Potions and food in Lost Relics are quite a critical thing to push your gear and ability to the limits. It not only can help you run adventures quicker. It can, in fact, help you run adventures and other activities that you otherwise would lack the gear for.

Potions

Lost Relics has a lot of potions in game. They last for an entire single adventure for an entire run of Nightmare. They do have to be used while inside the activity you are running. So the entire 20 slots you can bring and carry out of an activity seems like a lot. It really comes down to what you are doing.

In total, if I wanted to fully max out my potion capabilities and my focus is magic damage. It would come at the total cost per run of ~7,645 gold (using current buy prices at the time of writing this) if I was running something like nightmare.

Nightmare is a bit more interesting than standard adventures. As you have other types of damage, you can have a boost for such as against Custodians. You will also want things like damage taken reduced. There are also a lot of guardians to clear as well, so having that potion is quite needed as well.

Those potions would be Arcane Velocity (10% magic attack speed, 490 gold), Bastion Brew (20% reduced melee damage, 805 gold), Bloodrage Elixir (chance to gain frenzy which increases critical damage, 900 gold), Discreet Magic Potion (5% magic damage, 225 gold), (20% magic damage, 265 gold), Enhanced Magic Potion (10% magic damage, 250 gold), Draco Juice (25% damage to guardians, 380 gold), Guardian’s Demise Brew (40% damage to guardians, 700 gold), Mandate Fracture (50% damage to Custodians, 2,200 gold), Precision Potion (5% crit chance, 300 gold), Precision’s Peak Potion (15% crit chance and 25% crit damage, 960 gold), Ruthless Potion (10% crit chance, 170 gold.

In total, that would use 12 of my 20 inventory slots. Leaving only 8 for food that is used for healing and replenishing energy needed to use my weapon. I can also tell you now that long before it's worthwhile to spend 7,645 gold, at least with the gear I have. I’d be out of energy or long dead before I needed such insanity.

That is where experience comes into play and understanding diminishing returns. If I had to use all those potions just to be able to clear the first floor of Nightmare before having to exit. It would not be worth it, and at that point I’m trying way too hard to push gear or lack understanding of how that dungeon works.

As I would need to run Nightmare 30 times to get a single Nightmare Vault, which was selling for around 100k (at the time of writing this). I would be doing so at the cost of almost 230k in potions. If all I cared about was getting the Nightmare value at that rate, it would just be cheaper to buy it from other players.

While yes, you do get a couple hundred gold worth of items from running Nightmare. Along with a chance at blockchain drops as well. It’s still not even close to being worth it. Even more once you factor in the cost to get a Nightmare key of 1 uncommon Fragment, which was selling for around 0.80 Enjin (at the time of writing this). Having the total cost of 24 Enjin or 74 cents worth of cryptocurrency.

The good news, at least for my gear level, is I don’t need any potions at all to help in my ability to clear the first floor of Nightmare. So any potion would more or less be wasteful. In fact, I can clear the second floor without needing any as well.

I have, however, in the past used at least an Elite Magic Potion for 20% more magic damage. When farming to clear to the second floor. It only costs 265 gold. It increases my clear time and reduces my chance of getting killed or having to use food. That also means I’m getting a Nightmare Vault in 15 runs at the cost of just 3,975 gold and 12 Enjin to do so.

If you look again at just the potions that increase my direct magic dealing and nothing else like crits or damage to guardians. You will notice the market is a bit funny. For 20% it’s just 265 gold. However, for only 5% it’s 225. Since potions stack, I could take all three types of this potion and have an extra 35% magic damage for a cost of 740 gold. I, however, prefer just having 30% more magic damage for 515 gold instead if the situation needs it. For just clearing the second floor, it’s not. At least not for me.

While in theory I can clear to the third floor most of the time. There is a chance that I get killed. It also takes me a lot longer than just spamming out the first two floors of Nightmare. I’m also having to use food, and by the end of the run I’m leaving without having a max energy bar to jump back into the next activity that I want to run. Thus creating downtime for myself to now have to counter or wait till I slowly regen enough energy to go again.

For myself personally, I have found the balance of using Elite Magic Potion, Enhanced Magic Potion, Guardian’s Demise Brew, Ruthless Potion, and Precision Potion. For when I want to clear the first 3 floors of Nightmare. That cost of 1,685 gold gets me 30% magic damage, 40% damage to guardians, 10% crit damage, and 5% crit chance.

Guardian’s Demise Brew is around 41% of my total potion costs in gold. The third floor in Nightmare has a double boss. So, to clear all three floors, I’ll have to take down five guardians.

The guardians on the third floor, I’ll be using more than a full energy bar of 2,300 just to deal with. I could use a Chimera Trout, which restores 1,000 energy; however, it comes at the cost of 330 gold each. Suddenly spending 700 gold to deal an extra 40% damage to guardians makes sense. While there are cheaper foods, you have an inventory limit as well to keep in mind. With the potions, I’m brining in taking 5 out of my 20 total slots. I also naturally want free slots to carry out anything I loot and not have to waste food that was not needed.

While in theory it may or may not be worth bringing in and using Ruthless Potion and Precision Potion. I have the skills to craft my own anyways. So I have just lots sitting around. Since I use the raw materials I gather for making them to level up my alchemy anyway. So I’d rather reduce my clear time, chance of getting killed, and lower my need to consume food.

Next, you might be wondering if it’s even worth using potions to push to the third floor when I could just be clearing to the second floor a lot cheaper. Outside of saving some uncommon Arcane Fragments per Nightmare Vault. I do get a couple more Axiom Sigils from clearing the third floor, where you need 500 total to get an item worth around 37 Enjin. While that last part is not exactly tipping the scales into the yes column for doing so. In total, I only get around 10 Axiom Sigils for clearing three floors, and you need 500 for the item.

There is also the fact that I get more experience for clearing another floor as well. Nightmares give quite decent combat experience at 10,000 per floor. Along with more breach experience, which, as I level that up, increases the difficultly by having more spawns that drop the Axiom Sigil from different kind of Custodians creatures. Naturally, I’m hoping I won’t need the potion to deal 50% more damage to them or quite some time.

There is, however, an even bigger reason. Blockchain item drops. On the third floor, there is a slim chance of almost zero. Where you could get a Stellar Core staff drop. They can sell for about 4,000 Enjin ($117 at the time of writing this). Now suddenly it makes a lot more sense to be at least clearing to the third floor at such a small amount of gold in the end. Just for a chance at a drop like that.

Food

Next comes in the other type of consumable that I’ve slightly talked about: food. There are two types. One heals, and the other gives you energy so you can deal damage. There are quite a few different kinds, from only healing 200 health or energy all the way up to 1,500. Needless to say, at the lower end of like 20 gold, you hardly think of the cost of using the cheaper food. However, when you start to spend 670 gold for 1,500 energy, it suddenly becomes another factor to consider. Even more so when you only have so many slots to fill with food, and not having enough health or energy on a Nightmare run is death, with you losing any remaining food you have, potions you used, and getting nothing out of it.

There comes times when you sometimes just got pay the price to see how far you can push it. When you don’t, you come up short and leave with nothing. This happened with me in wanting to see how deep into Nightmare I could.

I made it to the 5th floor and even the second guardian that had spawned. I then ran out of energy and had no more food to get any back. It did not help any that it was the guardian that gives me the most trouble. Otherwise, I might have been able to sit there at 75% reduced damage just spamming my basic attack for a long time to get the win. Instead, the run ended in death.

If I had packed one more energy food over health, I’d have had it easily. Even better yet, I had spent some gold on the dual health and energy food. Freeing up further slots for even more healing ability.

I, however, had no idea what to expect. How many guardians, creature levels, or other challenges I would be facing past the third floor. Needless to say, for my gold costs, it was fun to experience but at the moment not worth the cost. Not to mention how long it takes to clear those higher floors, at least for me.

Final Thoughts

Dimming returns, learning from experiences, and leveraging consumables to get ahead is a smart way to play. It’s also something you have to think about and play around with. An easier example is the normal adventures. Having twenty inventory slots is a lot for them, and it’s easy to get carried away on potions and food.

I can run uncommon and rare adventure maps at such a quick rate. That any use of potions since there are no speed movement potions. Is not worth it. It’s even more likely not worth it for me to use any for clearing rare adventures either.

However, once I get into legendary adventure maps. It becomes quite worthwhile to at least be using Elite Magic Potion since they only cost 265 gold at this time. Each map run alone nets me 12 Enchanted Stones, and 20 of them you get Enchanted Island Scrolls that I can sell for 4k gold. So a single 2 runs pays for enough potions for 15 runs worth of potions.

That’s around 13% of the total gold I’d get if I were to sell the Enchanted Island scrolls. The actual costs are a bit lower than that since you loot items. Including a chance at a coin pouch that could have 1k gold. Along with looting blockchain items as well. As the more adventures you run, the more chances you have.

There are a lot of factors that impact my map clearing speed. From the map layout, creature density, if I land some lucky crits on the guardian, and so many other factors. Saving just a minute and a half per run is a huge deal. I’ll sometimes even toss in other potions as well, but there are quite the diminishing returns.

There are also times when using potions to clear things you could not have had a chance at are worthwhile. Such as when there are rewards from ongoing events. Suddenly, an activity that you would love to do for those rewards where you die 50% of the time without potions. Becomes a 5% chance of getting killed with them. Opening up new doors and worthwhile adventures at the cost of a little gold.

While I myself by no means have a fast clearing time of the adventures I tend to run. I know that some of those who do are using so many potions to do so. The math is not mathing when it comes to covering gold costs. However, for those players, they are usually beyond the care of gold costs anymore and are looking to maximize their total runs per hour at any gold cost. Those kind of players can also craft all their own food and potions. Where they are getting a greater per value for 20 Enchanted Stones gained then I am. So in the end, what works for one player with their current skill levels and gear won’t work for another one with lower skills and gear.

Information

Content was written and screenshots taken by @Enjar. Content was written about Lost Relics.