Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator news & patch notes

Hello Alchemists! 

We're constantly working on a variety of new mechanics and content for the game, but today we wanted to share something special: we're developing a brand new ingredient class – monster parts!

What's a potion without a bat wing, newt tail, or toad eye? A true alchemist should use every ingredient available, no matter how unappealing, to create the most powerful potions! Besides, the monster hunter has been itching for some work...

Unlike regular ingredients, monster parts can't be ground in the mortar; they provide an immediate effect when added to the cauldron. For example, here are some effects we've discovered so far (these are subject to change or refinement as we continue our research): a mimic's tongue can copy the effect of the previous ingredient added to the potion, an eye reveals an area of the map around the potion, a brain collects experience within a certain radius, a heart restores the potion's health, and a giant's finger amplifies the effect of the next ingredient added to the cauldron – and these are just a few examples!

But a dragon's heart and a kobold's heart surely have different alchemical potential, so some monster parts will have multiple variations of varying power: from weak and cheap to very powerful and rare.

For instance, brains collect all experience books within a certain radius, and the more powerful the brain, the more experience is collected.

We're striving to make the potion-making process in Potion Craft even more diverse and engaging, and we believe monster parts will open up new avenues for experimentation and potion optimization for you!

These mechanics are still in development, are not final, and may change by release, but we'll keep sharing information about the new features and content we're working on, and will be carefully reading your feedback.

Thanks for reading! We always pay close attention to your feedback and comments on our devlogs – they support us and inspire us to continue working on Potion Craft, and your ideas and suggestions can influence the game's development. Stay tuned and follow our Steam Page. 

Don’t forget to also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to keep up to date about what’s happening in Potion Craft, or head to our Discord or Subreddit to chat about the game!

Greetings, Alchemists!

We’re pleased to share with you today that the 2.0.2 “Hotfix” Patch for Potion Craft is now here. This planned hotfix ended up not being quite as ‘hot’ as we’d initially intended, as we had a few more things to fix than we’d originally thought (sorry!). We’ve fixed the most crucial bugs and issues, and tweaked the balance a bit – so if you’ve already finished a playthrough on Suffering difficulty, it might be time to do it again for even more of a challenge (don’t really do that, Suffering difficulty is not recommended for anyone!). 

We’ve also added some cool Steam Community Items, like cards, avatars, backgrounds, and more – keep reading to find out more! 

Of course, we’re still working on lots of other fresh content for Potion Craft, too – head to the end of the post to learn more about that.

Patch Notes

Balance

• Customers are now a bit more reasonable with their additional requirements:

  • Sometimes they asked for impossible potions with incompatible additional requirements like Wine Base + No Salt + Tier 3 effect that needs turning on Wine Map. This led to cases where you couldn’t serve a customer on harder difficulties, where additional requirements are mandatory.

  • We like how customers are being know-it-alls, unbearable and picky sometimes, but we still want to keep every potion theoretically possible (even if it’s a Fable-Bismuth-only concoction with 5 effects!)

• Crystal Grotto can now be purchased much earlier (in Chapter 4 instead of Chapter 5). Your Crystal Seeds will be happy!

• Fixed Seeds prices:

  • Phantom Skirt Seed price was too high.

  • Plague Stibnite Seed price was too low.

• Selling potions directly to merchants is now less effective. It will now be a bit harder to grind money by selling many potions to merchants:

  • Price multiplier 25% → 20% (without talents)

  • Price multiplier 37.5% → 30% (with 2/2 levels of “Selling Potions to Merchants” talent)

• Difficulties balance tweaks:

  • You get less harvest from garden plants on harder difficulties.

  • You get less experience on harder difficulties.

  • NPC “price profitability” multiplier is changed for Grandmaster difficulty.

• Using Wild Growth and Stone Skin potions on plants to accelerate growth is now restricted to one potion per plant per day even for growing (not adult) plants. There will be now a little bit less fertilizing and little bit more reason to get Quick Growth talents.

Difficulties Balance (or “More Suffering”)

We collected your feedback on harder difficulties and adjusted the balance accordingly.

• Grandmaster. Grandmaster difficulty seemed a bit greedy on gold, but at the same time it felt that there’s too much profit from the garden plants, so we tweaked both parameters a bit. We also give now less experience, so it’s a bit more challenging to get new talent points:

  • Price profitability: 25% → 40% (now easier to get gold)

  • Amount of ingredients when harvested from garden plants: 100% → 50% (less free ingredients)

  • Amount of experience gained: 100% → 75% (slower levelupping)

• Suffering. Suffering difficulty is terrible and annoying. But it turned out that it’s not enough! Garden was a bit too overpowered on this difficulty, and it was pretty easy to grind all the levels to get all the necessary Talents:

  • Amount of ingredients when harvested from garden plants: 100% → 25% (much less free ingredients)

  • Amount of experience gained: 100% → 50% (slower levelupping)

Because of the new difficulty multiplier some garden talents now may not give any effect unless you upgrade it several times (you will see it in the tooltip).

Also note that selling potions to merchants is nerfed (see Balance section for more), so it will be a bit harder to gain gold, especially on harder difficulties.

Don’t forget that Suffering Difficulty is still not recommended for anyone, and now even more not recommended for anyone than before. Please don’t play it – you will suffer (even more now with the new patch).

Quality of Life and Accessibility (or “We listened”)

• Autosave is now automatically created when you quit the game or start a new game.

• You can now disable sparkle effects in “Settings / Accessibility Settings / Disable sparkle effects”. This option can be useful for photosensitive players and players who hate sparkles.

• Plants in the Garden are now more compact – they can be placed a bit closer to each other. You can now fit all 58 types of different plants (and even more!) in the Garden, so you don’t have to choose the outcast that didn’t fit the Garden before. You’ll probably have to do some rearranging, but it’s worth it!

• Potion Bases can now be selected through tabs on the Alchemy Map. Those tabs work as Recipe Book tabs – you can move them around and even put them on the left side of the Map. Old method also works – click on the current tab to see the selection menu with the names of Potion Bases.

Bug Fixes

• KeyNotFoundException error is now fixed (yaaaaay!):

  • Saves that didn’t load because of this error now should load fine as well.

  • The error happened if you pressed the Right Mouse Button on the room navigation button, which skipped one room and bugged if it ended up in a locked room (like Pond or Grotto before buying the room).

  • Right Mouse Button now works as Left Mouse Button with room navigation buttons.

• Watering can now won’t disappear if thrown from the inventory in specific cases and is protected from going out of bounds of the room:

  • All your lost watering cans are now found and returned – don’t forget you can buy even more watering cans and store them whenever you want in your shop, so visitors know you are wealthy and can afford as many watering cans as you like!

• Fixed an error that happens when you try to load the save where the item is stuck in the locked room (for instance if the Watering Can in the Pond before unlocking the pond).

• Fixed a rare bug with furniture placement that caused saves to break. Saves should now work fine.

• GUIs (dialogue window, trade window, haggling window) now have hover priority over items behind it (like Potions on Shelves).

• Recipe Book button collider now should work correctly and won’t gain size error (which caused clicking Recipe Book instead of hovered button near it).

• Text reaction to a potion that uses any base other than a particular base (e.g. Oil) is now correct.

• Fixed bug/exploit that led to creation of potion without any ingredients (sorry!). Old exploited recipes with no ingredients won’t be removed – you can keep them as trophies :)

• Price tags in the trade menu now have the correct size.

• Fixed issue caused by using touch screen.

• Save/load during the Tutorial will now work correctly and won’t soft-lock the player.

• Fixed text for Nord’s fourth potion order when he returned for the second time. Text was for the third order instead of the fourth one, which confused some players and misguided them if they didn’t complete the request on the first visit.

• Fixed a bug that led to falling ingredients inside the mortar through the mortar.

• Many text and localization issues are fixed.

• Fixed visual bug with sparkles.

• Fixed visual bug with numbers in the Right Panel.

• Aaaaand many-many-many other bugs were fixed on the way. Let’s hope we fixed more than created new ones :)

Secret stuff

• Developer mode debug button that adds ingredients now adds 100 instead of 10. Very important one.

Important notes

If you’re not seeing the updates, please ensure you’re not using Steam Betas by opting out so you are in the Default Branch. To do this, navigate to Potion Craft in your Steam library, then click the cog on the far right of the page (or Right Click on Potion Craft in Library), and select ‘Properties…’ from the dropdown menu that appears. You should now see a pop-up window with ‘Betas’ on the left-hand-side of the screen. Select this section, then ensure the dropdown menu next to ‘Beta Participation’ is set to ‘None’. If this doesn’t help, restart Steam – this will help to fetch the update faster.

If you are playing with mods, please make sure to remove all mods before updating the game. If you’ve used any mods, the game can break, and we won’t be able to help with such problems. If you encounter any errors, please make sure you didn’t use any mods (even if it was once and a long time ago) before sending a bug report.

Steam Community Items

We’ve now got a bunch of new Steam Community Items for you to enjoy! Here’s the full list of everything that you can now get through playing Potion Craft (trading cards) or buying for points in the Potion Craft Points Shop:

• 15 trading cards

• 11 profile backgrounds (10 still, 1 animated)

• 10 emoticons

• 4 animated avatars

• 6 animated avatar frames

• 4 animated mini-profile backgrounds

• 7 stickers

• 6 tiers of a badge

Shall we take a closer look at some of them?

What is in development right now?

We know this patch doesn’t feel as meaty as some of our previous ones, and might not be exactly what you were expecting, but the team is hard at work on a lot of new stuff at the moment – with this patch being just one of them (and not the biggest!): there’s a lot more to come from Potion Craft, including a large (maybe you’d even call it ‘Monstrous’) Update 3.0, which we’ll be showing you Parts of in our upcoming Devlogs.

We’ve already put a lot of work into new features and content, and we are very excited to finally show you some of it and see your thoughts and feedback – just give us some time and enjoy the Patch and new Steam Community Items so far, and we’ll be back with some Devlogs in a jiffy.

We also know that a lot of our Console players are concerned about the 2.0 update and when it will become available for you. We appreciate your patience on this and we are working on it – here’s some more information for Console players.

Theme: Unleash Your Talents

Participation Guidelines:

Winners of Potion Craft Fan Art Contest #12:

Theme: Mushroom Hag's Secret Food Recipe

Participation Guidelines:

• Enter your artwork using the hashtag #PotionCraftFanArtContest11 on socials, or by joining the Potion Craft Discord and posting in the #fanart channel: https://discord.gg/PotionCraft
• You can submit your work by 11 April 2025 at 18.00 BST. The winners will be announced 2 weeks after.
• 9 winners will be selected, and will be provided with a Steam key of their choice from a selection of tinyBuild games!
• Feel free to share as many entries as you'd like.

Winners of Potion Craft Fan Art Contest #11:

Theme: Advertisement for your Potion Shop

Participation Guidelines:

• Enter your artwork using the hashtag #PotionCraftFanArtContest10 on socials, or by joining the Potion Craft Discord and posting in the #fanart channel.
• You can submit your work by 14 March 2025 at 18.00 GMT. The winners will be announced 2 weeks after.
• 9 winners will be selected, and will be provided with a Steam key of their choice from a selection of tinyBuild games!
• Feel free to share as many entries as you'd like.

Winners of Potion Craft Fan Art Contest #10:

Winners

Theme: Your Favorite Character

Participation Guidelines:

• Enter your artwork using the hashtag #PotionCraftFanArtContest9 on socials, or by joining the Potion Craft Discord and posting in the #fanart channel
• All entries must be sent by 11 February 2025 at 18.00 GMT at 18.00 GMT
• If you use AI for your submission, please mention this in your caption alongside your submission, and if submitting on Discord please do so in the #ai-fun channel
• 9 non-AI winners will be selected, and will be provided with a Steam key of their choice from a selection of tinyBuild games!
• Bonus prizes may be provided to AI entrants we feel have met the theme well.

New Enchanted Garden

New Talent Tree

Build Mode and Shop Customization

Difficulty Selection

New Base: Wine

New Characters & Merchants

Legendary Recipes Saving and Rebalancing

Rebalancing, Quality of Life Changes, New Music and Sounds, and more…!

FAQ:

• Create Nigredo - Compensation: 2 Nigredo
• Create Albedo - Compensation: 2 Albedo
• Create Citrinitas - Compensation: 2 Citrinitas
• Create Rubedo - Compensation: 2 Rubedo
• Create Philosopher's Stone - Compensation: 2 Philosopher's Stones
• Create Void Salt - Compensation: 5000 Void Salt
• Create Moon Salt - Compensation: 5000 Moon Salt
• Create Sun Salt - Compensation: 10000 Sun Salt
• Create Life Salt - Compensation: 2500 Life Salt
• Create Philosopher's Salt - Compensation: 2500 Philosopher's Salt

• Enchanted Garden 2.0:
  • Planting/transplanting any ingredients
  • Watering
  • Unlocking new parts of the garden
• Build Mode:
  • Rearranging furniture (bed, tables, chests, etc.)
  • Shelves and other surfaces for placing potions and other items
  • Various furniture and decor to increase comfort and customize the shop
  • Treasury (new room)
• Talents 2.0:
  • New talent system
  • 50+ new talents, each with unique effects and ranging from 1 to 20 levels (also includes an infinite talent that can be upgraded indefinitely)
  • Now talents can be reset for gold and redistributed
  • Experience rebalance – experience is awarded for new actions, and much more experience is given than before, but each talent now always costs 1 talent point
• Wine Base (new alchemical map with different mechanics)
• Game Difficulty Selection:
  • Explorer – for a more relaxed gameplay experience
  • Classic – balanced experience
  • Grandmaster – for experienced players who seek challenge
  • Suffering – extremely unfair and ruthlessly grindy
• Saving Legendary Substance Recipes
• Rebalancing to reduce tediousness:
  • Rebalancing legendary recipes (simpler and more appropriate recipes for the Philosopher’s Stone and its components).
  • Rebalancing the final chapters of the Alchemist’s Path (now it takes less grinding to complete the main game).
  • Level 5 experience books now complete objectives for level 4 books and below (and so on for all books).
• New Characters:
  • 2 new NPC classes:
    • Adventurers
    • Brigands
  • 4 new unique clients:
    • Diver (Dave the Diver)
    • Nord
    • Suspiciously Pale Lord?
    • Madame Twerks
  • 6 new merchants:
    • Druid
    • Mushroom Hag
    • Crystalmancer
    • Handyman
    • Decor Trader
    • Smuggler

We've made it as a finalist in The Steam Awards 2023!

Quality-of-Life features and fixes:

• When you hover over ingredients while browsing a merchant’s goods you now see the number of those ingredients in your inventory in the tooltip. Now you’ll know for sure when you are out of Poopshrooms!
• You can now create potions by pressing its picture in the Recipe Book (as you could do with the craft panel on the Alchemy Map). Quick brew and put on the scales in one move!
• You can now hover over the Effect icon on the Alchemy Map to see the name of that Effect. Now you’ll know for sure what that blue paw icon meant!
• Now you can see wrongly filled vessels on a Legendary Recipe even if those vessels are not used in this recipe. No more accidental poops instead of Nigredo!
• Improved controller/gamepad controls and UX. Also the controller support setting is now turned on by default. Especially useful for Steam Deck players and those who want to chillax while brewing some quality concoctions using gamepad!
• Touch is now supported. Now grinding and throwing stuff around can be even more fun on Steam Deck!
• Restored the ability to use Enter and Numlock Enter as a Spacebar alternative in the Haggling mini-game! It used to be there before, but something went wrong :)

Optimization:

• General optimization. Everything should work better and faster!
• Higher FPS. No more slideshows – only a smooth and oddly satisfying experience!
• The game now uses much less memory. Now you probably won’t need to close all your browsers on a weak PC!
• Focusing/alt-tabbing the application won’t freeze the game anymore. Now the game refreshes the list of save files only when the Save/Load Menu is opened.
• Loading optimization. Game just loads faster and smoother. Simple as that.
• Application closing optimization. No more freezes and crashes when quitting the game!
• Lower hardware requirements. Tried the game before and it didn’t load? Try now – maybe now it’s playable for you!

Bug fixes:

• Most game mechanics are now framerate independent. It means that everything will work the same on different hardware as originally intended.
• The Haggling mini-game speed is now framerate independent. Changing FPS to 30 won’t make it easier (sorry!), but it will now work the same for everyone.
• The potion indicator moving speed from stirring with the spoon is now framerate independent. There was a huge difference between different hardware (for some too slow, for some too fast), now it’s balanced for everyone! By the way – don’t forget to heat the coals before stirring for faster movement ;)
• Philosopher’s Salt rotates the potion indicator correctly regardless of pouring speed.
• Fixed a game-breaking error caused by switching pages in the Recipe Book.
• Controller support setting now shouldn’t break mouse controls when turned on. It’s now turned on by default, so if you encounter some strange mouse behavior, please let us know.
• Fixed the bug that allowed duplicating potions and ingredients by hovering over a slot in the Alchemy Machine with an item in hand and quick saving.
• Now creating Legendary Substances via Alchemy Machine unlocks corresponding achievements after the Machine finishes working (used to unlock on start). No more spoilers!
• Fixed an error that happened when a player created a very long path for a potion by using a large amount of ingredients.
• Gamepad – GUI element with price above the scales now selects only if it’s not hidden.
• Gamepad – sometimes the cursor selected invisible items from the inventory (when they were near the Recipe Book button).
• Gamepad – “Brew this recipe“ button deselects when RB or LB pressed.
• Fixed a game-breaking error that happened when going in the main menu while navigating between rooms.
• Fixed cursor twitching while navigating between rooms.
• Fixed the bug that prevented the game from loading for the first time in some rare cases (endless loading issue).
• And many other bug fixes.

Other minor changes:

• Changed the versioning system for builds.
• Loading screen: added coloring for the “empty“ part of the loading circle.
• Updated colors and icons for additional potion quest requirements in the met state.
• Now the “Save recipe” button becomes active right after you click the “Continue brewing from here” button in the Recipe Book, allowing duplication of existing recipes. Can be useful in some rare cases.
• Long texts in the Main Menu don’t scale down anymore, and they look much better. Can be pretty long now!
• Added XP icon on the Tooltip while hovering Level Button.
• “Haggle” Button and “Start Haggling” Button texts now can use 2 lines if the text is long.
• Collecting Green bonus in Haggling Minigame now triggers fade animation of this bonus.
• Esc button now skips Night animation.
• Logs now have more useful info for debugging. Can be helpful if we need to dig into a particular issue to find a solution and/or release a hotfix.
• Redesigned error screen – it now contains more useful debug info. Can be helpful when helping players with particular issues and analyzing errors without sending logs.
• Added hourglass animation when closing the game to show that closing in progress (so you know that the game didn’t crash, it just needs some time)!
• Small UI fixes and tweaks.

Screenshots of new QoL features:

For those who played Potion Craft with mods:

What’s next:

Here’s some devlogs about what’s in development:

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That’s great and all, but when is the update?

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First Ever 40% Off Sale!

Price Change After The Sale

Why Change The Price Now?

What’s Next?

• Quality-of-Life & Optimization Update
• Console Releases (PlayStation and Nintendo Switch)
• Garden 2.0 (includes garden management, new rooms, and more features from our Upcoming Features List)

Thank You, Players!

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• FPS has become more stable and increased on average by 30%
• Textures occupy less space in the video memory and are loaded faster
• We also optimized the game’s loading process, accelerating it by an average of 1.5-2 times

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• Gardening and Herbalism – everything related to planting, growing, and tending to plants in the garden;
• Alchemy – talents that make the potion-making process more efficient;
• Trading – various talents for selling, buying, haggling, and interacting with visitors.

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Week 1: Enchanted Garden

Week 2: Potion Shop Customization

Week 3: Unexpected Encounters

Week 4: New Uncommon Merchant

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• New Plants System
• Seeds, Planting and Replanting plants
• Using Wild Growth potions for fertilisation

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