The Voodoo Brew is a new room introduced in Dungeons 4, giving the Horde section of the tech tree access to a number of useful buffs. One of the more interesting elements of this is the ability to craft Perk Potions, which will give the creatures they're used on a permanent buff and special title.

There are 3 branches of Research for the room. The Room itself unlocks Healing, Speed and Perk Potions, and then there are separate researches for Basic and Advanced Potions. Once the room is researched you can place Alchemists Cauldrons, which let Little Snots brew random Potions from those available until the storage is full.

When you use a Perk Potion on a creature it will gain a title after it's name, and a potion Icon will be added to it's portrait. You can hold a Creature in the Hand of Terror and then mouse over the icon to view the details of it's buff.



Unless of course you can't. See the bugs section for more details.

This guide aims to focus on the Perk Potions primarily. I may mention others in passing, but we're here to find out the range of Perks available.

Broadly speaking there are 2 classes of Perks available. There are the more common ones which can buff a Creatures Health, Armour or Damage stats and are produced fairly regularly. Then there are the rarer potions which can provide buffs to different damage types, health regeneration or resource effects. These are generated a lot less frequently, and being slightly more diverse than the more common Perks it can be tricky to get particular ones you want.

After quite a bit of testing I've managed to establish the baseline ranges of effects for each potion, and each class will be covered in it's own section.

When laying out your Dungeon it is recommended to try and keep a Temple with Sacrificial Pit near the Voodoo Brew. You will need to collect and dump a LOT of potions to clear space for brewing the ones you really need.

It's a good idea to have some small rooms adjacent to the Voodoo Brew which you can keep locked. That way you can sort potions as you like without any Little Snots moving things around whilst you're looking for the creature you want to apply it to. Or indeed the Creature wandering off whilst you look for the right Potion.



You can hold 25 regular potions in the Hand of Terror at a time. But only 1 Perk Potion. Even identical ones. This can make sorting through Perk Potions somewhat painful.

A useful passive ability to take is the Magic Battery auto recharge. This keeps your Cauldrons active of course, but also gives you the option to lock the Voodoo Brew to prevent your Little Snots wasting time moving potion piles around. It also makes it a lot easier to go through the available Perk Potions as they will just be dumped in front of the Cauldron.



As the Cauldrons produce Potions at random from the available pool you can always increase you're chances of producing Perk Potions by forgoing the Basic or Advanced Potion research options. Personally I'd always keep Advanced Potions for Horde Strength and The Golden Potion. But I seldom bother with Basic Potions. Obviously this is down to personal preference, but worth considering if there's something in particular you want to concentrate on.

The most common Perk Potions are Armour, Vitality and Damage. They are produced in roughly similar quantities, but obviously RNG may favour one above the others to one degree or another.

Armor Perk
increases the Creatures Armor by X

Vitality Perk
The creature's maximum life energy is increased by X%

Damage Perk
The damage done by the creature is increased by X%

As you can see the Armour perk only improves at level 3. Which seems odd but there we go.

The Damage and Vitality Perks share the same range variations at level 1 & 2, but the level 3 Damage perk does cap out a lot lower than the maximum Vitality Perk. So don't waste time holding out for those 80%+ Damage buffs as they don't exist (as far as I can tell). It's also worth noting that there is quite an overlap in the range of potions between levels. The top end of one level is the bottom end of the next one. A Level 3 Potion will always be better than a level 1 Potion, but a Level 2 Potion might not be.

The more varied Perk Potions are the rarer to drop, but the effects are mostly not dependent on the level of the potion. A lvl 1 Damage Sensitivity Potion will have the same effect as a lvl 3. The only difference is in the title it gives the creature.

Physical Sensitivity Perk
the creature makes all targets hit 50% more sensitive to Physical attacks for 5S

Magic Sensitivity Perk
the creature makes all targets hit 50% more sensitive to Magic Attacks for 5S

Cold Sensitivity Perk
the creature makes all targets hit 50% more sensitive to Cold for 5S

Fire Sensitivity Perk
the creature makes all targets hit 50% more sensitive to Fire for 5S

Regeneration Perk
The creature regenerates 1% of it's maximum life energy every 5s

Loot Perk
the creature drops random resources upon death

Spendthrift Perk
On payday, the Creature brings X% of it's wage to the treasury instead of taking gold out of it

The only Perk here that noticeably changes over level is the Spendthrift Perk, jumping up to 200% at level 3. I have no doubt that the Loot Perk will offer better rewards at higher levels, but it's not a common enough drop that I've really been able to test it with an army of disposable goblins or what have you. Maybe one day.

The Damage type Perks all provide a debuff to enemies hit by the creature, so make good options for creatures with AOE attacks such as the Banshee or Gnome. Although you may just want to give the latter Damage perks rather than mucking about. Still, can be useful depending on the makeup of your army.

Testing for this guide was done on V1.8.1 with all current DLC installed. I have noticed some issues with the behaviour of potions during this.

When evolving Horde creatures the potion icon disappears, leaving you unable to check the details of that creatures Perk. Giving them a new Perk Potion does bring it back however.



Whilst the Voodoo Brew room states that Room Level 3 is needed for Lvl 2 potions, and Room Level X is needed for Lvl 3 Potions, in practice these start being produced at Room Level 2 & 3.

When you Load a saved game this can affect the object piles in your dungeon. If you have Perk Potions piled up by category in locked rooms you will find they are not in the same order after a load. This seems to affect all items in the Dungeon as I've seen issues with piles of toolboxes and magic batteries scattering after a load as well.

So, the main question I suppose you're wondering at this point would be:

Originally posted by Imaginary reader:

Is it really worth all the mucking about to get maxed out potions on your whole army?"

And after many hours mucking about with the Voodoo Brew testing for this guide I can honestly say....

No, not really.

The buffs you get from Perks are useful, don't get me wrong. I think the room is a great addition to the game. But it requires a LOT of micromanagement to get the most out of. You need to constantly sort through piles of potions to find the Perks, chuck the unwanted ones into the Sacrificial pit to free up space and manually apply each buff. As well as having to manually check each creature to see which ones are even worth upgrading once you have better potions available. You can do it, but by the time you've gone through all that you're army is going to be able to steamroller across the whole map anyway. It's fun to play with, but really you don't need to pay that much attention once you've gotten some sort of Perk on the creatures you want to upgrade.

Maybe if Creatures could seek out improved Perk potions on their own once they've been given one that would be helpful in making managing potions less of a chore. That would be my main suggestion for improving the room.

I'm not sure that intensive micromanagement of the room is really an intended play experience. Dungeons 4 does seem to favour a faster style of play than the previous games. So sitting in the Dungeon for 6 hours tweaking Perks whilst feeding Heroes into a grinder may not really be what we're supposed to be doing. But that's not going to stop me.