Are Custom Orders even worth fulfilling?

[Capybarasan]

Let's say a CO wants to Speed Potions and the reward is 360. That would make them 180 each. I can sell each potion for way more than that through haggling. So what's really the point of doing CO's?

[Tiwaking! 56k NZ]

They are dumping grounds for leftover potions. There is not a lot of point in actively attempting to complete the custom order. They're not worth the money which leaves only the fact they cost 0 time to fulfil and you dont have to haggle.

[Wabbajack]

It is worth fulfilling if you have the ingredients. But me personally rarely do it except for the named NPC (Xid, Roxane, etc) because it also increase the relationships with them.

[StormRangerX]

Outside of the custom orders required to max rank your friends, honestly? No. They will almost never be worth more than haggling potions yourself and usually only better priced than if you just dumped potions into the vending machine you unlock later. Unfortunately later on custom orders have strict trait requirements as well, rendering them unreasonable and unprofitable to fulfill. There's no penalty for not completing custom orders, either.

[canyoucant]

I just use them for ideas on what to brew next

[Capybarasan]

Thanks for the info guys.

[Intern Waffle]

Custom Orders are ridiculously imbalanced. Later they start to pay a ton of money, but the potions required are untenable. They have 3-4 positive traits and no negatives and you cannot turn them in if any traits are incorrect. I can barely get one positive trait on a potion if I'm lucky, I have no idea how Roxanne's service works (I have never even used it, it was not explained very well), you can't preview the traits on a potion while brewing, it seems to be a game of luck and memory and I don't want to put in that much effort when I could spend that time making 4 of something else that I could just sell for more anyway.

If the game had a shop reputation system and the potions were simpler it'd be fun, though.

[Ness Keyhand]

During the very first week and during the start of the second one? Sure, they can be helpful.
For NPCs? Sure, if the potions are not too complicated, it gives a nice boost to friendship, but the gold rewards tend to be.. Very lacklustre.
In the last week, you sometimes get asked for the best tier of potions with all 5 good traits, and while the only good thing I can see with that is that it does not require a specific amount of stars, so you could send out a potion that barely makes the cut, it gives like... 4900 for two potions you could sell in the vending machine for 6.5k each? Or haggle and get over 10k for just one? It's so not worth it.

[Meta]

Before week 3, absolutely. After that? waste of time, you will be able to make much better potions and sell them for higher prices than waste the time these fine tuned potions require.

[TripSin]

They don't even seem worth before week 3 to me. Custom orders seem really poorly implemented.

[Tenebrais]

Originally posted by Intern Waffle:

Custom Orders are ridiculously imbalanced. Later they start to pay a ton of money, but the potions required are untenable. They have 3-4 positive traits and no negatives and you cannot turn them in if any traits are incorrect. I can barely get one positive trait on a potion if I'm lucky, I have no idea how Roxanne's service works (I have never even used it, it was not explained very well), you can't preview the traits on a potion while brewing, it seems to be a game of luck and memory and I don't want to put in that much effort when I could spend that time making 4 of something else that I could just sell for more anyway.

If the game had a shop reputation system and the potions were simpler it'd be fun, though.

Roxanne's service doesn't work on custom orders. But with traits in general, as I understand it, as long as you have a positive trait on at least one ingredient then the final potion will have that trait.

[kagmole]

Not really. The custom orders tend to be weaker potions than the one you can create with your cauldrons.
Even if the custom order is beneficial for the 2-3 potions you ship, the other options that came with the brew batch will have to be sold the "classic" way, and as said above, they are weaker than your best potions; in the end, you better have to brew your best potions.
It's a nice relationship boost if the order comes from a potential friend/lover though.

[Terotrous]

In general no, which is kind of a problem. I feel like the custom order price should be a "bonus", and the order should also pay the base price of whatever potions you give them. Even then they'd probably still rarely be worth it.

[BaDKaRMa]

They're worth it if you have the items and time to make quick brews. Typically you'll brew 3 or 4 potions for one brew and the custom order only needs one - you can sell the other 2 or 3 potions for a total of a custom order + 9 sales. Just don't go sacrificing time and gold for custom sales that are too close to the competition time.

Better to spend that time and money on pots for Mint explorations, gold for Baptiste explorations, additional cauldron space from Saffron, and 2 upgraded cauldrons.

[Flopperz]

I'm a bit late to this thread but my experience has been vastly different. I'm not seeing anything in the patch notes about it though. Anyway, about half of my orders are clearly paying more than the base price of the potions. For example, I just sent out 1 grand fire tonic and 1 shadow tonic, valued at <1k combined, for a 6k order. Basically once I was able to make grand/superior potions the custom orders started to become more lucrative than the sales minigame.

[StormRangerX]

Originally posted by Flopperz:

I'm a bit late to this thread but my experience has been vastly different. I'm not seeing anything in the patch notes about it though. Anyway, about half of my orders are clearly paying more than the base price of the potions. For example, I just sent out 1 grand fire tonic and 1 shadow tonic, valued at <1k combined, for a 6k order. Basically once I was able to make grand/superior potions the custom orders started to become more lucrative than the sales minigame.

I haven't played since the first few weeks after release so it's possible they've updated the game to make custom orders more profitable but when I was playing they were barely a better markup than just putting them in the vending machine, and since I often had to go out of my way to fulfill the order conditions it wasn't really worthwhile.