Comprehensive guide to potion making

Potioning

A comprehensive guide

Abstract

This is currently a work in progress, I'll link it when done.

Preliminaries

Mortars and pestles

Mortars&Pestles have a chance to break of 1 in 300 uses. That means you will need a lot of them. You have basically three options of getting mortars&pestles:

• Buy at general stores for 100gc,
• buy from players or
• make your own, once your manufacturing level is high enough you will be able to beat the NPC price but it will obviously take longer. You should make them at the gypsum deposit.

Vials

You will obviously need plenty of empty vials to make potions. There are five options to obtain vials but only three of them will be feasible in the long run:

• Get them from Harvy, this is the worst option, see below.
• Buy Potions of Mana or Potions of Minor Healing from Mira. When you use those potions you will get an empty vial. You can try using them for mana or healing while fighting to get vials.
• Buy them from players.
• Make them yourself, if you want the crafting experience and already have a sufficiently high crafting level. Make sure that your break rate modifier is positive!
• Buy them from Closca in Melinis for 5gc each. You can either haul them Thelinor by the cave from Melinis (you will need a monster magnetism cape or perk) or to South Redmoon Island by Hurquin - this route is free of aggressive creatures save Leonard at night but takes longer.

Food

You have the usual options and we'll discuss them by potion below. However the Potion skill comes with two advantages if you want:

• make your own Potions of Feasting,
• make your own Poison Antidotes

at least from a sufficiently high level on and provided you can get your hands on the Book of Poison Antidote (or get lucky with a Scientists Day).
In the Money Talk subsection we'll look at different player types' outlook on ingredients for now let's just say that if you calculate with market prices for ingredients and value your own time, you will be better off buying feasting potions from NPCs (see the discussion below for details).

Animal parts

There are a number of animal parts that are used in various potions, we'll discuss the usefulness and market for those below. As a general rule of thumb you might want to

• kill everything that moves and isn't quick enough to get away and
• save the bloody remains.
• Especially beginners should remember to save the bones and the meat, furs and other parts usually will have a use or a market at some point.

Some animal parts will be extremely hard to come by later.

NPCs

• Mira in Whitestone, buys and sells potions, reasonably close to Nordcarn storage.
• Vesine in Morcraven Marsh, sells wine (20 wine for 15gc) after you completed the wine quest.
• Derzelas in Irsis, buys and sells potions (including True sight potions), close to Irsis storage
• Mariana in Aeth Aelfan, quite a walk but only NPC that buys Invisibility Potions. Also buys and sells some other potions.
• All taverns sell ale and mead as well as wine, but you should get that at Vesine.
• All general stores sell mortars and pestles.
• Harvy trades vials for 5 quartz and 3 gc (not advisable) as well as Mercury.
• Closca in Melinis sells vials.

Money talk

As with almost everything in Eternal Lands you can consider everything except for wine, ale, mead and some of the books to be free in making potions. It is obvious however that obtaining some tools and ingredients takes time away from actually making potions. For some players and some items such as mortars and pestles, vials or meat this may provide a welcome opportunity for experience in other skills, for other players this might not be the case. What it comes down to is that depending on your playing style or philosophy you will find some potions more or less desirable to make, the most prominent being the ones requiring animal items and from those most likely feasting potions.

A little math excursion

To determine when to start making a certain potion (or item in general) is difficult because of the stochastical nature of failures and successes. An in-depth discussion can be found in the probability guide.
For making potions you will have to include the price and break rate of mortar & pestle in your calculations, which comes down to 0.33 gc (100gc cost, 1 in 300 chance to break) per attempted mix.
Ideally you don't fail and you don't lose ingredients, so your cost in making an item is the sum of the prices of the ingredients, the price for the food to make one item and the tool price per item (0.33 gc). However that's not reality, so you'll have to calculate with failures both critical and non-critical and you have to keep in mind the price that NPCs sell the items for, which might make making some potions unprofitable for you; while the fact that NPCs buy some potions will make some potions very profitable for you as well as set a lower bound for what you should charge players. With that said you will find, using the tools of the probability guide, that some potions will be profitable for you even if you loose half of your ingredients while others will never be profitable.

First steps

Quests

Potion Quest

This quest will get you almost to level 9, do it.

Wine Quest

This quest will enable you to buy wine at 0.75gc (20 wine for 15gc) from Vesine, the only reason for a potion maker to not do this quest would be the Antisocial perk.

Leveling

Once you get to levels where you can profitably create Potions of Spirit Restoration you are all set for a career as a potion maker.

Potions of Spirit Restoration

These are the pots you will most likely make the most, at least until you can make True sight potions, depending on your playing style and preferences probably afterwards as well. Obviously you will have to start with getting the supplies:

• mortars and pestles,
• vials,
• wine,
• blue star flowers; there's a patch close to Judith the Morcraven Marsh storage,
• blue quartz; there's a nice deposit in the Nordcarn market square or if you have the monster magnetism perk Thelinor offers a good spot at and inside the city wall.

Alternatives

• You can also try mixing them on site.
• You can mix them while training attack and defense while on spawn, however, since you don't get the vials back and the weight of the ingredients is greater than the weight of the finished potion this doesn't seem to be a good idea. If you want potion experience during a/d training, you should consider and try Potions of Mana.

Strategies

Add your personal tips & tricks, that don't fit in at another place or that should get some extra attention here.