Ishin Potions: How Mixing Works and Which Effects Are Reported

Quick answer

You mix ingredients and the effect lands on your character straight away, so the change you see is the result. Different potions exist, but no printed recipe list is established, and the outcomes reported in play so far are a swollen head, a head shrunk to pea size, floaty high jumps and blue skin.

• The potion book is inside live notebooks, which you reach by sitting down first.
• The entry marked with a question mark in the potion list is called mystery X; what it produces is not established.
• Nothing supplied ties a specific ingredient combination to a specific effect, so expect to run your own mixes.

What potions are in Ishin

The game's own description advertises the feature as a hook rather than a system: it invites you to "Grow plants- what happens if you mix them together... with potions as well?" That is official promotional text, so it confirms mixing plants and potions belongs to Ishin, but it gives no interaction detail, no ingredient list and no recipe.

Players fill in the rest. In recorded first-day play, a newcomer announced they were off to make dish soap, and another player corrected them: you make potions, and beyond that, "you can make different potions." The correction came from a player rather than a tutorial prompt, which is a fair picture of how this activity is passed around — word of mouth between students rather than a screen the game puts in front of you. In recorded play, another player explained that potions exist, so treat other students as a practical lead if you are working out this activity.

So the answer to "what potions exist" is narrower than the question sounds: the game has multiple potions and reports of several distinct outcomes, but no catalogue with names and effects has been established. The potion list you can see in-game, described below, is the closest thing to a reference.

How potion effects are found

Discovering what a mix does is trial and error. One player summed the method up as "you just got to mix and match until you figure out something hopefully," and the other player confirmed it with a yes. Treat that as the method itself rather than a fallback: nothing supplied shows a menu of guaranteed recipes, so treat discovering a mix's result as the activity itself rather than looking for a recipe list.

One useful thing to know before you start is that the result arrives fast. Effects apply to your character straight away, and they can catch the maker off guard — right after one mix, a player asked "what happened? Someone Someone cast a spell on me." If you are mixing around other players, expect to look different before you have worked out what your mix did, and check your own character rather than waiting for a message to explain it.

The potion book and mystery X

There is an in-game reference for potions. A player described it simply as a book you reach "if you sit down and you go to live notebooks," and the newer player then found it — "Live notebooks. Okay, I see." Sitting down first is part of the described route to the book, so try that before hunting through menus: from live notebooks the book is where the reference lives.

The book's contents have not been documented, so it is worth opening yourself rather than relying on a summary. One detail from the potion list is known: the entry marked with a question mark is called mystery X. What mystery X produces has not been established.

Effects players have reported

During a recorded gameplay session, these character transformations were described or seen:

• A swollen head — the character's head swells up.
• A pea-sized head — the opposite result, with the head shrinking down small.
• Floaty high jumps — the character's jumps lift unusually high.
• Blue skin — a player making potions turned blue, remarking "Holy, I am blue."

All four are observations of named players in one session. Which ingredient combination produces which effect is not established, so read them as a picture of what mixing can do to your character rather than as a map from ingredients to results. Because the effects land immediately, you can confirm a mix by looking at yourself right after making it: a change in head size, jump height or colour is the sign that the mix did something.

Growing plants, and where potions come in

Plant growing is a separate activity from mixing, and the two are easy to blur because the game's teaser runs them together. On the growing side, there is a big communal plant that is open for everyone to contribute to — as one player put it, "you can come over the big plant is for everyone to put something in" — and once you have planted, the item needs watering: "I can plant some stuff. Now I need to water it."

That planting-and-watering interaction is the gardening half. What the official text dangles is the step beyond it, mixing what you grow with potions, and there is no documented detail on how that combination is done. If you are new to campus generally, the Ishin beginner guide covers the opening steps and the first activities worth trying.

What is not established yet

The honest state of potion knowledge in Ishin is that the activity is confirmed and the method is clear, while the specifics are open. Which combination produces the swollen head, the pea-sized head, the floaty jumps or the blue skin is not known; what mystery X does is not known; and the potion book's contents have not been documented. That makes this a page to check back on as you experiment, and your own mixes are currently the fastest way to learn anything beyond the four effects listed above.