Question: Balancing & Discord

[Meluna]

How soon will balancing be changed/fixed? Im really itching to give this another try but my first playthrough was quite discouraging. Even with the tips & tricks i dont know if i want to try & waste another 4 hours only to fail.

Regarding Discord, why dont you have one? Im so used to going to discord for answers/help and itd be great to see others progress & screenshots.

[Evan the Illiterate, PhD]

Hey Meluna. I had three different stores where all potions were almost fully stocked non-stop. I had one of every cooking item, and 3 cookers running almost non stop, and 3 floors of selling rooms. The rules of thumb I suggest are to minimize actions needed by workers, minimize ingredients, and maximize the profit with better bottles, selling in the middle price range:

1. You can look at your starting ingredients and likely find 2 potions that require minimal effort to make, and that are not in the same potion category. I certainly aim for all recipes to have less than one action taken on each ingredient when starting; however, I find that just to get started it is okay to use 2 ingredients with no special actions taken on any. For the first few days, you should focus on selling the 2 you can make like this.

2. The two research I grab at the start are at the top left of the research tree, which make your bottles better. I keep all building expenses and employee expenses cheap up to this point. You only really need an upgraded alchemist to get your store rolling. The two research mentioned in this point can help boost your selling range to the middle bracket, where the profit is better. Most potions can be sold in the middle price bracket for most of the run.

3. Run your way in the research to the fermentation machine.

4. At this point, you can make what I believe is currently maximum profit per effort. Try combinations of ingredients for potions, that take no more than 3 ingredients, where potion results sell mid range. You can make almost all potions this way, selling to the mid point. If you arn't able to get a potion into the middle selling range, just sell the ones you can for now that do, and focus on researching better bottles and better caps.

5. There are only 2 or 3 potions that I find myself needing to use 4 ingredients to get rid of all the negative modifiers. In most cases, all ingredients only have a single action taken on them. Only on the rare occasion have I found myself needing to take 2 actions on an ingredient (like a cut and fermentation) to get good potions in the middle price range. Note that many potions for health can be boosted twice with anti-toxen x2, and most sorcery spells can be boosted with toxen x2.

6. Once you get enough potions to sell on multiple floors, you can use the guide sings to lead customers to where they want to go. When I am selling every potion type, 3 floors are used, with all the health, provisions, and sorcery potions on their own floor. The guide signs can be rotated after placement to direct customers to the floor they want to go to. Each of those 3 floors can have its own clerk (and should). When you are selling that many items with just one clerk, the line at one clerk will max out, and clients will refuse to buy.

7. I keep most minions at just 2 upgrades. Very few minions need more than that. It is worth considering upgrading alchemists and store mangers, though store managers are a bit hard to hire. For store managers, I convert a greaser who comes with a good perk.

8. Another perk of selling at the cheapest middle level price point, is that most customers will have enough money to buy 2 potions. When I tried selling super exotic premium potions, about half of the customers could only buy one, killing your rate of sales and profits. You can hoover over incoming customers to see how much coin they have, which is how I realized this.

9. It is completely possible to keep the above recommendations in mind, while also having the best potion on the market in every category, after you have reached the end of the current research tree for potions, bottles, and fillings. Your profits will be a bit lower on some potions, but you can still make good profit selling premium bottles one click into the red area of sales. You can also save on the tycoon points by not updating existing recipes. Just make a new recipe and throw out old ones.Updating existing recipes costs more tycoon points than making new ones.

[Evan the Illiterate, PhD]

Here are links to screenshots of the 3rd shop I built, if you would like to look at it for any ideas or inspiration.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2958165750
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2958170307
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2958170532

[Meluna]

thank you! ill try this!

[Evan the Illiterate, PhD]

Also while it crosses my mind, decorations need improved in rooms that workers stay in most often, based on the worker levels. If you are upgrading alchemists, you can see their room rating requirement by hoovering over them. I can't recall if 30 or 40 is the highest they require to work. Keeping employees low level at the start can prevent the issue that occurs when employees don't like the rooms they are in - they stop working / protest. If the employees are level 3, I think they require 20 appeal? You can roughly see how the decorations were set in the screenshots for what I put in.

I also recall reading that decorations make a difference in the potion rooms? I'm not sure if that's the case, but I aim for all sales oriented rooms where potions are stocked and sold to have 40 appeal.

[Snowhound-Dmitri]

Originally posted by Meluna:

How soon will balancing be changed/fixed? Im really itching to give this another try but my first playthrough was quite discouraging. Even with the tips & tricks i dont know if i want to try & waste another 4 hours only to fail.

Hey Meluna,
You can expect more balancing changes with every game update as we are making them constantly. That being said, you shouldn't expect a perfect game any time soon - the main point of Early Access is to change and add stuff non-stop, often ruining the existing balance only to seek it anew.

Regarding Discord, why dont you have one? Im so used to going to discord for answers/help and itd be great to see others progress & screenshots.

We do have Discord. It's just shared among multiple games and run by Daedalic.
https://discord.gg/daedalic