Puzzles and Potions

In this Main Match, players must forage for ingredients so they can brew potions that will be sold to picky merchants.

Designer(s): RedsToad	Match Type: MM (for 10 players)
Featured in: The Genius: PnP

MM3: Puzzles and Potions

🔈 The communications are now open!

Players are free to talk with anyone in pair chats, talk in <#1140772828367552625> and to create resource channels!

Summary

Throw ingredients into a pot to brew potions; maybe the result will be something you can sell to merchants!

📖 Rules

This game is played over the course of 4 rounds, each lasting 24 hours along with a 24h pregame.

Players aren't required to submit anything during the pregame, it is there for players to learn the rules and to come up with strategies.

Players start the game with 4 ingredients and 4 coins. The 4 starting ingredients were given at random.

Coins and ingredients persist between rounds as part of your inventory. Coins are not transferable.

⚗️ Potions

This game has 8 ingredients: Rose, Violet, Nightshade, Salt, Quartz, Amber, Bone and Lizard.

Combining 3 distinct ingredients results in a potion.

There are 8 types of potions, each identified with a color: Black, Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Magenta, Cyan, White.

The three ingredients brewed always result in the same potion regardless of who made it or when it was brewed.

⚠️ Important to note: the 3 ingredients can come all from the same player, in which case only they receive the info and the money, or the ingredients can come from 3 different players, in which case they split the info and the money.

🪙 Potions brewed can be sold to merchants. Based on how accurate the potion is, the merchant will trade the potion for some amount of coins.

The amount of money you have at the end of the game will determine whether you win or lose the game.

Game Start and Game Actions

In each of the 4 rounds, players can do up to 4 actions. Unused actions don't persist between rounds and are not transferable between players.

Players can do the same action multiple times in a round, except learning a hint, which can only be done once per round.

Players can spend 2 garnets to gain a 5th action in a round and 4 more garnets for a 6th action.

Here are all of the possible actions:

Forage an ingredient from a location
Buy an ingredient from a shop
Brew and learn
Brew and sell
Learn a hint about potion brewing

Ingredients

Ingredients are used to brew potions. Ingredients are not transferrable and hold no value outside of potion brewing.

There are 2 ways to gain ingredients: foraging and buying.

There are 3 possible foraging locations:

Flower Field, where you can find Roses, Violets and Nightshades.
Mount Breaker, where you can find Salt, Quartz and Amber.
Abandoned Temple, where you can find Bones and Lizards.

Visiting any of these locations will give you a random ingredient that can be found there.

Ingredients found via foraging can only be used starting from the next round.

This means that Foraging is useless in the last round.

Ingredients found via foraging can only be used starting from the next round, not only in the next round.

If you want to grab a specific ingredient, players are welcome to visit the Ingredient Store.

At the Ingredient Store, players can buy any ingredient for 2 coins.

Bought ingredients can be used in a potion immediately.

Brewing and Selling

To brew a potion, you need 3 distinct ingredients. As a reminder, these ingredients can come from 1 or from 3 different players.

Player(s) can decide to learn the color of the resulting potion, in which case the it is revealed to all players who brewed it.

As this doesn't produce any money, this action is useless in the last round.

Player(s) can also decide to sell the potion brewed to a merchant of their choice.

There are 8 merchants, all requesting a unique potion. Each merchant has a budget, which will change over the course of the game. Budgets are public and will be updated every round.

When selling a potion, the merchant will assess the potion.

If the potion is exactly the color requested, the merchant will buy it for all the coins in their budget. If 3 players brewed the potion together, the budget will be split 3 way, with the merchant keeping the remainder.
If the potion is of a similar level, the merchant will buy it for a third of the budget and keep the remainder. If 3 people brewed the potion together, each of them will receive 1/9th of the budget and the merchant will keep the remainder.
If the potion is not even close to the requested potion, no money is given out.

⚠️ Notably, players do not learn the result of their postion, only if it was exact, similar or not even close.

Red, Blue and Green potions are all similar to each other; Magenta, Cyan and Yellow are similar to each other. Black and White potions are similar to no potions.

If multiple players sell to the same merchant, the coins they earn from that merchant will be divided by the number of similar level or exact potions sold (not even close potions don't count), rounded down.

For example, if player one sells an exact potion and player two sells a similar level potion, player one receives 1*(1/2) of the budget and player two receives (1/3*1/2)=1/6 of the budget.

For another example, if three players sell a similar level potion and another player sells an exact potion, the player selling an exact potion receives 1*(1/4) of the budget, and all of the other players receive (1/3*1/4)=1/12 of the budget.

For an extra example, if three players cooperate to sell a similar level potion and another player sells an exact potion, the player selling an exact potion receives 1*(1/2) of the budget, and the cooperating players receive (1/9*1/2)=1/18 of the budget.

Players will be informed about the exact fraction they got.

When cooperating in brewing, all 3 players need to agree to either sell or learn. A failure to reach consensus renders the brewing unsuccessful.

Hints

Brewing potions is a black box, mechanics of which are unknown to the players.

Players can use one of their actions to learn how the black box operates.

Note as the hints don't produce any money, this action is useless in the last round.

Hints will get more powerful as rounds progress. However, none of the hints will give a complete explanation.

All players receive the same hint in the same round.

As a reminder, you may only request one hint per round.

Game End

After 4 rounds, the game ends.

The 3 players with the most money win a ToL each.

The 3 players with the least money become EC, ranked by amount of money, then number of ingredients, then random.

In case of a tie in money, causing more players with ToL / EC than needed, all tied players lose ToL / become EC.

All players who win a Token of Life get 7 garnets.

All players able to dodge the DM get 5 garnets.

All players who win the DM get 3 garnets.

Submissions

Players can do up to 4 actions in each of the 4 rounds.

The possible actions are:

Forage an ingredient from a location
Buy an ingredient from a shop
Brew and learn
Brew and sell
Learn a hint about potion brewing

To Forage, say which location you want to visit. In the next round you will receive a random ingredient from that location.

To Buy, say which ingredient you want to buy. You will be able to use this ingredient instantly.

To Get a Hint, say you want to do so. In the next round you will receive one.

Not submitting will cause you to forage 4 times at random locations.

Brewing can be done solo, or as a group of 3.

To brew solo, state the 3 ingredients you wish to mix and optionally say which merchant to sell to.

If you don't say which merchant to sell to, in the next round you will learn the result of the brew.

If you say which merchant to sell to, in the next round you will learn how close the potion was and how much money you got.

To brew as a group of 3, state the single ingredient you want to mix and say which 2 other players you want to cooperate with.

If the three players don't all cooperate, nothing happens to the ingredients and players are notified that their cooperation was unsuccessful.

Information

The following information is revealed publicly, every round:

Merchants' budgets

The following information is revealed privately to you, every round:

Your inventory (ingredients and money)
Results of previous round's actions
Any ingredients you foraged
Ingredients used to brew a potion and its color of any potion not sold.
Ingredients used, closeness and amount of money learnt for any potion sold.
Any requested hints

The following information is revealed publicly, at the end of the game:

Everyone's money counts
Ingredient counts of tied players, if needed.