Rental Cauldron
Over the last couple months since the game went live, I’ve been spending gold on vault extensions. Now that I’m happy with my vault space, I can use coins for other stuff. In addition to the occasional bag of runestones, I’ve been utilizing the rental cauldron a lot more lately.
For 16 coins, you get a 3 hour rental. The cool part is any potions you want to brew must begin brewing within that time limit, which means you can brew a total of three potions with a 3 hour rental if you’re clever about it.
This has been explained before in this forum I think, but since I can’t find it here under the potions category, I figured I should add a new post for anyone who missed it.
You can get away with brewing a couple 2-hour potions, plus any other potion with a much longer brewing time.
Pay the 16 in gold to rent the cauldron for three hours. Get your first 2-hour potion brewing immediately and add another one to the queue. For example, one basic exstimulo and one healing potion. Enter master notes on the first potion. This reduces total brewing time to just over 1.5 hours.
Since the brewing time for both potions combined will be slightly over three hours, set an alarm on your phone to go in and finish the first potion early. If you finish a potion with 10 minutes or less of brewing time left, it only costs a single gold coin.
Enter master notes on the second potion and this should reduce brewing time to just under the available time left on the rental cauldron.
Now you can add a third potion to the queue, and it’ll start brewing once the second one finishes. The third potion can be a brain elixir, or potent exstimulo, or any of the potions with longer brewing times you happen to need most. It only needs to begin brewing within the 3-hour time limit.
If you forget to check back in on the first potion to finish brewing early, all is not lost. You’ll still be able to sneak in the third by finishing the second potion a few minutes early. Be sure to set an alarm because it’s easy to forget.
Grand total is 17 gold to brew three extra potions, which is well worth the price if you don’t have anything more important to spend your gold on at the moment. This will help you replenish your potion stock much faster if you’ve depleted it after a particularly difficult round of fortress challenges.
Since I blow through a lot more potions now than I did early in the game, I keep the rental cauldron brewing extras for me at all times.
Comments
This is an excellent description of the process and breakdown of the costs involved. I've always felt that the rental cauldron was a very good deal because of the liberal return policy.
This warning from the known issues on the latest release has been bothering me:
Rental Cauldron pop-up may become unresponsive if players rent a cauldron, then attempt to brew a potion with a longer brew time than the time left on the Rental Cauldron
Would you say this only applies to the first potion? Do we feel that the behavior of allowing potions to finish is a feature or a bug?
I didn't notice this on the Known Issues list @Osprey1. I think it's meant to be taken literally though. If they weren't happy with the current mechanics of the rental cauldron, they would have nerfed it some time ago, because people immediately began posting about it.
It looks to me like sometimes the rental cauldron glitches out when being used as intended, and some users reported the error. That doesn't mean they won't choose to "fix" how the rental cauldron works when they address this bug, but let's hope not. I think it's a great feature that rewards both the developers and players alike. I get to feel like I'm getting extra value for my gold, but the fact remains that I am still spending gold.
Great breakdown @Acumen! I have been considering using the rental recently as I seem to have difficulty maintain my stockpile of longer brewed potions. Seems like the spawn rate for higher level threats has increased, if this holds true this info will help me greatly!
@Acumen out of curiosity, how big is your vault space? Everyone's been telling me to stop adding to mine... but I can't, I feel a need to expand 😂
I understand that need, @JulieJubz, lol. I haven't gone too crazy with mine. I may continue to add more space down the road, but right now everything feels adequate.
Energy Capacity: 185
Potions Capacity: 130
Ingredients Capacity: 560
Seeds and Water: 60
That's definitely where I'm headed with mine! Although I've never updated my Seeds and water. I'm really sad that it only gives you 5 spaces at a time... otherwise I totally would!
@Acumen Good insight. I was using the rental cauldron a lot more early on, buy I've learned to harness brewing cycles against my activity and find as long as I keep the main cauldron on the fire at all times, I can spare the gold for other things. When I WAS using it, the 24 hour rental seemed the best value.
@Osprey1 I feel the bonus brewing time is a feature, much like the overages allowed with energy, ingredients and seeds. This was such a welcome feature for me with Wizard's Unite coming from Pokemon Go.
Thank you so much for this tip!! It actually worked for me. Genius!! I appreciate your thorough and easy- to-understand instructions. This makes the rental cauldron worth the cost. I've accidentally rented it a couple times when swiping up on that screen, since there is no pop-up prompt asking, "Are you sure you really want to spend your hard-earned money on this extra cauldron?" before you are charged, so I have avoided that page. It's great to have this little trick in my pocket. Thanks again.
I'm glad you find it useful @Hinkyjinks! It definitely helps me. I just noticed I was wrong about the rental cauldron price in my original post. It's 15 gold, plus one more to finish early, for a total of 16 gold. Either that or they reduced the rental price by one gold piece since my original post, but it's much more likely that I just had my numbers wrong.
Also, with the global bonuses in effect now, which includes reduced brewing time, you can sneak in FIVE potions on a three hour rental. Pretty cool!
There are actually several combinations that work with the current reduced brewing time:
four 2-hour potions
two 3-hour potions and one 2-hour potion
two 4-hour potions
one 4-hour and two 2-hour potions
one 4-hour and one 3-hour potion
one 6-hour potion and one 2-hour potion
+ a long one at the end (for all of these combinations)
BTW, thank you for this original post! I've been using the heck out of it recently and it's magnificent :D
I’d made full use of this when they sped up the brewing on the rental cauldron during community day and I was burning through potions fast as a solo player.
Literally the only thing (other than perhaps the bag of runestones) that seems reasonably priced to me. I’d love more free vault extensions like today’s gift 😉
I just noticed that 10 minutes left over in the trace tonic brew time requires 1 galleon to finish. Thought I’d put it out there in case it’s useful to anyone.
Bump
So I've been giving a lot of thought and trial to the method here.
The 2-hour potions -- weak exstimulo, healing -- are not the most useful ones. The 4-hour potions -- strong exstimulo, wit sharpening, as well as the 3 hour invigoration are much more useful. (Speaking as a professor who starts with 2 and needs 3 to cast).
So, a look at the 8 hour cauldron. Including both the 10% speed and the 15% master, you can use just over 10 hours.
If I did my math correctly, two 4-hour potions, and one 3-hour potion needs only 3 gold worth of "speedup" and then you can add a 12 hour BBE on the end for free. I know from experience that one 4-hour and 2 3-hours has room for a BBE at the end
38 gold to add 4 potions (2 for elites or tough traces, one for easier challenges, and one for double XP) may be a better buy than 16 for two heals and a double xp. In my case, i'm at the point where fortresses are dominated by either:
#1: elite foes if I'm pushing what I can do, or
#2: Formidable pixies ... snarl grr mash grumble :-(
That's too bad if spend gold in one day only 90 gold, i hope there's special offer for next event cauldron rental.
@Keybounce elite foes best is potent exstimulo potion if found harder elite and pixie is nasty one too.
Right on, @Keybounce. Use the rental cauldron to get the best value for your gold. There are several strategies a player can employ to get a great deal out of a 3hr, 8hr, or 24hr rental.
If I did my math correctly, two 4-hour potions, and one 3-hour potion needs only 3 gold worth of "speedup" and then you can add a 12 hour BBE on the end for free. I know from experience that one 4-hour and 2 3-hours has room for a BBE at the end
Confirmed. Needed 3 gold of speedup, gives 3 minutes to spare.