Trouble with the Save System
The first and most important thing for you to be aware of is the trouble with the save system. You will know immediately if you're running into trouble because your save and load times will start slowing down. I had 40+ hours in the game on my first playthrough when it quit loading. Thankfully, a friend told me to try downloading it on my PC via the Xbox app (thanks, Jawnie B!), and that worked well enough to allow me to finish the achievements, but it was slow. I can't tell you exactly what's going on, but I can tell you from experience what happens and how you can hopefully avoid the issue.
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The key here is not to have too many saves. Every time you rest to start a new day, the game will Autosave. These max out at five and are not the issue. It's making manual saves that creates the problem. I had no trouble with two or three manual saves. I could still delete saves. The magic number for trouble seems to be four or five. I'm an old RPGer, and I tend to create extra saves, but it causes massive problems with this game. The troubles compound the more saves you get:
1-2 Manual Saves - no problems
4-5 Manual Saves - can't delete saves anymore
5+ Saves - When you overwrite a manual save that isn't at the top of the save files, it doesn't overwrite - it CREATES A NEW SAVE. This is when the troubles really start. I had inadvertently created some new saves and was now up to eight manual save files when I realized that you have to be careful about the interplay between autosaves and manual saves. I was taking a break from making recipes by selling potions and resting. This put the autosaves at the top of the Save menu. Then when I went back to making recipes and overwrote a manual save, it created a new file at the top of the list. My eight saves were now nine saves (plus five autosaves). That's an "oh, crap..." I did learn though that as long as I kept saving to that top save, it didn't create new ones, so it's something about the order of the save files.
So, in a nutshell, don't make more than two manual saves. If you accidentally make a third, delete one. You will need to save A LOT in this game, so it's extremely important not to glitch it out.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, I have a few more tips that you need to remember.
Tip #1: Always make Level 3 potions and save the recipes
The way this game works is that you move the potion you're making around a map to add different effects to it. While getting to your desired effect, you will also need to dodge the piles of bones along the way because they can destroy your potion.
Here's your alchemy map with (from left to right) the bellows, ladle, cauldron, and mortar and pestle.
You always begin in the center of the Alchemy Map. Different ingredients move your potion in different directions, so however many ingredients you use to make that potion is your "recipe." You have three levels available for potions - weak (Lv. 1), moderate (Lv. 2), and strong (Lv. 3). Each effect has a different symbol. As you center your potion over the outline of the effect (they're the same shape), how well you line the matching images up will determine the strength of the potion. As you're lining up your potion with the matching bottle, Roman numerals I, II, or III will appear on the bottle. Except for specialty potions/legendary recipes, you always want that III.
Once you've got the potion where you want it, you add the effect by using the bellows to the left of the cauldron when you're ready.
ALWAYS wait and create Level 3 potions. The achievement that takes the longest in the game is getting to Level 15 Popularity, and popularity is determined primarily by the strength of your potions. Level 3 potions give you four stars each, and considering that you are going to need literally thousands of stars to reach that popularity level, you want to use Level 3 potions from the very beginning. Popularity Levels 14 and 15 alone take 1,000 and 1,250 stars respectively, so don't waste your time with weak potions.
You will need to manipulate your ingredients and the "ladle" that stands just to the left of the cauldron (it doesn't look like a ladle to me) . By taking the handle of the ladle and pushing it up with the left stick, it will move your potion back toward the center. An arrow will appear beside the potion to show you the direction it's moving with the ladle. This is great for making tiny adjustments, but you can also use the ladle to move a potion all the way back to the center of the map if you're moving from one side to the other, so be sure to use this tool.
Go back and forth between your ingredients and your ladle to center the potion and make the Lv. 3. Once you have created your potion, select "Save Recipe" in the menu with the picture of the bottle on the left, and the recipe for that potion will be saved in your recipe book. You only start out with twelve empty pages, so buy recipe pages from merchants as you need to. Once a potion's recipe has been saved, you can click on the book in the top right corner with the bottle on it and choose the recipe to make it instantly (as long as you have the ingredients). You can do this on the sales screen, which speeds it up.
Just a side note on getting around the map:
When your cursor is on the map, you can zoom out with the left bumper or zoom in with the right bumper. You can move the map to look around with the right stick.
Tip #2: Make your initial recipes with only the four/five basic ingredients
There are only five screens in this game: the shop, the map, your bedroom, the alchemy machine, and the magic garden. After you have served X number of customers each day, you can go to your room and rest. Your garden magically replenishes while you're sleeping every night, providing you with free ingredients. There are a lot more ingredients in this picture than normal because I had quit harvesting late in the game, so apparently, they pile up. Don't forget to check up and down the tree.
Make your initial recipes only with these ingredients. Later, when you have more money and better ingredients available, you can make new recipes and erase the old ones (to free up that page), but start with the basics so that you can make plenty of potions.
The Basic Ingredients:
Waterbloom - East
Fire Bell - West
Windbloom - North
Terraria - South
I also include Lifeleaf in this list. It is not as plentiful in your garden as the other four, but it shows up enough to be useful. Each ingredient moves your potion in a different direction. This will carry forward to elements in general - water/ice moves right; fire/flame moves left; air/clouds move up; earth/roots move down. A lot of ingredients don't fit neatly into these categories, but this is the general breakdown.
Tip #3: Use Haggle Only with Merchants
Haggling changes prices. When you elect to haggle, a screen will appear that has yellowish blocks on it and an arrow that moves horizontally back and forth between two handshakes (green squares). A scale will appear under this slider. It is your goal for the left scale to be sitting on the ground. To do this, click 
when the arrow is on the yellow squares. If you quickly hit five squares in a row, haggling will end because you have made the best deal you can. If you're satisfied with fewer, you can click on one of the handshakes to end the haggling. If you hit the right end and start back to the left, it may take more than five squares, depending on how much that left scale has lifted off the ground. Hitting the max squares will net you a 20% discount on purchases, which adds up to a lot of money over the course of the game. I always used the easiest difficulty because I'm not good at hitting the little squares, but if you are good at it, you can change the difficulty using the five squares at the top of the Haggle screen. Just remember that to use the two hardest difficulties, you have to unlock them in the talent tree. You can choose from Very Easy (20% discount - well, 19.96% if you put a pencil to it) all the way up to Very Hard (50% discount), and your discount will increase accordingly.
The main point here is that you want to haggle with merchants to save money on your purchases. You DO NOT want to haggle with customers. Haggling with customers raises your selling price, but it also lowers your popularity, so you'll get three stars instead of four on your Lv. 3 potions. That's a bad idea.
Tip #4: Give Merchants the Potions They Need
There are five merchants in this game:
The Alchemist sells recipe pages, legendary recipes, and alchemy machine parts.
The Mushroom Man sells mushrooms.
The Dwarf sells stones.
The Herbalist sells plants and flowers.
The Traveling Merchant sells a little of everything - plants, mushrooms, stones, and recipe pages but in smaller quantities.
The Alchemist and Traveling Merchant never ask for a potion, but the other three will from time to time. You always know because the option "What potion do you need?" will appear in the speech options. ALWAYS give them the potions they require. Doing so raises the number of available goods they will offer you for sale, both types and quantity. The only one of these that I ever found to be bothersome was when the dwarf asked for a potion with five different protections on it; I had to make that one. The others are pretty standard.
Tip #5: Shop the Sales
You will go through thousands of ingredients before you're done, so manage your money wisely. When a merchant's menu of goods opens, the prices will be listed at the top of each ingredient, but they will be in different colors. The peachy kind of color is the regular price; red is double price; green is half-price. Buy green whenever you can.
I will pay regular price from time to time if I'm running short of something I need, but I don't buy red unless I'm truly desperate for an ingredient. Prices will change as you level up your popularity and talent tree. Recipe pages, for example, start out at 200 gold each. With a maxed out trading tree, this drops to 100. Shopping green gets them for 50, so shop wisely, at least until you're so rich that it doesn't matter. Money isn't a huge issue in the game except early on. Just play smart.
Tip #6: Learn to Manipulate Your Potions
I mentioned in Tip #1 about using the ladle in conjunction with your ingredients. You can also use the grinding feature to your advantage. You can grind ingredients with the mortar and pestle that sits to the right of the cauldron. When you choose an ingredient, the path it will take will show up on your map. Your potion is the starting point. The X is where the potion will go if you drop the ingredient in the cauldron with no grinding. Everything after the X, however, is optional. After the X, you will see a further path in a lighter color that ends with a mortar (looks like a cup). As you grind the ingredient, the path will continue to move until it reaches the cup.
Keep in mind that you can stop the grind anywhere between the X and the cup. To move the potion along the path you've made after you've put your ingredients in the cauldron, grab the spoon in the cauldron and stir.
Between the grinding and the ladle, get those strong potions made.
Tip #7: Save A LOT
I've already warned you about being careful with your save files, but it's important that you get in the habit of saving a lot (just stick to those two manual saves), especially as your potions become more complicated. The controls for this game can be very sensitive, and it's so, so easy to zip right past the III when making a potion, so save before you make those last few tiny motions. You also want to save if you're making a risky move. There are piles of bones all over the map, and touching these damages your potion. If the potion takes too much damage, it will disappear and you have to start again, so I save if I'm cutting it a little close just in case I lose the potion and don't want to start from scratch. Also, you should save after each new recipe you add to your recipe book. Saving the recipe to your book does not create a game save, so if you reset, you can lose a recipe.
Effects
I'm providing a list of all the possible effects and what they look like. I was going to give you pictures, but I couldn't find a good way to do that (sorry). These are in alphabetical order.
Acid - a green and white blob with bubbles above it (looks kind of like a cauliflower)
Acid Protection - the acid symbol on a shield
Anti-Magic - the mana symbol on a shield
Charm - a heart with an arrow through it
Curse - a man with pins sticking in him like a voodoo doll
Dexterity - a blue animal paw print
Enlargement - a man inside a bigger red man
Explosion - a red sun
Fear - looks like the painting The Scream (a guy with his hands on either side of his face screaming)
Fire - a flame
Fire Protection - a flame on a shield
Fragrance - a purple perfume bottle
Frost - a snowflake
Frost Protection - a snowflake on a shield
Gluing - looks like a blob of dripping goo
Hallucinations - a multicolored swirl
Healing - a heart
Inspiration - a harp
Invisibility - a man with incomplete edges
Levitation - a pair of wings (looks more like folded wings - not spreading wings)
Libido - a hot pink tear drop
Light - a yellow sun
Lightning - a purple lightning bolt
Lightning Protection - the lightning symbol on a shield
Luck - a golden horseshoe
Magical Vision - an eye
Mana - blue star-like things
Necromancy - a skull
Poisoning - a knife dripping green
Poison Protection - the poison symbol on a shield
Rage - a red bull's head
Rejuvenation - a golden apple
Shrinking - a man with a smaller blue man in the center
Sleep - ZZZZs
Slipperiness - a dripping oil can
Slowness - a snail
Stench - looks like a swirl of green intestine
Stone Skin - a stone shield
Strength - a flexing arm
Swiftness - a pair of winged boots
Wild Growth - a plant sprout
Some Key Phrases
Usually, when someone asks for a potion, it's pretty clear what he or she wants, but if you're new to the game, some of them might not be obvious, so I'm listing a few requests you might not immediately recognize. Please remember that I ended up with an evil reputation both times I played, so I might have missed some nice ones.
Anyone who wants to be agile, nimble, a better pickpocket, a better hunter, to stab "the soft bits" better, to relieve rich men of their goods, etc. is looking for Dexterity.
Someone wants to escape the guards (Swiftness) or hide from the guards (Invisibility). Only once have I seen "nimble" want a swiftness potion.
Someone who wants to be smaller and more nimble wants Dexterity or Shrinking.
If someone wants to feel like a youngster again, he's asking for Rejuvenation.
Anyone wanting to provoke a fight or get enemies to kill each other is looking for Rage.
If someone asks for something useful in a fight, that can be Fire, Frost, Lightning, Explosion, Healing, or Poisoning.
If someone wants to beat up someone, "but he's massive," give Strength or Enlargement.
If someone wants to throw something in the guard's face that packs a punch, it's Acid.
If someone wants to blind a guard, it's Light.
If someone wants to confuse or befuddle an enemy or "relax," have a pick-me-up, feel good, or get high himself, that's Hallucinations.
If a person can't think of anything good or needs to come up with a plan, that's Inspiration.
Someone who needs protection from magic, to kill a mage, or needs help getting past a magical item (like a chest or rock) needs Anti-Magic.
If someone wants help getting a skeleton key to work, that's Dexterity or Slipperiness.
Someone who wants to open a chest needs Explosion. Opening a chest quietly is Acid.
Someone who wants to enhance or replenish her magic needs a Mana potion.
Any form of raising the dead is Necromancy.
Anyone who has no luck at dice or cards wants a Luck potion.
Someone who wants to see in the dark without drawing attention to himself or wants to see through a spyglass needs Magical Vision.
Intimate affairs or help in the bedroom is Libido while influencing a person or making someone fall in love is Charm.
To make something glow in the dark, provide Light.
Lubricating a golem's joints is Slipperiness.
3. Story walkthrough1. Walkthrough overview
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