Please clarify a bit more:

Does the recipe change absolutely randomly and no relation at all to the amount of resources players expended the previous day to brew? I mean, if my clan of 1000 players expend 3000 gold, 3000 stones, 3000 metals and 3000 ferns during monday it has absolutely no effect on the recipe of tuesday?

So, Admin, thank you as ever for being a great Admin! A few questions.

Is the lower probability for previously used ingredients to appear in recipes on a global scale, per-player, or per-pot? And is this effect cumulative?

Let X Metal > amount of any other resource.
Assume X Metal is enough to flag metal as unlikely.

A) X metal are used one day last week.
0 metal are used yesterday.
Is metal less likely to be in recipes today?

B) X metal are used EVERY day for the last week.
0 metal are used yesterday.
Is metal less likely to be in recipes today?

C) X metal are used in Pot A.
0 metal are used in Pot B.
Is metal less likely to be in Pot B's recipes?

D) X metal are used by everyone but Fred.
Fred hasn't ever used metal.
Is metal less likely to be in Fred's recipes today?

E) What is the difference in this effect, if any, when:
a: X metal are used to make X different potions.
b: X metal are used to make the same potion X times.
c: X metal get used but only 1 potion is made.
d: 1 metal is used and 1 potion is made.
e: X metal are wasted.
f: 1 metal is wasted.

I had told Humanophage I was interested in helping with the encyclopedia rewrites. I love the cold, heartless balance of TB's alchemy, and I'd be honored to write about it - if you'll let me (and describe what kind of format or mark-up I should send.) I have years of professional experience in technical writing, and will respect the mixture of facts and lore.

You asked too detailed. while I love to know answers of them, I doubt the devs will answer those.

Alpha class potions are okay for a while. Expensive, but bearable.

Beta class potions, now they are Ruinous.

Exactly the opposite. The more one kind of ingredient is used (by everybody), the less chance it has to be included in the next day's sequences.

Wallace... let there be some mystery

My question was much more simple than my write-up implied, I just wanted to be sure to get around the language barrier.

You just answered the larger half of my question, if "by everybody" does, in fact, mean all ingredients across all players. The "how long does this effect last" is much more pointless if this is the case, too, as things should average out, and rare ingredients remain preferred.

It's funny, though, because there are so many things which are over-explained, even in the Alchemy section, where it seems like just the kind of stuff that a player should figure out on their own. And then one sentence at the end confuses everybody

The logic is simple.
Gold is cheap... e.g. metal is worth 3-4 times more
So everybody tends to include gold in their recipes... and there's a need to balance that.

We're very interested in making our encyclopedia more elaborate... if some native English speakers wish to edit it or improve in any way we welcome that with arms wide open.

I"m pretty sure I understand the last bits of it, and now agree the design plays well off of the grand-scale economy (as opposed to a player gaming by rotating ingredients daily.) It's an elegant way to softly enforce a rule nobody would question if you had hard-coded it.

I'll gladly rewrite the alchemy section of the encyclopedia, as well as the in-game help for the potions. I'll start on the text tonight when I have more time, but what format should I aim for, straight HTML?

Thanks for bearing with me!

Yes its basic HTML

Beta potions are extremely expensive and hard to experiment, due to the extreme rarity of half the ingredients:

Dragon scales: the whole world always have only 5 random spawned dragons. Even if they are killed the moment they appear, there's no way we got enough scales for every brewers. Extreme rare and extreme expensive.

Ancient Dust: random loots from orcs (rare) or destroy artifacts. Destroy artifacts is quite expensive and extreme time consuming because buying them on market cost time transporting. Furthermore, it's needed for item crafting. So it's very much in demands. Rare and hard to stock.

Ferns: randomly placed spawn points. Amount of harvest unknown to players. In demand for both alpha and beta potions. Hard to stock.

Tentacles: harvested from Kraken on the seas. Can be bought on market. Expensive but easy to stock.

Orc blood: In demand for both alpha and beta potions. Hard to stock.

House Spirit: can be recovered from destroying buildings. Expensive but can manufacture at large and controllable amount.

Mandrakes: can be cultivated. Expensive but can be produced at large and controllable amount.
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Since each attempt need 5 ingredients, we have 4 stock-able. Just one more, which is either ferns or orcs blood. They are both needed for both potions, so both should be increased.

I really want devs considering either

a) increase the randomly spawned points of ferns AND/OR the amount of crops of each point AND/OR methods to cultivate them.

b) increase the blood we can get from orcs. Double the current amount at least.

IF both sources can be done then we can start seriously considering beta attempts. As it is, we, I, only have enough for experiment with alpha.