Best cauldron recipes in Alchemy Factory (1.1)

Counting only ingredients the game lets you sell, so their worth is money you would otherwise get, two of the 11 Cauldron products you can sell add value at base prices. Ranked by value added per minute on one Cauldron:

The other nine sellable products don't pay from sellable ingredients: Salt, Black Powder, Topaz, Obsidian, Lapis Lazuli, Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. Topaz, Obsidian, Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald do add value from late ingredients you can't sell; see late-game recipes.

Value added is what the product sells for minus what its three ingredients are worth, both at the game's base values. Per minute divides that by the craft time, which grows with the product's target value, from 3 to 60 seconds. Times and heat (1 to 10,000 per batch) follow the curve community calculators use (opens in a new tab), which matches the craft times the game lists for its own Cauldron recipes. Heat is listed but not subtracted.

For each product we took the cheapest set that:

• in the top table, uses only ingredients the game lets you sell, so “worth” is a sale you give up;
• uses three different items. Players do use repeats, but how the game values them is unverified;
• sits at least 1% of the target inside the product's value window, so a small change in a patch can't flip it. For 16 of the 47 products a cheaper set exists, but closer than that to an edge; we skipped those;
• leaves out the 16 bulk items (Logs, ores, relics), because how a portion counts in a Cauldron isn't confirmed.

Not counted: the time, machines and heat it takes to make the ingredients. The late-game and early lists also use intermediates you can't sell; those count at their base value, which is a yardstick, not a price. The product rule (the sum of three values lands on the nearest target) reproduces all four Cauldron recipes the game lists; catalysts and cauldrons explains it in full.

The game lists one Cauldron recipe each for the Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald and Philosopher's Stone, but any three items whose values land in the same window make the same product. At base values the listed Ruby and Emerald recipes use ingredients worth more than the gem sells for.

Philosopher's Stone

The listed recipe spends three valuable items. Any set whose cauldron values add up to more than 800,000 works, since no product sits above the stone. Plank + World Tree Core + Emerald does it for 9509 gold 50 silver instead of 143014 gold 30 silver. Each stone takes 60 seconds and 10,000 heat, the top of the curve. You can't sell it; it goes into the Eternal Catalyst.

Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald

The listed Ruby recipe loses 2121 silver; the cheapest safe set adds 1515 silver. The listed Sapphire recipe adds 2836028 silver 360 copper; the cheapest safe set adds 1801 gold 80 silver. The listed Emerald recipe loses 2342212 gold 34 silver 221 copper; the cheapest safe set adds 11 gold. Gems feed each other: the Emerald set uses a Ruby, so plan the whole chain in the finder.

The biggest margins need ingredients from after the Cauldron's level that the game won't let you sell (Resonant Catalyst, World Tree Core, Marble, Oblivion Essence, Vitality Essence, Fertile Catalyst and Lavender). Their “worth” below is the game's base value, a yardstick for comparing sets, not money you give up: you can't sell them, and making them takes production lines of their own. Open each ingredient's page to see its production chain, and plan the whole line in the production planner.

The Cauldron unlocks at Level VI. These recipes only use ingredients available by Level V, so you can feed them from lines you already run.

Malachite leads at 43064 silver 306 copper a minute, about 1.43 times as much as Black Powder. Early sets can also land on Topaz and Obsidian, but the cheapest ones are worth more than those products sell for. All of these sets use intermediates you can't sell, counted at base value. The finder's “Earliest” sort finds sets like these for any product.

For the best return on what goes in, look at the multiple, not the margin. Among the sellable-ingredient sets, Turquoise sells for about 1.48 times as much as its ingredients would, ahead of Malachite (1.21×).

Making fuel

A Cauldron can also make fuel from spare intermediates. Net heat below is the fuel's heat minus the heat one batch uses and the heat the ingredients would give if you burned them instead. Black Powder also sells for 660660 copper, so burning one gives up that sale. See the fuel calculator and the heat and fuel guide for how that compares with other fuels.

For some products, the Cauldron is the only way to make them on purpose. Impure Copper Powder, Crude Silver Powder and Crude Gold Dust have no recipe of their own: other machines only give them as a by-product. Three catalysts can also come out of a Cauldron, as an alternative to their usual machine.

• Lock the inputs. Players report that when one belt runs dry, another ingredient can take its slot and the product changes (Steam thread (opens in a new tab)). The 0.4.4.4298 patch added an item filter for this; also keep each belt slightly over-supplied and filter the output.
• Check any recipe before you build it. Paste the three items into the cauldron finder; it shows the sum, the product and how close it sits to an edge.
• Distrust old lists. The 0.5.4467 patch (June 2026) removed an extra multiplier the Cauldron applied when picking its product and adjusted recipes, so lists from before then can be wrong.
• Budget heat per batch. Sapphire needs 4,848 heat a batch, about 127 heat a second; size the fuel with the fuel calculator.
• Skip repeats unless you test them. Community calculators (opens in a new tab) scale a repeated ingredient's sum by 0.65 (two alike) or 0.5 (three alike); that is unverified, so try one batch first.