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.

High food items

Potions or items in general that require a large amount of food for creation pose the potential problems of

• boredom if you're using feasting potions or
• extra costs for antidotes and health essences if you're using toadstools or a combination involving toadstools.

And even if you're eating dead people you might regret going through your food so fast. If you're just going to make a few, possibly because of a request, waiting for cooldown, getting poisoned and such won't be so bad but for leveling you'll seriously want to consider saving your ingredients for a Day of Joule.
One obvious point to be considered when making high food items is finding a good food mix, even on Day of Joule. Things to be considered are

• reduce the time you have to wait for food with cooldown (if applicable)
• balance the waiting with chance to be poisoned (if applicable)
• optimize use of food items (e.g. try not to "waste" the 5 food from feasting potions by going below 0 food prior to using them)

You will have to find a combination that works for you for a given item either by careful calculation or by trial and error, a combination (both of foods and the methods to get to a food combination) will probably do nicely in most cases.

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. From a serious potion maker's perspective, acquiring animal items by actually hunting for them takes a lot (too much) time away from making potions.

Schools

If you don't mind throwing your money to the wind for experience, schools provide a nice way of doing it and if you harvest everything on your own, you might not even "lose" much besides harvesting time and the vial and food cost. Once you can make True sigh potions sufficiently well, you can even afford it but at that point the very same True sight potion will provide experience and income... (also compare note on Extracts in the potions section below).

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.

Potions

• Potion of Mana
• Potion of Minor Healing
• Potion of Reasoning
• Potion of Physique
• Potion of Defense
• Potion of Coordination
• Potion of Wildness
• Potion of Will
• Potion of Vitality
• Potion of Attack
• Potion of Spirit Restoration
• Potion of Feasting
• Potion of Body Restoration

Beyond vegetal 4

As a serious potion maker you will have to get your vegetal nexus to 5 sooner or later, simply because you want to make True sigh potions. As with any other nexus, you should consider buying it from Costel. However, getting a vegetal nexus of 6 should be considered a luxury at this point, because the potions needing it are low in demand or there's basically no demand altogether. You should wait until you've made enough money with other potions to buy this extra nexus, unless you don't mind spending pickpoints on nexi or plan to reset of course.

• Potion of Harvesting, there's no demand for this potion. The players who could benefit from it are the ones that can't afford to buy it. The White Rabbit Fur makes it unsuited and too expensive for serious leveling (Mira sells for 20gc, buys for 10gc).
• Potion of Manufacturing, you might be able to sell a few of these at storages, the ingredients are harvestable so unless you bought them, it won't hurt to keep a few in storage but don't expect high trade volumes. Not suited for leveling.
• Potion of Summoning, summoners will buy these in decent quantities (sometimes). The ingredients make them somewhat of a pain to create. Not suited for leveling.
• Potion of Crafting, every now and then you might be able to sell a few of these. Don't count on it though. Not suited for leveling.
• Magic Potion, there's some demand for magic potions usually by players that want to start draining mana early, as there's no competition from NPCs you should be able to charge a price that let's you break even or make profit. Not suited for serious leveling.
• Yarrow-Wormwood-Tulip Extract
• Potion of Extra Mana, if you're making a lot of Potions of Spirit Restoration, you will seldom need to make Potions of Extra Mana using the recipe, demand is usually driven by PK and PK events. It's certainly good to have a couple ready, not really suited for leveling.
• Nightshade-Mullein-Dandelion Extract
• Poison Ivy-Henbane-Poppies Extract
• Potion of Great Healing, currently the recipe is totally worthless and due to the influx by Desert Chimeras there's no demand by players that can't be satisfied by it. Do not make these unless by chance while making Potions of Body Restoration.
• Poison Antidote, nice to make and there's some demand for them, the book seems to be rather expensive and you shouldn't expect to get the money back by making these any time soon. NPC buying price is less than for True sight potions and ingredients include twice the amount of NPC brew and they don't stack; makes them overall less attractive than True sight potions, but keep a good load in storage since if you're using toadstools for food, you might end up being your own best customer for these.
• Red Currants-Blue Berries-Rue Extract
• Potion of True Sight, discussed above.
• White Chanterelle-Ogre Toe-Tree Mushroom Extract
• Potion of Invisibility, if you find a supplier for the furs or hunt your own, these are kind of nice, suited for leveling if you don't mind the long walk to the Aeth Aelfan pharmacy (pays 105gc) or can afford to have them sit in storage until you're able to sell them. The fact that Fluffy Rabbits and other monsters drop them as well as the animal ingredients, weight and the fact that they don't stack make them less than great potions to make in general.
• Wheat-Valerian-Mugwort Extract
• Potion of Accuracy, there's a good demand for these. The furs make them unsuited for leveling and there's also an influx by drops, however if you can manage to get your hands on furs, these are nice to have. Since they aren't as nice of a profit as True sight potions, you shouldn't waste money on the book if you can't afford to.
• Wheat-Daffodiles-Feran Horm Extract
• Potion of Evasion, see Potion of Accuracy above, the same applies here.
• Potion of Alchemy, demand for Potions of Alchemy is rare and the less than optimal ingredients don't recommend this potion for much except if you can get your hands on the ingredients for less than 100gc as that's what Closca will give you for them. Due to animal items involved this potion isn't suited for leveling.
• Refined Vegetal Mixture
• Potion of Potion, if you're short on gc (aka haven't reached True sight potions yet), you shouldn't be worried about this potion. You will never get the money for the book back as there's no demand and NPC buying price isn't worth it.
• Mixture of Power
• Potion of Engineering, demand is low for these, the ingredients scream: do not level with me.

Strategies

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