Potions & Poisons

Where to Find It

The whole operation runs out of the village under "Apothecary & Brewing." Two doors: Visit the Apothecary (the shop) and Brew something (the cauldron). A third door opens on other people's profiles: "Send a potion or poison," which appears on every player's bio except your own, the system having decided that posting yourself a draught is not a meaningful achievement.

Ingredients

There are ten ingredients, ranked by how reluctant the world is to part with them — common or rare. You acquire them two ways:

• Buy them at the Apothecary with gold. Common ingredients run 30–80 gold; rare ones (Valerian Sprigs, Wormwood, Aconite) run 150–250, the rarity surcharge being mostly indignation.
• Forage them in the forest. Most ingredients are forageable; a few (Porcupine Quills, Bicorn Horn, Aconite) refuse to be found lying around and must be bought. Foraging is a forest special: now and then, instead of a fight, something edible-ish turns up half-buried in the leaf-litter, having grown there specifically to inconvenience you. You take it anyway. The forest is generous with common weeds — two or three at a time — and stingier with the rare ones, which turn up one or two at a time and only when they feel like it.

Inventory is counted, not weighed. The cauldron does not care how you came by an ingredient, only that you have it.

Brewing Essence

Ingredients are inert without brewing essence, the fuel that persuades them to react. Essence is sold by the measure at the Apothecary (75 gold each, by default) and is the only fuel a recipe requires. Every recipe lists an essence cost (1 to 3); you spend that essence on each attempt whether the brew works or not. Essence is yours and the module's alone — no other shop, currency, or candy is involved in making a potion exist.

Recipes & Discovery

A recipe is two to four ingredients in any order, plus essence, plus a minimum level. You begin knowing two harmless potions — the Wit-Sharpening Potion and the Pepperup Potion. The other six recipes, poisons included, are not handed to you. You find them by putting plausible things in a cauldron and seeing what happens:

• A valid combination you don't yet know is discovered — the recipe is recorded, permanently, and brews from then on like any known one. Discovery happens the instant the ingredients match, so a recipe you stumble onto below your level is still written down and waits for you on the brew screen; you needn't re-derive it once you've grown into it.
• An invalid combination fizzles into a disappointing sludge. Nothing is learned and the cauldron judges you — but nothing is spent either. Idle experimentation costs only your dignity; essence and ingredients are consumed only once a real recipe is actually brewed.

Eight recipes exist in all: four potions (buffs) and four poisons (debuffs). The poisons are never starter recipes, on the reasonable theory that handing a first-year a Draught of Living Death recipe is the kind of thing that ends up in a report.

Discovery is a narrowing puzzle, not a blind sweep. The brew screen keeps a list of rumored recipes — every one you've yet to find — and for each it names one ingredient that is definitely involved, along with how many ingredients it wants and what level it needs. The remaining one to three ingredients are left as an exercise for the ambitious.

The Brew Roll: Success & Quality

Having the ingredients, the essence, and the level only earns you the right to fail. Each brew is a roll against your brewing skill, which starts at zero and rises by one with every successful brew:

• Success chance = 50% + 4% per skill point, capped at 95%. A potion is never quite guaranteed by skill alone.
• Potent (a critical success) = 5% + 1% per skill point, capped at 40%. A sub-band of success that yields a markedly better potion.
• Failure curdles the potion. The essence is gone and roughly half the ingredients are lost; the rest are scraped out of the ruined cauldron and returned, along with a hint to try again with a steadier hand (or more skill).

A potent result lasts 50% longer and pushes its effect a further 25% from neutral — a stronger buff, or a nastier poison. Standard results are exactly as written on the recipe. Your brewing skill resets to zero at the start of each new Voldemort Encounter cycle, so a lifetime of expertise is, as ever, on loan.

Two things here are called "level," and they are not the same thing. A recipe's listed level is the character level you must reach to brew it — it moves only when you do. Your brewing skill, above, is a separate hand-steadiness that climbs one point per successful brew and sets your odds, and it never unlocks a recipe. The brew screen states both your current character level and your brewing skill outright, and marks any recipe your character is still too low for as Locked — so no one need wonder which "level" is standing between them and a Strength Potion.

Drinking Potions

A finished potion goes into your stash. Drink one and its effect applies to you immediately as a standard combat buff — a sharper attack, a sturdier defense, for a set number of rounds — after which it wears off and files its final report. Potions are for drinking. Poisons are not, and the cauldron will quietly talk you out of it if you try.

Sending Potions & Poisons

You can drink your potions yourself — or send them. From any other player's profile, choose "Send a potion or poison," and your stash lays out both options: a potion travels as a gift (a buff that lands on the recipient), and a poison travels as, well, a poison. Either way an owl departs and the effect does not strike on arrival — it waits on the recipient's owl perch and takes hold on their next new day, in their own session, where the effect can actually stick. This is deliberate plumbing: an effect poked directly into someone else's account would be wiped the next time they saved, so the system queues it and lets their own new day apply it.

The recipient is not left to guess. When the item lands, an owl arrives in their post to confirm it: a gift names the sender, on the sound principle that generosity ought to be attributable; a poison announces only itself, the sender left off the envelope, because the whole point of a poison is that you do not get a card.

Several limits keep this from becoming a hobby:

• Daily send cap — gifts and poisons share one small fixed budget per day (5 by default). The counter resets on your own new day, in step with the game's days rather than the calendar's — take a new day and the owls are yours to spend again.
• No self-targeting — you cannot send to yourself, under any pretense; if it's a potion, just drink it.
• Block list — anyone may block any sender. A blocked owl comes back, looking apologetic.
• One active poison at a time — a target already suffering one poison, or whose perch already holds its limit of queued poisons (3 by default), cannot receive more poison. Gifts keep a separate allowance on the same perch: a queue stuffed full of poisons never uses up a friend's ability to send a gift, and a gift is never blocked merely for an active poison. Kindness does not dogpile, and it will not be dogpiled out.

Poisoning — but not gifting — is also a moral transaction. Where the Alignment system is running, every poison you send nudges you a few points toward evil; a gifted potion carries no such toll. Brewing a poison costs you nothing on that account either; only delivering one does. A relentlessly malicious soul can therefore drift toward wickedness one owl at a time, which is either a tragedy or a hobby depending on your outlook. (Administrators set the exact toll, and may set it to zero, in which case conscience is complimentary.)

Optional Shortcuts

Two conveniences exist for the impatient, and neither is ever required — every recipe is completable with zero of both:

• Bertie Botts beans, if Candy Raffles is running, can be stirred into a brew to guarantee it succeeds — a failed roll becomes a standard brew, and a potent roll is preserved. When you hold enough beans, a "guarantee with beans" button appears beside each brew; without the beans (or without Candy Raffles installed) the option silently isn't there, and brewing is exactly as hard either way.
• Donation points can buy a rare ingredient outright or steady a single brew, where the administrators have enabled it. When the guarantee is enabled, a "guarantee with DP" button sits beside each brew, mirroring the beans. Where the administrators haven't enabled these, the links don't appear, and nothing about crafting changes.