This guide explains how healing works in Thymesia – what types of health potions are available, how to upgrade them, recipes and required ingredients for them, and of course, the non-potion options for health recovery through the Talent Tree and the Plague Weapon!
How to unlock different health potion types
There are 3 different types of health potions in Thymesia:
- General Potion – start with this.
- Long-lasting Potion – unlocked by defeating the main boss of the Sea of Trees.
- Fast-acting Potion – unlocked by defeating the main boss of the Royal Garden.
If you need some tips on how to defeat bosses in Thymesia, check out this guide.
Difference between Healing Potions in Thymesia
Each potion differs in terms of how long it takes to apply the healing and how much overall healing you receive. The longer it takes to receive the healing, the more you get, creating a risk-reward system.
| Potion Type | Max Healing per Potion | Max Uses | Total Max Healing |
|---|---|---|---|
 Long-lasting | 525 | 6 | 3150 |
 Fast-acting | 175 | 8 | 1400 |
 General | 300 | 6 | 1800 |
Long-lasting Potion (1.5x)
All health and energy recovery increases from upgrades and ingredients are 50% greater than what you’d get with the General Potion. The key trade-off of the Long-lasting Potion is that the healing goes out over time instead of being given all at once and the time it takes to consume (inject) this potion is quite long, making it considerably harder to use.
Against bosses, you will need to run out of their range and precisely time your activations just as the boss finishes an attack sequence or during attacks that you know can’t hit you. If the injection animation doesn’t complete, you will have to reapply the healing.
The Long-lasting potion synergizes best with health and energy-increasing ingredients because they’re getting boosted just like the health recovery. The health ones in particular will also help to give you an immediate bit of health that this potion otherwise wouldn’t provide. I’d also like to note that since the healing does not go out immediately, this potion does not work with the First Aid talent that automatically activates a potion if you would take lethal damage.
Fast-acting Potion (0.5x)
All health and energy recovery increases from upgrades and ingredients are 50% less than what you’d get with the General Potion. The key benefit of this reduced effectiveness is a much faster activation time that makes using this potion much easier.
Since the boosts to healing and energy are weakened, but you have more total activations (enabling higher uptime), the Fast-acting Potion is best suited to be used with ingredients that provide some other type of buff or with a specific recipe.
The Fast-acting potion should also work well with builds that don’t allocate too many points to the Vitality stat. You aren’t getting any value out of getting healed for 400 if you don’t even have 400 HP.
General Potion (1x)
The General Potion offers higher health and energy recovery than the Fast-acting Potion and faster activation speed than the Long-lasting Potion. Since there aren’t any particular synergies with the General Potion, I think it’s more important to make sure that you benefit from a recipe by combining specific ingredients to gain an additional effect.
Given that this is the first potion you get, the fact that upgrade materials are finite, the fact that this potion doesn’t cater to a specific build, and the fact that you have an incentive to upgrade your potion ASAP because the game is difficult, I recommend sticking with the General Potion for your first playthrough instead of partially upgrading it and switching to another as you unlock it.
How to upgrade healing potions in Thymesia
Potions can be upgraded with 
Alchemy Enhancers, which drop from stronger enemies that don’t respawn once they have been defeated. Higher-tier upgrades cost a greater number of Alchemy Enhancers compared to the initial upgrades.
There are 4 tiers of potion upgrades across 3 categories. The first upgrade in each category costs 1 Alchemy Enhancer, the second costs 2, and the third costs 3 for a grand total of 6 Alchemy Enhancers required to fully upgrade a given category and 18 to fully max out a potion.
What are Ingredients and how to get them
An ingredient provides an additional effect to a potion of your choosing that applies each time you use the potion. There are 4 different types of effects:
Life (HP) – Recovers X amount of HP
- Fennel
- Sage
- Rosemary
Energy (E) – Recovers X amount of Energy
- Mint
- Oregano
- Thyme
Strength (S) – Increases damage dealt by X% for 30s
- Cinnamon
- Basil
- Garlic
Toughness (T) – Decreases damage taken by X% for 30s
- Lavender
- Clove
- Black Pepper
Each potion can have up to 3 ingredient slots and you can increase the number of ingredient slots by upgrading that category using Alchemy Enhancers.
Ingredients seem to drop randomly, but appear to have a higher chance to drop from stronger enemies. You can have and equip multiple of the same ingredient if you want to stack the same effect.
It seems that ingredients that provide the same type effect may have different ranges depending on the specific ingredient. For example, Cinnamon may provide a damage boost of 5-7% while Garlic may provide a damage boost of only 2-4%.
Recipes in Thymesia
Recipes are bonus effects that are granted by your potion if you have a specific combination of different ingredients. They work kind of like set bonuses in other games.
Unfortunately, the combination and effects seem quite arbitrary. The only pattern I’ve been able to observe is that the 3 ingredients must be different from each other, even if they provide the same category of effect.
Strangely, the ingredient descriptions do not appear to be connected to recipes. For example, you’d think that if you were to combine 3 different ingredients that all induce sweating, you’d get a sweaty recipe, but no. The only recipe hints that the game seems to offer come from some lore notes that you pick up.
Thymesia Recipe List
This list may not be comprehensive; I’ll try to update it as I discover new recipes. If any of you come across a recipe not listed, please include the ingredients and effect in the comments and I’ll add it here. I have not come across any recipes that require multiple of the same ingredient.
Circulation: +5 Health per second
- Fennel (HP)
- Oregano (E)
- Clove (T)
Refreshing: +3 Energy per second
- Fennel (HP)
- Oregano (E)
- Mint (E)
Sweating: Grants 1 stack of Offensive buff
- Black Pepper (T)
- Mint (E)
- Cinnamon (S)
Courage: Grants 1 stack of Defensive buff
- Black Pepper (T)
- Mint (E)
- Lavender (T)
Four Thieves Vinegar: +100 Max HP
- Thyme (E)
- Rosemary (HP)
- Sage (HP)
Focus: +10% Memory Shards
- Thyme (E)
- Rosemary (HP)
- Mint (E)
Warming Up: +10% Damage Dealt
- Basil (S)
- Garlic (S)
- Black Pepper (T)
How to heal yourself in Thymesia without Potions
If you want even more health recovery, there are several sources of healing outside of potions that you have access to in Thymesia.
- Plague Weapon: Scythe
- Talent Tree
- Short Claw Lv2
- Healing Execution Lv1, Lv2
These sources of healing are less limited than the potions, making it a lot easier to survive between beacons (rest chairs).
Thymesia was released on August 18. Here on VULKK.com you can find more guides about the game. I recommend next you learn how stats work in Thymesia.
