Tips for the first 10 days?

[Momo]

I just feel... overwhelmed. I feel there's no window to experiment. Everything costs time/turns, and I don't really know how should I prepare for the first competition. If I go for the Quinn's shop I don't really know what to buy. If I go for the adventure I need potions to help the girl... potions that need time/resoursces I am spending for her instead for selling stuff.

If failing the competition means a game over, that means also that I have to redo it from day 1 because I need to properly prepare all over again, right?

I don't want to start another "they should have been not set a time limit" thread, but I also don't really want to waste time by experimenting things without a sense of "progression".

So... any tips? What should I focus on? Thanks.

[beep beep]

the loop i settled into is investing heavily into baptiste and feeding the ingredients to quinn, with this method i didn't need to send any of the heroes out in the beginning which allows you to sell more. remember the color combinations next to each potion you need for the contest and buy those ingredients from what you fed to quinn, baptiste provides a lot of high quality ingredients with many color combos so you shouldn't have much of an issue. in the beginning this allowed me a lot of wiggle room to get to know the cast and do stuff i wanted, i also saved often but highly rec to save at around day 5 when owl reminds you that it's the halfway mark.

[Myth Alric]

If possible, you want to use the random daily events to your advantage. If basic potions have a higher price than normal, sell the heck out of them. Because they have a higher base value, the percentage of increase from haggling will make even more money. In fact, that is why you typically want to make the best potion possible, whenever you can.

I would not buy ingredients on days where the price is increased though. I would buy anything on sale though, if it is at all useful. Usually you want the items with the most stats, but a lot of the small value ones are still useful for fine adjustments to potions.

[Kiru]

So I "Game Over" once. Restarted. Beat the 1st Tourney but I finally found a groove I liked so I restarted (again!) just to try it out earlier and this is what I came up with ... though after Week 2 or by the end of Week 2 I had to be a little bit more adaptable.

Pretty much always set Brew to 2-Units-of-Time (except at night, when it can be 2-4).

Morning bock, I open up the shop and sell whatever I made the night before. I always set aside what I need for Mint (usually 2 Heal 2 Mana when she's Lv1) and sell anything else; even if it's 1-2 potions, just sell them.

Afternoon, I go out on the town. Prioritize getting enough ingredients for 3 more brews (Night when you return, Morning while you open shop, Afternoon when you can go back out and get more ingredients). Even if those brews are on the lighter side because it's also important to send Mint (if you saved potions) or invest in Guild - preferably both, but if money is tight - check Baptiste and if he's got killer items get them; otherwise send Mint. You also use that 2nd block of Afternoon to "Rank up" someone. I almost always had someone ready for a rank up because once you have a tiny bit of disposable income, you should be giving cheap gifts to everyone, almost every day -- up to you. I'm playing blind so I don't have certain cards in mind; I just rank up people I like and take whatever cards I get. Make sure if you want to get Mint's rank up (or give her a gift), you Rank her up before you send her out.

Night - I set up my night brew which is (early on) usually Mana because it tends to take longer and I don't have to speed it up with fire-boosts that are limited in the first few days. I re-open my shop at night and sell whatever I made in the morning & afternoon.

Stress isn't usually that bad in the first Week, but keep in mind every night you will shed 10 Stress; so if you can stay around 10 you'll be ok -- you can always close out a sale if Stress is getting close to 10. The difference between 10% when we're talking about potions worth 40 Gold is laughable anyway. I only haggle cause it's fun, but it's barely necessary until you get up into the 100s in Week 2.

I hope some of this helps. I could go into more detail about potions and qualities, but that is dependent on what Baptiste & Mint bring back. Feed their stuff to Quinn and I keep track on a notebook when I get better quality stuff for better quality potions. Get a new cauldron as soon as you can (make sure you prioritize the 3-brews worth of ingredients, tho) ... but a new pot is clutch for better potions. New pot is almost always a good idea if you can afford it.

I hope this helps.

[Kiru]

As others said, watch the daily bonuses. If you see Potions are going for more, you can use your Morning & Afternoon blocks to make them, and then the Night block to unload your highest price ones. Sometimes you can skip going out on the town if you have enough items stockpiled for 6 batches of potions! and then you can take advantage of 3-Open Stores to unload during a particularly good bonus day. (Basic Potion days are awesome early on). Once you get a good routine going, you can start to be more flexible and adapt to situations as needed.

Edit: You can also send Mint out without potions, by the way. Just like closing out a deal to avoid 2-4 more stress -- you can send Mint out with nothing and she'll beat 2-3 monsters on her own. You don't always have to beat the final boss of an area in order for it to be worth the time/money. In fact, in order to get better ingredients, I almost would say send her to the higher areas knowing she will fail / only bring back a little bit, but then you give it to Quinn and you snowball into better potions, better adventures.

Anyway, it's something I didn't think about in my first attempt. You can send her out and she will bring "something" back if she kills 1 or 2 enemies. Potions cost time and money, so sometimes it's better to send her poorly equipped just to get a couple new materials.

[TripSin]

I'm at day 15 so far, beat Roxanne without much issue. I haven't found the time constraints that bad at all, but I'm used to playing more in-depth strategy games like XCOM and Fire Embelms and etc.

Like someone said, you don't have to supply Mint with potions if you don't have any to spare. You can just send her out anyways with her base HP/mana. With Quinn's shop, you buy what you need. Before travelling, try to have an idea of which magimins (a/b/c/d/e) you're lacking for the potions you want to make. Then go buy ingredients that have those magimins. I always keep a good stock (5+) of the basic 6 -magimin ingredients because they're good cheap filler if you've already gotten to the quality and star level you want (every 2 ingredients used increases the number of potions made). The cheap 4-magimin ones can be good filler to add a trait for the +5 price bonus.I've been feeding Quinn every single ingredient I've gotten. I wasn't sure if I wanted to feed her the really rare, really expensive items I got (pure mana ones and whatever) because they would be so costly to buy back, but in the end I ended up feeding her those too. Not sure if that's the play, but for the cheaper ingredients definitely feed her everything so you can buy it later.

What you do each day will depend on what daily events you get. If an adventure zone has good drops, I usually send Mint there. If something is selling well that day, obviously I will try to make and sell those if I can. The game spells out literally what potions you will need for the competition. You can find this by going into your recipe book (it's at like the top and right of the screen) and going to the third tab down on the right of the book. It recommends they be 3 star quality commons for the first competition, but I feel like you could get away with lower than 3 star commons because the haggling part was quite easy (the judge has a TON of patience that I ended up not needing to use).

Getting cauldrons with more space for ingredients is priority as this makes it easier to make higher quality potions and druid girl carpentry upgrades for more cauldrons and potion shelves you want to get ASAP as well.

I've never used the basic "hang out" option yet. My relationships seem to be progressing at a fine enough rate with just giving them gift ingredients. I feel like I would only use this option if I needed to get rid of stress, but the card battling has been easy so far and I haven't gotten much stress.

[Momo]

Thanks everyone, I will read everything asap ;)

p.s. I don't know if you already said something about that (sorry, I came here just to thank you for your replies lol) but do you think that there is enough time to enjoy the hangouts/other events (?) or everything should be minmaxed to fit the time limit and just beat the game?

Did the devs said anything about an endless mode yet?

Thanks again :)

[TripSin]

Oh, I forgot to mention, but if you're not already. Try to always have something brewing before you go to travel, open shop, and go to sleep. You get two turn's worth of brewing over night. I'll usually use fuel if needed to have the potions ready by the time I get back from travelling & spending time with rank ups and to have potions ready in the morning.

[TripSin]

Originally posted by Momo:

Thanks everyone, I will read everything asap ;)

p.s. I don't know if you already said something about that (sorry, I came here just to thank you for your replies lol) but do you think that there is enough time to enjoy the hangouts/other events (?) or everything should be minmaxed to fit the time limit and just beat the game?

Did the devs said anything about an endless mode yet?

Thanks again :)

I've never used the hang out option yet. I give everyone a gift every time I travel and my relationships seem to be progressing at a decent enough rate with just that. I feel like I would only use the hang out option if I needed to get my stress down, but I've never accumulated much stress so far. I guess if I were out of ingredients and couldn't make potions and had time to kill then I would also use it then, but I make sure to have ingredients.

How many rank ups I need to do with characters will determine whether I aim to sell once or twice in the day. If I only have one rank up or less to do, then I will aim to brew and sell twice that day. If more rank ups, then brewing and selling once.

[Old Man Bryan]

There will be 1 or 2 days if your lucky where basic potions (Mana/HP) will be worth more, I recommend selling through all of that day and getting as much money as possible. Then taking a future day where there isn't much going on to build relationships.

With Baptise spend 2 days investing 100% into Mushroom Mire / Bone Wastes, whichever you don't plan on visiting with Mint in the next day and giving those ingredients to Quinn.

Only equipment I bought was the Glass Cauldron. I would of liked to buy the extra cauldron expansion from Saffron. However by the time she comes around I was spending the last 2 days planning out what I needed to brew + budgeting.

Everyone gives out good relationship T2 cards so I'd try get everyone sooner rather than later.

I don't think spending time on "hanging out" is ever a good idea, you want to build relationships by gifting - which there is a guide out for which characters like what.

[Kiru]

Originally posted by Momo:

Thanks everyone, I will read everything asap ;)

p.s. I don't know if you already said something about that (sorry, I came here just to thank you for your replies lol) but do you think that there is enough time to enjoy the hangouts/other events (?) or everything should be minmaxed to fit the time limit and just beat the game?

Did the devs said anything about an endless mode yet?

Thanks again :)

In the first 10 days, I wouldn't recommend it. You can give them cheap gifts and still rank them all up to (at least) 2 for some easy card choices. Beyond Week 2? the game isn't as hard as it might first seem. In fact, I bet after you get the hang of it, if you try the first 10 days again you'll find you can spend time much more liberally.

You honestly never need to hang out (as far as I've gotten) but if it's something you're interested in doing, you can make the time for it after the first competition.

I have only seen Devs reply to bugs and such. I'm eager to hear if they plan to tweak any QOL issues, add endless or even if they have DLC or "next project" aspirations. I'm waiting for launch / bug hype to die down, but I am checking pretty consistently to see if any hints get dropped about content changes or QOL fixes.

[Miro]

I wrote a compilation of advice and tips here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1874490/discussions/0/5254037276327218959/