Its not that bad. But in order to "succeed" you will need to take careful notes!

The first thing you must understand is that the Potion Authenticator will give you clues. When you mix a potion, using one mineral, one organ, and one herb, if TWO of the THREE ingredients were right, you will get a message "You feel close".

When this happens, it is very tempting to try to find the third ingredient. DO NOT DO THIS! Let me show you why: Let's say that you submit a potion: gold / brain / barberry and receive the message "You feel close". First we must determine which 2 of the three are correct. To do this, submit similar potions, changing only one ingredient. Let's assume we submit these three, and get the results shown:

At this point, we could assume that "gold / brain" was the functional pair of our original result. NOTE: It is possible that all three would show "CLOSE". Perhaps, for example, "gold / brain" are 2 of 3 ingredients for one potion, and "brain / barberry" 2 of 3 ingredients for another! The temptation at this point, is to begin submitting "gold / brain / apple" then "gold / brain / arnica" "gold / brain / bloodmoss". Again DO NOT DO THIS!

Look what we learn "your" way: We now know that the following 3 combinations do not produce potions . . . gold/brain/apple, gold/brain/arnica, gold/brain/bloodmoss

What is the alternative? Try to use MINERALS and HERBS that have not been used before for this ORGAN. (I use ORGANS as my tracking base . . . you may choose another thing). Let's assume that instead of chasing the "missing herb" we had continued to submit "unrelated" BRAIN potions. DO NOT DO THIS!

If all of these show "no result" what have we gained? A LOT! We now know that for the organ BRAIN, (my tracking category) ANIPIUM, NICKEL, TUNGSTEN, APPLE, ARNICA, and BLOODMOSS do not make ANY potions! Cross them off your BRAIN page! We just eliminated 690 combinations with 3 attempts! This is *SO* important to track that I've written an Excel '97 spreadsheet to help me. You can download it here: Porter's Potion Spreadsheet. It has 23 pages, one per organ, and has 3 macros built in. When you click in the square for your combination, (PAGE = organ, COLUMN = herb, ROW = mineral), you can do "Ctrl+Shift+H" to mark all combinations using that Herb as "X" for "no further testing", "Ctrl+Shift+M" to mark all combinations using that Mineral as "X" for "no further testing", or "Ctrl+Shift+N" to mark both that Mineral AND that Herb as "X" for "no further testing".