, Provisions, Sorcery. Toward the later end of the very beginning game (when you start getting more seeds) I would recommend picking one type and then specializing it focusing on getting superior potions for your specialty area. This will allow you to become and stay market leader which allows for an increase in the amount of Tycoon Points (used in worker hiring, Marketing and Research). Later on as you expand to further floors, you expand to the other areas.

When making your potions pay sharp attention to the potion tags (in the bottom right of the Potion crafting screen)

• If you see anything in red – I would highly recommend modifying it. These can really lower the appeal and quality of the potion making it less desirable for customers. Some potions benefit from the poison tag, some potions benefit from making it tasty – different potions have different needs, so pay attention to the tags.

Potion appeal is very important!

• This is what makes a potion superior and can put you as market leader and other advantages (increasing fame, sales). The more potion appeal you have the better. It is worth sacrificing a few extra cents in exchange for making it superior. In very early game the extra cents can make a huge different but once you get your fourth seed, you should be taking potion appeal very seriously.

Raise Arcane Power

• The more arcane power you have the more ingredients you can include in a potion. This can raise the appeal, strength, and quality of the potions. Anything you can do to boost this pays for itself. There is an artifact that you get for one of the early quests, researching lab supplies provides furniture that boosts this, promoting alchemists can sometimes get a perk that boosts. Take advantage of this as much as you can. While you don’t necessarily need every potion to be boosted to the max, I do recommend any potion you are trying to keep superior check into boosting them every time you raise your arcane power.

Limit the number of different ingredients at the start of the game

• By limiting the number of different ingredients/processed ingredients it allows more space for production machines, less time swapping around between the ingredients and will take less storage space. This will increase the money as you aren’t spending on machines, storage, and time.

More Tips

Worker wage is based explicitly on skill ranks and nothing else. They also can only hold about 5 perks (4 for your first greaser/manager your game starts with, might make 5 if you don’t straight master one job), but they can still gain levels, so you can give them more than one job. Depends on your playstyle! The room rating caps at 40, so if you’re already covering that, you don’t have to worry about taking it even higher.

Of the jobs, greasers gain a speed boost with higher ranks, and managers generate tycoon points as per their manager rank. Manager perks also tend to influence the other workers, so it might be worth upgrading them instead of the others in some cases. Most Alchemist perks affect potions regardless of who brews them (but not all), but operator and greaser perks tend to be dependent on the worker doing the job.

If you got your business going but aren’t too happy with one of your workers, check out the hiring page daily for a potential replacement worker to level in hopes of some other perks.

Height matters! Map-wise currently, you can have 5 floors high or 5 floors deep if you don’t adjust room heights, but only 6 high or deep if you make them a short as possible, or 4 high or deep if you make them taller. However, shrinking a room costs nothing, while expanding costs the difference in the size change. If you’re pinching a few coins you can shorten some rooms to get some basic function first, then expand them late when you can use the space (and have more coins).

You know how you put potions on cabinets for customers to buy? Did you know you can put the same potion on multiple cabinets? It’s true! While it won’t increase your department rating, it does allow customers to consider the same potion more than once, improving the odds of them purchasing it if it’s the right type. This can be helpful if your starting ingredients are giving you so so options and you want to generate as much profit off your one working potion as you can before you risk putting a so-so product out.

Money Tips

My best recommendation for making lots and lots of money (almost from the very start): try to use as less ingredients as possible (in the whole house).

For Example: If you’re using Mandrake, Pickled Mandrake and Dried Mandrake, when creating a new potion, try to incorporate mandrake again. This will allow you to save a lot of storage and production space.

Also, try not to use every possible variation of an ingredient. If you intend to cut a half of an ingredient, try to use the same cut in other potions too.

This way, you could rely on growing only a few ingredients. Less staff, less storage, more money.

Layout Tips

Best layout I found is to use the tutorial layout for the underground grotto section. Reason is you want your workers to move on the same level most of the time from getting the resources —> storing it —> using it in machines and cook it + bottle it

The layout being this from left to right:

• Room to place 4 greenhouses or cult boxes (having 3 with artefact is the main goal)
• Next to it a room to place 2 pallets, 1 for raw herbs and 1 for processed with potions aswell
• Staircase
• Room which contains from left to right, bottle machine –>small cooker–> mortar –> pickle machine -bottle machine –> small cooker –> small kettle –> drying kiln

Then rinse and repeat for third floor but then swap out the mortar and pickle machine for infuser and fermentation tank

Only thing changes on the 4th floor where you place mortar –> oven preheater –> drying kiln –> water tank –> pickle machine

Reason behind this layout is because it overlaps all the things you would need for every potion you are cooking, so it is all in the range of 1 floor

If you do this however you need to be conscious whilst assigning your potion to a cooker and look at the links for all the machines, on floor 1 you have to assign potions that do not use the infuser or the fermentation tank, for the rest you can assign like you want there is overlap everywhere, just make sure you link it correctly if you are at the bottom cooker that you use the closest in reach drying kiln for example.

Last floor is the experiment floor still, where I use a grand cooker and the extractor + refiner but it will be some time when people get to this stage.