Since this is a guide to grinding out a badge, my assumption is that you want to finish as quickly as possible with minimal expense. Obviously those two ideas come into conflict. If you want to really minimize your currant expenses then the best route is growing your own herbs. By contrast, if you really want to minimize the amount of time it takes then you will want to buy all of the ingredients and grind the potions out in a few hours. I'm not that interested in crunching out the most effective way to buy ingredients, so I am leaving that out of the guide. If you have a ton of money and want to buy the ingredients then it should be easy enough to figure out which potion is the cheapest to produce or which gives the best rate of return.
You can also make Rainbow Juice which requires no herbs. I'll put a special section at the end to talk about how intensive that is.
For those who don't want to read all the gory details, I can sum up the conclusion in two words: Charades Potion. Basically no matter what way you look at it, Charades Potions are the best potions to make to reach your goal (after making potions that you'll use to get other badges). IF you really want to hurry it along you can use guano to accelerate their growth. If you want to take your time you can just harvest and replant each time you log in. If you want to harvest your own gas to make the laughing gas for them you can do that or you can buy the gas from other glitchen. Any way you do it Charades still comes out on top.
But this blog is all about gory details, so here they are:
Working on Other Badges
While you are working on your potions badge you probably want to prepare to get other badges. Specifically you are going to want 251 doses of tree antidote (51 antidotes) to get World-class Tree Surgeon and you are going to want 251 doses of poison to poison trees to apply your antidote to, plus another 1009 doses to make trees to chop down for Paul Bunions (a total of 252 poisons). If you make all of those then you'll need to grind out an additional 730 potions.
Each of those doses counts as one pour towards your 811 potions poured or quaffed badge, so you'll get that badge completely incidentally. Finally, you may want to make some other potions simply because you plan on actually using them. A few extra poisons, some elixirs of avarice, and maybe some fun stuff as well.
But a years supply of elixirs of avarice likely doesn't get you halfway to 1033 potions, so it's time to look at how to grind out potions effectively.
Growing Herbs
If you want to make your own potions from scratch then your main consideration is how long it is going to take to grow those herbs. For example, if you simply added up all of the hours of herb growing with two large herb gardens, it would take 60 full days of growing to make 1033 draughts of giant amicability. Of course no one would think that draughts are the fastest way to reach this goal.
Growing herbs is very straightforward to do but very complex to analyze. Depending on how you play the game there are two completely different ways of looking at how long it will take to grow the herbs. Let's discuss two different ways of playing:
Discrete play, which probably encapsulates the way that the vast majority play, is play where you log in and play the game at certain times of the day or on certain days. For example, if you are aggressively growing herbs, you might make sure you log in each morning and evening to harvest and replant your gardens. You may play for a few hours in the evening as well, not necessarily every day. Another example of discrete play would be logging in to play for half an hour every couple of days, or once a week.
Continuous play is staying logged in all day, perhaps on a background window or second screen. Alternatively you might technically log out but a set a timer to make sure you get back in when your herbs have finished, or you might check in so often that you might as well be there all the time. This is presumably not a common way of playing the game, but among those who are trying to get a lot of high end badges, this play style is worth considering.
The important difference is this: for discrete play, you will be primarily concerned about how many plot-harvests it takes to make a potion. Since each time you log in your herbs will be fully grown, the question is how many fully grown plots you can get by on. For continuous play, you will be primarily concerned about how many plot-hours it takes to make a potion. Since you are playing all the time, the difference between an herb that grows in 4 hours and an herb that grows in 7 will be relevant.
This entire guide assumes that you have the relevant skills and upgrades. Those include Herbalism 3, Super Seedy Powers, Speedier Herbs, Super Special Herbs, Tendy Gonzales, and Watering Whiz. Combined these mean you get maximum seeds from shucking, reduce grow times by 20%, tend and water in one second, and have a 30% chance to get a triple harvest of herbs. If you are missing any of these then the advice in this guide basically stays the same, but the numbers will work out a little different.
Two Classes of Herbs
If you aren't familiar with herb growing, you'll need to know that there are two classes of herbs. Class I herbs (Gandlevery, Hairball Flower, Rookswort and Rubeweed) produce one herb per harvest and shuck for 4 seeds. Class II herbs (Purple Flower, Silvertongue, Yellow Crumb Flower) produce three herbs per harvest and shuck for an average of 2.66 seeds.
Because of super harvests, in the long run the number of herbs harvested per plot will be 60% higher than the base amount (a 70% chance of harvesting the base amount and a 30% chance of harvesting three times that; 0.7 * 1 + 0.3 * 3 = 1.6). You also have to pay back in the seed it took to grow the herbs in the first place, so that's 0.25 seeds for Class I herbs or 0.38 seeds for Class II herbs. As a result, each plot-harvest yields 1.35 herbs for Class I herbs and 4.42 herbs for Class II herbs.
By taking the reciprocal of those numbers, and by multiplying by the number of hours it takes to grow those herbs, we can get both the number of plot-harvests and the number of plot-hours it take to produce each type of herb.
Herb
|
Class
|
Plot Harvests
|
Plot Hours
|
Gandlevery
|
I
|
0.74
|
0.89
|
Hairball
|
I
|
0.74
|
2.67
|
Purple
|
II
|
0.23
|
0.18
|
Rookswort
|
I
|
0.74
|
2.96
|
Rubeweed
|
I
|
0.74
|
2.37
|
Silvertongue
|
II
|
0.23
|
1.27
|
Yellow
|
II
|
0.23
|
1.63
|
Tinctures
With the exception of rainbow potions, potions are made of tinctures. So another factor is how many of each herb goes into a tincture. We can multiply the number of plot-harvests or plot-hours for an herb by the number of herbs in a tincture to get the plot hours for that tincture.
Here's a quick look at how many plot-harvests and plot-hours each tincture takes:
Herb
|
Herbs Per Tincture
|
Plot Harvests per Tincture
|
Plot Hours per Tincture
|
Gandlevery
|
3
|
2.22
|
2.67
|
Hairball
|
5
|
3.70
|
13.33
|
Purple
|
23
|
5.20
|
4.16
|
Rookswort
|
5
|
3.70
|
14.81
|
Rubeweed
|
5
|
3.70
|
11.85
|
Silvertongue
|
4
|
0.90
|
5.06
|
Yellow
|
6
|
1.36
|
9.76
|
With that its pretty easy to multiply out the number of plot hours for each kind of potion.
Potions
So here is a list of all potions with plot hours and plot harvests. I've highlighted those that have relatively low requirements. I'll admit my cut-off for "low" was totally arbitrary - fewer than 10 plot hours or 4 plot harvests - but it doesn't have to be overly scientific.
Potions
|
Plot Harvests
|
Plot Hours
|
Amorous Philtre
|
5.20
|
4.16
|
Ancestral Spirits
|
8.31
|
30.25
|
Charades Potion
|
0.90
|
5.06
|
De-Embiggenifying Potion
|
5.20
|
4.16
|
Door Drink
|
5.93
|
14.52
|
Draught of Giant Amicability
|
8.22
|
41.51
|
Dung-Kicker Drops
|
5.93
|
16.00
|
Elixir of Avarice
|
4.61
|
18.40
|
Embiggenifying Potion
|
5.20
|
4.16
|
Keycutter Tonic
|
3.70
|
11.85
|
Liquid Super-Hoe
|
7.41
|
28.15
|
Manyharvest Cordials
|
9.22
|
33.83
|
Potion of Animal Youth
|
11.87
|
12.16
|
Rainbow Juice
|
0
|
0
|
Rook Balm
|
3.70
|
14.81
|
Seed-Dibber Libation
|
7.16
|
24.86
|
Soak-All Solution
|
8.47
|
18.13
|
Trantsformation
|
9.50
|
26.95
|
Tree Poison
|
3.70
|
14.81
|
Tree Poison Antidote
|
2.22
|
2.67
|
As noted above, Rainbow Juice will have its own section in the guide.
For discrete play it appears there is no contest. If you log on once a day then you can make about 1.1 Charades per herb plot you have. The next closest would be Tree Poison Antidote, but that gives you less than half of a potion per herb plot you have.
For continuous play the lines are a little blurrier. Tree Poison Antidote is clearly the winner, but since Gandlevery grows every 72 minutes, it requires your play to be very continuous indeed. The next closest are those potions that require just an Essence of Purple, but then you need to harvest every 48 minutes.
In reality no one does entirely discrete or entire continuous play. People who play fairly continuously may not be able to dedicate themselves to actually harvesting a crop every 72 minutes. People who harvest most discretely will presumably play for 60 to 90 minutes at some stretches which would allow them to sneak a Purple Flower or Gandlevery crop in.
So let's talk about things in practical terms. If you want to reach the 730 mark at maximum speed and are willing to harvest a crop every 72 minutes for 16 hours a day to do so then you'll be able to make 13 harvests of Gandlevery plus one overnight harvest of Silvertongue each day. Assuming a full backyard of large herb gardens (90 plots in total) that would get you the herbs to make 526 Tree Poison Antidotes and 99 Charades Potions each day. You could make 1033 potions in a day of work plus a bit of the next day.
If you are willing to log and harvest each morning, get home from school or work to harvest again by 5:30 and then stay up until a little after 11:00 to get a third harvest in before bed, you could get enough Silvertongue to make 298 Charades Potions per day. It would take you two and a half days to reach the 730 mark.
If you only log in once a day but play long enough to harvest one Gandlevery crop then you could get enough herbs to make 40 Tree Poison Antidotes and 99 Charades Potions. In around six days you'd be done.
Or if you simply log in to harvest and replant Silvertongue then it will take you 8 logins, however long that takes, to get the Silvertongue to make 730 Charades Potions.
Of course if you have fewer than 90 plots you can adjust these numbers. For example, with only two large herb gardens (30 plots) it will take three times as many harvest, or three times as much time, to finish.
Other Materials
Of course these potions that use minimal herbs also have other materials. We're really only considering two potions here: Charades and Tree Poison Antidote. Charades requires three Laughing Gas which take three General Vapour each to make, as well as 2 energy and just under 0.6 seconds. Buying Laughing Gas itself isn't really an option because you won't find three thousand of it on the market. Getting the General Vapour for all 730 potions, however, is not terribly time consuming. On home streets with 12 or more Gas Plants you should be able to pick up around 4 vapour per second. Since you need about 6570 of it, that's about 28 minutes of gathering plus another 21 minutes of gassifying. Alternately it's a little under 66k currants if you buy the vapour, which seems to be getting more expensive all the time.
For Tree Poison Antidote you need some more awkward ingredients. Guano is consistently priced at more than 5 times its list value, between 110 and 120 currants. Harvesting it yourself is a little expensive as well. Going for speed I was able to spend about 30 currants and 1.4 seconds on each guano. At that rate you could get the guano you need in around 25 minutes by spending around 31k currants. Of course there is also the Friendly Acid and Spriggase. To make those you need 125 red, 35 green and 75 blue per potion. The cheapest way to get that much appears to be 18.75 chunks of beryl at 8 currants each for 150 currants per potion. Alternately you could harvest that yourself but that would take 16.4 seconds. So you need to either spend about three hours harvesting or spend around 100k currants on beryl. Then you need to crush those which is about 14 minutes of crushing that will require 41k energy. Assuming your energy tank is over 4.5k you could do it with 3 no-no powders and a get out of hell free card over the course of 3 game days. After that making the elements themselves would take about 14 minutes as well.
So the materials to make a Charades Potion cost around 90 currants and 1.8 seconds or about 3.05 seconds if you gather them yourself. The materials to make a Tree Poison Antidote cost around 260 currants and 2.3 seconds of your time, 180 currants and 3.7 seconds of your time, or 30 currants and 8.8 seconds of your time.
Regards of which route you take, the materials for Charades Potions are much cheaper to produce.
Fertilizing Herbs
You may try using guano to speed up your herb growing. Using two guano or two charges of Dung-Kicker Drops knocks 95% of the growing time off of an herb plot. This means that using it on Gandlevery saves you only 68 minutes while using it on Silvertongue saves you five hours and 20 minutes. Since fertilizing Gandlevery would mean you couldn't even tend more than three gardens worth before it finished growing, I think that is out of the question. I've noted that you need 8 harvests of Silvertongue from a full back yard to make 730 Charades potions. With guano you could do that in just over three hours.
Since each plot requires two guano and each plot makes enough herbs to make 1.11 potions, we can examine the cost effectiveness of this by adding the cost of two guano to the cost of making a Charades potion. As noted, guano can be purchased for 110 each or manufactured for about 30 currants and 1.4 seconds.
Comparing these it is slightly more cost effective to make the Tree Poison Antidotes, depending on how you value your time, but at 20 currants per second this different is fairly small - 210 currants to make a Tree Poison versus 230 to make an accelerated Charades potion. If your goal is speed, then making the herbs at more than ten times the rate should probably be incentive enough to go this route. Furthermore, Tree Poison Antidotes are worth 25 currants less than Charades Potions. If you are selling the potions at the Tool Vendor then that difference makes up for the increased cost, if you are donating them then the difference in value makes up for the increased cost. Currently the market doesn't really support selling them to players as a good option.
Conclusion - Growing Herbs
If you decide to make potions by growing your own herbs then you should be looking at making Charades Potions. If you would rather get it done faster then probably the best way is to use Dung-Kicker Drops or Guano to accelerate the growth of your silvertongue and stick with the Charades Potions. If you are looking for a medium route then you could make Tree Poison Antidotes, but it is both much slower than accelerated Charades Potions and much more expensive than non-accelerated ones, so it is close to being the worst of both worlds.
Rainbow Juice
Rainbow Juice used to require a small number of yellow crumb flowers to make, but now it requires no herbs at all, just 11 Blue Bubbles, 11 Green Eggs, 3 Orange Juice and 13 Strawberries. Let's get an idea of how expensive that really is. If you gather the ingredients yourself (excluding the Spinach) then you will need 106 tree ingredients per juice (11 Plain Bubbles, 11 Eggs and 84 cherries). These are the cheap tree ingredients, but that' still a lot of harvesting if you want to make them from scratch. If you want to buy then you are investing approximately 468 currants in ingredients before spending 16 seconds transmuting and 14 seconds cooking per potion. Harvesting yourself would mean over a minute per potion or almost 13 hours of crafting. Buying the ingredients would still leave about 38 seconds per potion which would be close to 8 hours of crafting. If instead you used guano to accelerate your silvertongue you could be finished growing all the herbs, crafting all the ingredients and making all the potions about two and a half hours faster and for only about 60 currants per potion.
That looks pretty bad for Rainbow Juice, but of course that is leaving out the fact that with Rainbow Juice you can also use your gardens to grow yellow and sell the seeds. A full garden produced about 5909 currants of seeds from yellow. Since the Charades Potion plan relies on harvesting 44 gardens worth of Silvertongue, that could have been approximately 44 gardens of yellow crumb using discrete harvesting or 34.2 garden worth using continuous harvesting. 44 gardens at 5909 sounds like a lot, and it is a lot - almost 260k. But considering the Rainbow juice is spending 468 currants on each of 730 potions (which is 341k) is isn't really that much. Plus the Charades calculation I did included gathering guano while the Rainbow Juice one did not. That should account for another 10k to the side of Charades.
Basically Rainbow Juice is not the way to go. Even if you have the money to buy the ingredients you'll be finished faster and cheaper by doing the Charades potions instead. Unless you want hundreds of Rainbow Juice for your own future use, Charades is the way to go.
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