Potion Permit is a game all about collecting and gathering materials. You also have to help the villagers of the small town of Moonbury, whether it be your main job of healing the sick or running errands and befriending the residents. However, despite its modest nostalgic charm and easy-to-learn gameplay, it doesn’t always tell you the best ways to begin or truly hint at what you should try and do first. Here are some early tips and tricks for beginners in Potion Permit.
Tip 1: Never stop Collecting Materials
The story is actually very slow to begin. One of the very first things you’ll be told to do is talk to the rangers outside the town and start exploring the meadow woodland area just outside of town. You will actually have a day or two to gather ingredients and materials from the area before your first major task is given to you, do not squander that chance. Collect all you can, run the resources dry, they always respawn after you go to sleep for the day.
Trust in the idea that you will always always want to be ahead on how many options for materials to have. If you run out of ingredients, it could cost you valuable time to complete a task or heal a sick villager. There are also events or tasks where you have to make a special one-off potion for that request. If you already have dozens of extra ingredients you don’t have to waste time in the woods finding what you need to make and spend all day or more wasting to get what you need.
Tip 2: Keep extra Potions on you at all Times
Similar to always having extra materials and ingredients, once you have access to make different potions and elixirs, stock up on those too. Usually late at night when you’ve done everything else before you go to bed, would be the best time to make 2 or more different potions, no matter what they are. It may even be a while till you use them, but once you finally get a townsfolk who is sick with what you need, already having it on hand will save you a lot of time and effort. There are also going to be tasks and random events around town where a village will ask you for a potion, if you already have it, you don’t have to run around later to give it to them once you make it and waste time that way.
Tip 3: Talk to Everyone
This is the kind of game where you literally have to interact with everyone to fully experience and complete the game ad its challenges. There are no nameless NPCs with filler background dialogue. You will be able to befriend every townsfolk in Moonbury. You even have the chance for more close relationships with certain villagers. If you start talking to them early on, you will build up the trust and relationships faster and gain new gameplay mechanics and unlock new areas and items faster.
Warning: they will all distrust ad not want to talk to you until you cure the Mayor’s daughter first. Luckily that is the first major story task, but it still takes 3 or so days to get to that part of the game. So you will have a few days of foraging and potion making before they will talk to you.
Tip 4: Explore everywhere Do everything
This may sound like an obvious one, but it seems like the most prevalent thing in Potion Permit is timing. The sooner you do things, the smoother the game will go for you. Wait too long to go somewhere or play a minigame or explore a public building, and it might take more time than you want to move on to the next task or take up more than a day to do what you wanted. Some word of advice though, maybe don’t go into a villager’s home until you are invited or a task allows you to go in. The game is based on trust and the villagers slowly warm up to you. Something tells me if you go poking around their houses before they like you that will affect certain gameplay.
Just make sure you use every second of every day to the fullest while still trying to enjoy the game’s laid-back aesthetic. If you take the opportunity to stalk up early and never shy from spending a few hours of each day gathering materials or making potions, you should almost never get surprised with being out of things you need.
