When should I upgrade to 5 x 5 Cauldron?

[KaiTenSatsuma]

I'm still fairly early in the game and most recipes don't use too many ingredients...with a larger board, its hard to get a high color bonus %, on the other hand the extra room makes it easier to get orbs without deleting previously placed colors...

When does a 5 x 5 cauldron become necessary?

[Lazy Lizardman]

Mainly if you want an item's quality to go up you will need more space since higher quality materials use more blocks.

[Ogami]

Mind you, overlapping items is not always bad. You later get some cauldrons that get bonuses from overlapping stuff.
Placing all items to fit on the grid is mainly good at the beginning and to raise the quality rating of the resulting item.
But later all your ingredients will have high quality and its more about maxing the item specific trait bars.

My favorite cauldrons are the Fairy Cauldron and the Tuned Cauldron. I prefer 6x6 but 5x5 is fine.

Also, item creation fails when the end result is 0 quality. But if you recreate your Grandmas cauldron you get one with the "never failure" trait.
That is very useful for later when you need to craft some really high level alchemy items that may be outside your reach.

[KaiTenSatsuma]

Originally posted by Sexy Lizardman:

Mainly if you want an item's quality to go up you will need more space since higher quality materials use more blocks.

I see, I was wondering about the usefullness of things like the Jumbo Magic Grass, that makes sense.