Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator News

The main instrument of a master alchemist is not a cauldron or mortar as one might think. True, alchemists manipulate the Elements themselves! Many of you must have noticed that the map directions in Potion Craft are associated to the elements: e.g. Water is on the right and Waterbloom, being the main water ingredient, leads there; while Fire is on the left and Firebell leads there also. In the upcoming update, we decided to upgrade this system, making it more complex and consistent. To achieve that, we needed to review old ingredients and create a lot of new ones. To begin with, we collected all sketches and legacy ingredients that have ever been created.

Click to enlarge the image

Click to enlarge the image

The new system will have 8 “elements”, each one having its own direction on the map. Each element will also have a set of effects relevant to it.

• Up: air
  
• Right/up: magic
  
• Right: water
  
• Right/down: life
  
• Down: earth
  
• Left/down: poison
  
• Left: fire
  
• Left/up: explosion
  

Before we started working on new ingredients, we had divided existing ones into new elements to see what was missing. Some ingredients had to be moved into new elements. For example, it is more consistent for Terraria to belong to the Life element due to its green color. It will have to change the name as well while some other ingredient will become the basic ingredient for the Earth element.



We wanted each element to have 7 ingredients, one crystal among them. Moreover, each element should have a distinctive color scheme, e.g. Fire is yellow and orange, while Magic is violet and purple. When the task was clear, we started working on new ingredients and revising the old ones.



Air ingredients are mostly light, delicate flowers and herbs.



The Magic element combines flowers, fruits, and even root vegetables, but they all share similar purple-violet colors.



There is no more Watery ingredient than waterweeds! Moist and underwater mushrooms will do too.



Juicy green is the main feature of Life element ingredients.



Mushrooms and roots — what else could be closer to Earth?



Poisonous, ghastly colors and mushrooms of all shapes make up the Poison element.



The Fire element embraces various types of ingredients, but warm colors and a touch of hot unites them.



Barbs, nervous bends and vivid red color are features of the Explosive element.



Some ingredients, being processed skilfully, should give an alchemist an opportunity to make way on the map in any direction. We decided to make them iridescent.



So here is what we came up with finally: 8 elements, 58 ingredients and an infinite alchemical potential! We still need to draw it all though. By the way if you wish to know more about the process of creating new ingredients, please, read our previous Devlog (#15). There is some fascinating stuff there!



We are actively working on the new system of Elements and new ingredients right now and we would love to hear your thoughts on them as well to know what kind of ingredients you would like to see in the game! New ingredients also need names, thus we will be happy to hear ideas from you!

Thank you for your attention! Please make sure to follow us on Social Media and join our Discord to stay up to date on everything Potion Craft and chat with the community and developers:

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There is nothing more important in potion making than ingredients! Rightly so, the most renowned alchemists used to say: “Garbage in, garbage out”, that is why we approach creating ingredients for Potion Craft with utmost focus and consideration and we would like to share this process with you.

As usual, everything starts with a sketch.



Color is the most important feature of an ingredient, it gives the ingredient density and tangibility. For us to decide whether a flower or berry belongs in the game, we strive to finalise the appearance of it first. You might notice that most ingredients never make their way into the game, but nonetheless, we never lose this legacy groundwork and often return to them while working on new ingredients.









After the best ingredients are selected, we start polishing their appearance and searching for the right color scheme.









Moving onto the ingredients which are dear to our hearts, mushrooms, flowers and minerals. They require a lot of effort to be crushed, smashed and broken. For soft ingredients, 8 to 12 states are usually enough.





Things get more difficult with rigid ingredients such as minerals. A mineral should split into two pieces after the first hit; then each piece should split into two when hit again, and so on until they are grinded into dust. Thus, 19 sprites are needed for large crystals, and even more for small ones. For example, 27 sprites had to be drawn for the Frost Sapphire.







Leaves, petals, barbs and anything with the ability to cheerfully spray around when an ingredient is thrown at the wall, should also be created.



Basic work on ingredients is finished at this state, but small icons for the Recipe Book and garden plants still need to be drawn.







Next time we will talk about a new elemental system for ingredients and potion effects and will show a lot of interesting stuff, so stay tuned and follow our Steam Page. Also, make sure to join our Discord so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs!



Thank you for your attention! Please make sure to follow us on Social Media and join our Discord to stay up to date on everything Potion Craft and chat with the community and developers:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Discord
• Reddit
• Imgur
• YouTube

Greetings, Alchemists!

Today we want to show you a new feature that will be available in the upcoming update – auto-hold! The auto-hold will be the first option in the new Accessibility section of Potion Craft settings.



We decided to add this feature after a significant number of players reported getting hand fatigue due to having to hold down the left mouse button for long periods of time to grind ingredients, mix potions with a spoon, and drag items around the shop. We hope that the auto-hold feature will make the gameplay more comfortable.



While this feature might seem quite simple and easy to implement, many changes to the internal structure of the game had to be done in order to add such functionality. Due to this, the auto-hold feature will only appear in the future update along with other additions.



The auto-hold feature is but a first step in improving the accessibility of our game. By listening carefully to our players, we plan to gradually add new options regarding accessibility and controls to make the experience better and more enjoyable.

Thank you for your attention! Follow our Steam page or join our Discord server to never miss new devlogs and important announcements!

We know that some players find Haggling too hard, while others think that it does not fit with the pace of the game. We believe in this mechanic and we would like to tell you about adjustments and improvements that will be made to it in the next large update.

We don’t want haggling to put too much pressure on a player and meddle with your focus and mood, which is typical for alchemists; that is why you can now choose one of five different themes to talk about with a visitor, each of them with different difficulty levels. There are easy themes, where you choose to respond in the easiest way and won’t lose any profit, and there are hard themes, which are more difficult and risky but the profit is much higher. Each visitor has a unique set of themes which will help you to understand their character better. For example, the Mushroomer enjoys a snack, which makes it easy to speak to him about food as he is not very picky when it comes to it. On the other hand, mushrooms are of great importance to him, you need to be careful when speaking about them as you can easily upset him. If he finds a fellow mycologist in you though, he will be willing to make a better deal!

The most sensible themes (4th & 5th) are locked at the beginning of the game but can be unlocked later. Do you remember the Mushroomer had mentioned something about his memoirs?



Click the image to enlarge it

The theme difficulty affects:

• The arrow speed
  
• Quantity and size of bonuses
  
• Scales tilt speed
  
• Miss potency
  
• Profit of a deal
  

On top of that, current profit will be shown more clearly now during Haggle and haggling will finish automatically when maximum profit is achieved.



To help players cope with Haggling nuances, we added a new info window.

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We believe that Haggle, while not being a key mechanic, is still important in Potion Craft as it provides a change of pace, some risk, helps to know your visitors a little better and, finally, to get a discount (show me those that don’t like a good discount)!

Stay tuned for more devlogs on the upcoming update. Please don’t hesitate to follow our Steam Page and make sure to join our Discord so you don't miss other upcoming devlogs!

Happy Year of Tiger, alchemists!

Potion Craft is part of the Lunar New Year sale on Steam with 20% off. Get it for yourself or treat someone with a nice gift! Offer ends on February 3rd so don’t miss this opportunity!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1210320/Potion_Craft_Alchemist_Simulator/