Draft Cauldon Guide

[Silly Bubbles]

I thought it would be great to start on a Cauldron guide. We could break it up into sections to make it easier:


Overview

• Basic functionality aka "no excuses" guide - simple, easy explanation of basic functionality
  • Cauldron announcement
  • Short video explaining the basics​
• Full functionality aka I want to know everything - thorough explanation of all functions
  • Wiki
  • Inno video

Strategies

• No effort aka I don't care at all that I waste my witch points - I think this one is already covered well
• Study focus aka Let's do it right - one ingredient recipes and focus on improving the most important effects to us first
  • One ingredient recipe list
• Premade recipes aka Just give it to me - list of premade recipes that can be used over and over
  • Some recipes can be found here and here
• Manual recipes aka I can do this without any tools - explanation on how to read Brewing Screen to choose the best ingredients to get our preferred effects
  • Multiple ingredients use list
• Spreadsheet for recipes aka I want to play more - spreadsheet that shows how ingredients increase/decrease probabilities of getting specific effects
  • Spreadsheet for recipe creation
• Solver Add-on aka I want it perfect - how to create the best possible recipe and get two or more preferred effects
  • Advanced spreadsheet with Solver and Macros

Any help, additions, comments, tips, tricks, strategies are very welcome. Also, let us know which strategy you would like the best.

 

[Silly Bubbles]

The easiest initial strategy:

1. Select any ingredient to get to Study Phase. At this stage, the ingredient doesn't matter much as it will very likely fail. The Success Rate for one ingredient is very low. If you would still like to try to get something, here's a list of best ingredients for each effect.​

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2. Choose effects that you would like to focus on. I'd recommend not to focus on more than 5 effects to start with, it will make it possible to get at least one of them each week later on. This is because of diamond ingredients that might block ingredients needed for an effect. Here's a list of available effects for each Diploma. You get an additional Diploma for each fully completed chapter including all optional research. If your chosen effect is not unlocked yet, it's better to wait rather than upgrade effects that will not be useful later in the game.​

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3. Allocate Witch Points left from brewing phase to your chosen effects. You can buy additional Witch Points if you want to but I wouldn't rush it especially in early chapters. The best is to only use resources that you have an excess of. Once you reach later chapters, you'll have more available resources and it will be easier to upgrade effects. Also, every additional Diploma reduces the cost of Witch Points by 25% and that is a lot. So it's much better to wait for later chapters to fully upgrade your effects.​

Please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions, improvements, comments, jokes... all welcome!

 

[Silly Bubbles]

Brewing Screen

Witch Points (1) - can be used in brewing or studying phase. You get additional Witch Points for every research completed equal to that chapter number (eg. a research in Ch 20 is worth additional 20 Witch Points).

Trophy Goblets (2) - the more Goblets, the more sips (tries) from your potion. You get one Goblet for free and can earn additional Goblets in tournaments (max 4 Goblets for 2000 tournament points). Goblets considerably increase your chance of making a successful potion, getting an effect you want and Critical Effect as it gives you more attempts at getting them.

Probability of getting an Effect (4) - this is how likely you will get that Effect per Goblet/sip.

Success Rate (11) - how likely you will create a successful potion that will give you an Effect rather than nothing at all. This rate is for one Goblet so the more Goblets you have, the more tries/sips you have and this increases your overall success rate.

Number of Ingredients (8) - you can use maximum of 25 ingredients, the more ingredients, the higher Success Rate of making a potion that gives an effect rather than nothing.

Spell Fragments (5) - spell fragments increase the value of the Effect, both percentage and duration (details are here and you can also see it in Effect table in Brewing Screen(4)). Fragments also increase the probability of getting Critical Effect.

Diamonds (6) - diamonds can be used instead of Spell Fragments.

Critical Effect (12) - when you get Critical Effect, you get max percentage boost for your Effect and also 50% increase in duration of that Effect. This is on top of the improved values through Spell Fragments.

 

[Silly Bubbles]

Probability and Goblets

It's important to know what our chances are of getting what we want. To make it a bit easier, here's a table that shows how number of Goblets increases the chance of getting an Effect, a combination of effects or Critical Effect. It's based on this formula: 1-(Fail Rate^Goblets).

For example, if you have an Effect probability of 50% and one Goblet, you have a 50% chance of getting that Effect but if you have 5 Goblets then you have a 97% chance of getting that Effect. You can apply this to Critical Effect too.

One thing to watch out for is a low Success Rate. If your Success Rate is 50%, you're effectively halving the number of your Goblets because 50% of your sips will on average fail. So you need to adjust the number of Goblets as per table bellow to use the table above more accurately. The number of Goblets is rounded down to a whole number. If your adjusted Goblet number is zero, there's a close to zero chance of getting anything.

Example:
Number of Goblets: 4
Success Rate: 50%
Probability of preferred effect as per Brewing Screen: 40%
Probability of Critical Effect as per Brewing Screen: 10%
Result:
Adjusted Goblets: 2 (as per 2nd table)
Overall probability of getting preferred effect: 64% (as per 1st table)
Overall probability of getting Critical Effect: 19% (as per 1st table)

 

[SkyRider99]

I thought it would be great to start on a Cauldron guide.

Your suggestions and guides are awesome @Silly Bubbles.

I would also like it if Inno could provide a Training Cauldron app. That is, not linked to the game and our individual resources. That way we could experiment and fiddle with all the ingredients and combinations to see what possible rewards could be gained. I haven't thought this through, so it is just an idea.

 

[Silly Bubbles]

Your suggestions and guides are awesome @Silly Bubbles.

I would also like it if Inno could provide a Training Cauldron app. That is, not linked to the game and our individual resources. That way we could experiment and fiddle with all the ingredients and combinations to see what possible rewards could be gained. I haven't thought this through, so it is just an idea.

Here's a spreadsheet if you want to play, it's not perfect but it might make it easier. You can either download it to use it on your desktop (Excel or LibreOffice) or you can make a copy of it under your Google account. You can easily check the accuracy against your Brewing Screen.
Also, even if Inno made an app, the brewing results will differ a bit because of RNG (oops, I said the word ).

 

[SkyRider99]

Thanks mate. I'll give it a look.

(oops, I said the word ).

He who shall not be named!

 

[Silly Bubbles]

The easiest way to make recipes

You can make a generic recipe that you can reuse every week. You only need to remove diamond ingredients based on that week and update it once you reach a new Diploma. Here are the steps:

1. Choose Effect(s) that you would like to get. There's no need to choose more than 5 as the maximum possible Effects per Brew is 5. And it also makes it a bit more predictable.

2. Find ingredients that increase the probability of getting those Effects. If you have picked more than one Effect, choose ingredients that increase the sum of the probabilities of your preferred Effects. At this stage, add only one of each ingredients to make it easier. Here's a list of ingredients that can increase your Effects but be careful as things are a bit different for each Diploma.

3. Remove diamond ingredients if you want to.

4. Evenly increase the number of ingredients to use up your Witch Points. The important thing is to enter the ingredients from highest number to lowest number, one type of ingredient at a time eg 222222,5555,33 - the number reflects an ingredient. This reduces the amount of Witch Points used.

5. Check your probabilities to see whether the potion is worth brewing in the post above.

6. Brew your potion just before you need the Effects.

 

[SkyRider99]

6. Brew your potion just before you need the Effects.

That is a biggie! It is not made clear anywhere that I've seen. (Maybe they cast a blindness spell on me). It should be pasted on the Cauldron screen.