So I lost the second competition HARD! How do I improve?

[Violent Rainbow]

I went into the second competition thinking I was all that and a bag of potato chips, I had the recommended potions and I was ready to beat that man but his potions were super fancy, they even had little decorations one was wearing a very fancy hat! How am I supposed to compete with that?! Where is the potion haberdashery?!

[Ness Keyhand]

Every opponent has a different vial to yours, they can get really cute! They're themed around them, too, adorable.

[Violent Rainbow]

Messaggio originale di Ness Keyhand:

Every opponent has a different vial to yours, they can get really cute! They're themed around them, too, adorable.

Urgh. How do I beat him? Got any tips for making better potions?

[Ness Keyhand]

As long as you meet the required tier and stats, you should win the competition pretty easily. Though cards definitely tend to make a difference, who did you rank up? I know the first few cards from Quinn are good, but they fall off quite quickly unfortunately, Muktuk has a card which boosts Interest by a lot... Your deck by now should not contain any Sylvia basic cards anymore, every other character does what she does.. Better.
If you can get potions with good traits, that might help too (although less at the start of the game, since it's a 5% increase per good trait), but in the same vein, beware your potions don't have too many bad traits, if any at all!

[Violent Rainbow]

Messaggio originale di Ness Keyhand:

As long as you meet the required tier and stats, you should win the competition pretty easily. Though cards definitely tend to make a difference, who did you rank up? I know the first few cards from Quinn are good, but they fall off quite quickly unfortunately, Muktuk has a card which boosts Interest by a lot... Your deck by now should not contain any Sylvia basic cards anymore, every other character does what she does.. Better.
If you can get potions with good traits, that might help too (although less at the start of the game, since it's a 5% increase per good trait), but in the same vein, beware your potions don't have too many bad traits, if any at all!

Thanks. Maybe my cards aren't good enough is the problem? I have a mix of everyone's cards and I am still using Sylvia cards D: Do enchantments help with the competition also or do they only work in the shop on customers?

[AdvancedWind]

The game has a very simple structure, you just need to get the following down, and it'll work fine:

Week starts - Check requirements for next tier of cauldrons. Acquire them (you need extremely bad luck and not be making money at all to not be able to do so first half of a week, assuming you start at 0 ). Now, to make the potion, forget stability. Literally just throw your highest numbers at it, then fix stability enough to not get a debuff. You know these "rainbow" materials that add a bunch of magimins at once? That's basically what you wanna use. Throw 1-3 of those, use the remaining slots on your cauldron to stabilize, and simply reaching cap or close to current cauldron cap will be enough to pass the competition. At best, avoid pilling up bad traits

To make money, use marketing campaigns. They're really, really strong, and getting any campaign + a favorable random effect will make you rivers of money. It's a two day process. First day, go check what marketing are available, do a random rank up and return to the shop. Use the remaining hours to craft the correct potion for the marketing (you know, if she offers fire tonic marketing, make fire tonics, try to stack as many positive traits as possible here). Next day you sell those and profit, get the upgrades and rainbow materials,

[Ness Keyhand]

Messaggio originale di Violent Rainbow:

Messaggio originale di Ness Keyhand:

As long as you meet the required tier and stats, you should win the competition pretty easily. Though cards definitely tend to make a difference, who did you rank up? I know the first few cards from Quinn are good, but they fall off quite quickly unfortunately, Muktuk has a card which boosts Interest by a lot... Your deck by now should not contain any Sylvia basic cards anymore, every other character does what she does.. Better.
If you can get potions with good traits, that might help too (although less at the start of the game, since it's a 5% increase per good trait), but in the same vein, beware your potions don't have too many bad traits, if any at all!

Thanks. Maybe my cards aren't good enough is the problem? I have a mix of everyone's cards and I am still using Sylvia cards D: Do enchantments help with the competition also or do they only work in the shop on customers?

Enchantments ONLY work for the day you use them in, and in your shop. If you brew potions using ingredients with golden traits, they will lose them the next day, and if it covered a red one.. You will have the disadvantage of it.
I should note as well, Roxanne's enchantments WILL NOT WORK for Custom Orders! So don't be fooled into making potions willy-nilly thinking the enchantment will work. (Most likely because you send the potions out to the customers, so they lose the enchantment applied at your shop)

Messaggio originale di AdvancedWind:

The game has a very simple structure, you just need to get the following down, and it'll work fine:

Week starts - Check requirements for next tier of cauldrons. Acquire them (you need extremely bad luck and not be making money at all to not be able to do so first half of a week, assuming you start at 0 ). Now, to make the potion, forget stability. Literally just throw your highest numbers at it, then fix stability enough to not get a debuff. You know these "rainbow" materials that add a bunch of magimins at once? That's basically what you wanna use. Throw 1-3 of those, use the remaining slots on your cauldron to stabilize, and simply reaching cap or close to current cauldron cap will be enough to pass the competition. At best, avoid pilling up bad traits

I would argue that for week 2, you should absolutely NOT be using the mana materials. They are only really good for lategame (Day 31 onwards, even then I feel like it's a bit early to make full use of them). Potion balance is extremely important in the beginning of the game, where one star can mean 3 or 4 more haggling turns. If you can, try to get as close to a perfect brew as you can for the competition potions!

[aesthesia]

Enchantments don't work in the competition afaik, but as long as you meet the potion requirements you should be set to win if you have a good deck (interest ranks up a lot faster for Robin than for regular customers during haggle, at least that's the feeling I got).

So definitely give it another shot with a different deck of cards.

Also, just to check, make sure you offer the right potion -- when the competition asks for Greater Ice potion with 3 stars or whatever, make sure you don't accidentally offer a Greater Ice potion with 1 star that you just had lying around in your inventory. It might sound silly, but honestly it's the kind of misclick that can happen easily.

[AdvancedWind]

Messaggio originale di Ness Keyhand:

I would argue that for week 2, you should absolutely NOT be using the mana materials. They are only really good for lategame (Day 31 onwards, even then I feel like it's a bit early to make full use of them). Potion balance is extremely important in the beginning of the game, where one star can mean 3 or 4 more haggling turns. If you can, try to get as close to a perfect brew as you can for the competition potions!

If you use them, you can very possibly get to the next potion tier. Next potion tier cuts the haggling mini game completely. If the rainbow materials were excessively rare and expensive I would agree with you, but there are a few early ores that add 70+ magimins and don't cost much, and quinn can sell infinite of those, then week 3 you get the slimes, so....eh. That's the most straightfoward way to beat the challenge and honestly I kinda soured on the game when I realized that, but that's for another thread.

[Ness Keyhand]

Messaggio originale di Violent Rainbow:

Messaggio originale di Ness Keyhand:

As long as you meet the required tier and stats, you should win the competition pretty easily. Though cards definitely tend to make a difference, who did you rank up? I know the first few cards from Quinn are good, but they fall off quite quickly unfortunately, Muktuk has a card which boosts Interest by a lot... Your deck by now should not contain any Sylvia basic cards anymore, every other character does what she does.. Better.
If you can get potions with good traits, that might help too (although less at the start of the game, since it's a 5% increase per good trait), but in the same vein, beware your potions don't have too many bad traits, if any at all!

Thanks. Maybe my cards aren't good enough is the problem? I have a mix of everyone's cards and I am still using Sylvia cards D: Do enchantments help with the competition also or do they only work in the shop on customers?

If you want some good ingredients for the Ice Tonic, which has a 1A 1D ratio, the Gems (Shadowveil Pearls from the storm plains, Murkwater pearl from the mushroom forest) give decent D magimins (Especially the Shadowveil Pearls, 20D) AND they give a good eye trait!
Fairy Flower Blooms also come from the storm plains, and give you a very good 20A magimins, AND they come with a good nose trait.
If you can manage to combine 4 Pearls and 4 blooms, you'll make a base Greater Ice Tonic, with a perfect balance, which will automatically push it to 2 stars, and give you a shot at a third one. You'll also get the two positive traits, giving it a 10% bonus, so winning the first round should come easy!

The sight enhancer is a bit more tricky, since it requires 3A, 4B and 3Cs, however there are amazing AC, AB and BC items (namely, Pheromones for AC, Slapping Turtle Shells for AB and Figment Pommes for BC).
But you can circumvent all that with a somewhat simple recipe: 3 Nessie Pheromones (From the Ocean, 20A 20C, neutral traits) will give you 60A and 60C.
Four Giantstool Mushrooms (20B, good trai on the belly) will boost you to... 80B, which is a pefect brew!
The potion you get with that recipe is a Greater Sight Enhancer at a base 2*, but perfect brew boosts it to a 4* minimum, and a chance at a 5th star. AND it'll have one good trait, so another 5% bonus! This should allow you to win without even haggling.

Hope this helped!

[Violent Rainbow]

I'm realising I know NOTHING about potion making! Jesus all I thought you had to do was get the right amount of colours, I didn't listen to the owl at all! He just kept talking and talking he never shut his damn beak so I just skipped everything! I remember him saying something about traits? Or something? My god I'm just gonna start the game over...

[Ness Keyhand]

I mean, listening to advice would be a wise thing to do...

But to give you a rapid rundown (because traits are still a mystery we don't yet quite understand), when you brew a potion you add colors to it. Each kind of potion needs a different color ratio. The closer you are to a "perfect brew" aka you followed the ratios perfectly, the more beneficial it will be.
Your potions start as "Minor", and at some color total thresholds, they gain a quality star. For example, when you add 10 colors total, your potion goes from a Minor 0* to a Minor 1*. Each star gives your potion a little more value, until you reach the end of the red line, when this happens your potion "ranks up": it goes from "Minor" to "Common". And with the stars, it goes from a Minor 5* to a Common 0*.

The balance of your colors is very important at first, because a flawed brew has a chance to take a star off of the final result (and if you made a Common 0* with a flawed brew, it CAN downgrade into a Minor 5*, which will take away a fair bit of its value). If you made a stable brew, it has a chance of gaining 1 star on completion (And yes, same scenario applies, it can upgrade from a Minor 5* into a Common 0*, and gain a fair bit of value). A very stable balance will net you one star, with a chance of a second one. A perfect brew (so all colors according to the recipe) will net you.. 2 stars and a chance of a third!

Traits are a whole different story. Some ingredients have increased color values, but come with a bad trait: A Dwarf Kraken for example gives you 40 of the red color, but has a bad taste trait. Some ingredients have very low color values, but give you a positive trait: The Fairy Flower Bulb only gives 4 of the red color, but has a blue smell trait!
Any bad trait you have on your final potion reduces its value by 5% per trait.
Any good trait you have on your final potion ups its value by 5% per trait.

For the first weeks, just try to make the recommended potions, with the required amount of stars, it should be enough to start with!

Hope this helped!

[SakujoSakujoSakujo]

On top on everything that was said, do give the loot for Quinn to munch. Having right letter combinations with a combo of a positive trait accessible in the time of need can really be a life saver.

[Ferrous]

Messaggio originale di SakujoSakujoSakujo:

On top on everything that was said, do give the loot for Quinn to munch. Having right letter combinations with a combo of a positive trait accessible in the time of need can really be a life saver.

Yeah in the early game the reason why you want cash is to buy from quinn. That and investments but quinn's a sure thing once you laid the ground work.

[Mr. Oobi]

Best strategy I can tell you: Day's 1-4 build up money for supplies, day's 5-8 work on your tournament potions. Always give new ingredients to Quinn, Always go for the 1 rare item with Baptiste. Use Mint and Xid often (I mostly use them on the 1'st stage). Other than that, your deck and strategy is most important, you need to go shopping once a day most of the time, if you lose after all of this, it's likely because of a poor deck... And remember: ABB! ALWAYS BE BREWING!!! (make sure to put those +2 extra brewing hours to use overnight)

[Duelviper25]

just set up a system personally my cycle is go out send heroes on missions come back sell potions , send out heroes and sell potions, theres no time to build relationships sadly but i figure if i get ahead enough by day 17 or 18 ill just start using vendi and only do 1 sell a day at least until next competition