Players who pick up Potionomics will immediately be thrust into the cutthroat world of managing a retail store while also managing the pressure of paying off considerable debts to keep that store. There is a great deal to do right from the beginning, and while the game makes a point of giving exceptional tutorials and a great deal of guidance from the first moments, there is a limited amount of time in the day to get everything taken care of.
Figuring out how to manage Sylvia's various time demands and fulfill all the tasks needed is a major part of the game, but it can seem especially daunting as a newcomer to balance all of the varied requirements of the game while still finding time to explore the many optional pieces of side content. Fortunately, there are tricks that even new players can keep in mind to ensure that they get the most out of the game without spoiling huge chunks of the story or gameplay.
7 Always Be Brewing
Potions are the heart and soul of Potionomics, so it makes sense that brewing them is important. What is equally important is to make sure that the players' cauldrons are never quiet and making the best possible use of time, which means consistently checking on the cauldron and ensuring that there are hopefully no periods wherein nothing is brewing. Before undertaking any task which requires time, the cauldron should be checked.
Early on this is especially advantageous when planning around opening the shop; since the shop takes up two units of time and many early potions take two units to brew, it works well for checking the cauldron, setting a new batch to brew, and then selling what just finished crafting.
6 Start The Day With Travel
Traveling costs one unit of time when Sylvia returns to the shop. The start of the day is when adventuring expeditions will finish up with rewards to collect. It is thus most advantageous to look at the two morning time slots as the best time to travel the town, buying supplies and spending time with others in order to maximize the time spent brewing and selling.
Traveling will use up one unit of time, but players are advised to use an additional unit of time to hang out with an available person of their choice. This helps in building up relationships (advancing to the next relationship level requires one unit of time and awards new cards, not to mention learning lore) as well as managing stress if Sylvia has gotten overwhelmed on the previous day.
5 Use Mint And Baptiste Liberally
Sylvia starts off with access to only the most basic potion ingredients, which lowers the overall quality of the potions she can produce. In order to get better potions, she needs better ingredients, and the first step to better ingredients is making sure to make use of Baptiste's adventurer expeditions and Mint's outings as often as possible.
Baptiste is a very straightforward system wherein paying gold leads to items being recovered the next day, but Mint can be a bit more difficult; she requires potion support to get the most possible items, which can make it difficult early on. Still, even if she cannot clear a dungeon, spending the gold to send her out will often result in item rewards that are worth the time and money spent.
4 Feed Lots Of Items To Quinn
Baptiste and Mint are useful in no small part because they allow players access to more items, but they cannot be relied upon to always bring back desired items. This is why it's important to always take their spoils and feed one of everything to item shopkeeper Quinn, no matter how valuable it might seen. While a player will losing access to one item today, they will also gain regular access to the item in Quinn's stock in the future.
It might seem counterintuitive at first, but Quinn will always stock at least one of items fed to them on every subsequent day, meaning that access becomes far more reliable and players can plan around these ingredients rather than hoping for luck. The one downside is that Quinn will only stock ingredients, not fuel.
3 Upgrade The Cauldron ASAP
Players will encounter Muktuk quite early, and he offers an upgraded cauldron. This is good. But his shop sports additional cauldron upgrades from the moment Sylvia meets him, and getting one of these upgraded cauldrons as soon as possible is the key to brewing the best potions possible. Each of his two available upgrades significantly improves Sylvia's options.
Between the two upgrades available, the Glass Cauldron will probably come out slightly ahead; it offers one the option of having slightly more ingredients in the brew at the cost of a very slightly lower overall magimin count. Nevertheless, this upgrade coming in early will be a key element of triumphing in the game's first potion showdown.
2 Strive For Balance
While tutorials mention how balance is important, they undersell that importance to a degree. Balance of magimins will greatly affect the final product, since there is a hard limit to how high players can push the potion tier while still being limited to an upper boundary of total magimins in the brew.
A perfect brew will not only automatically add two stars to the finished product, there is a chance to add another star on top of that which can push potion quality to new heights. As a result, balancing the colors as deftly as possible is the key to making the best possible potions and should always be the goal.
1 Keep Travel To A Minimum
The time limits in Potionomics don't feel overwhelmingly strict and it can be easy to think that there's no need to worry too much about them. Unfortunately, this is not altogether accurate. While it's not necessary to spend all of Sylvia's time holed up in the shop like some sort of potion goblin (and doing so is actively detrimental to the game), the time limits are there, and not being quite on-point for the first major potion showdown alone can lead into a soft-locked and unwinnable state.
As a result, players are advised to keep travel to a minimum and focus more on having an outing early in the day followed by focusing on brewing and selling. Later in the game it is possible to split up time in a more varied way, but it's best to play it safe early on and avoid the possibility of missing important deadlines.