Deskrawl Health Potions: All 8 Tiers and How to Upgrade Them

There are 8 health potion tiers in Deskrawl and they run from 25 instant healing to 2,000 — an eighty-fold spread that the game never announces anywhere. What the tiers do not change is the shape of the potion: the heal-over-time window is 3 seconds and the cooldown is 5 seconds on all eight, without exception. Only two numbers scale with tier, and one of them barely moves.

This page gives you all eight tiers, the seven upgrade steps with their exact gold and materials, where to buy them, and the one setting that decides whether they ever get drunk.

Four facts decide whether a potion matters:

• Instant healing is the tier-scaled number. 25 → 2,000, and nothing else about the potion is tier-dependent except the regen share.
• The regen share only climbs from 30% to 45% of your maximum health. Fifteen points across the whole game.
• The upgrade is gated by character level, not by gold alone. Each step needs a level and materials and gold, and the last one is level 65 in a game capped at 70.
• Auto-use is off by default and lives behind one key. Press C and set the health percentage.

All 8 tiers in one table

The last two columns are the same on every row, which is the point of printing them eight times.

So: the jump from tier 1 to tier 8 is 1,975 points of instant healing and 15 points of regen percentage. The instant number is flat and absolute, so it means less and less as your health pool grows. The regen share is a percentage of maximum health — which means tier 8's 45% is a bigger absolute number on a late character than tier 1's 30% was on a level 1 one. The regen half scales with you; the instant half does not.

That is also why the tier does not change how often you can drink. Three seconds of healing followed by a five-second cooldown is the same clock on every tier, so a tier-8 potion is exactly as spammable as a tier-1 one.

The upgrade path: 7 steps, 558,600 gold

Each tier is bought from the Alchemist and each step has three gates — a character level, a gold cost and a material bill. The materials are all plants, and the recipe walks steadily through the plant table as you climb.

So: the entire ladder costs 558,600 gold and no step is skippable. The first four steps cost 3,600 gold combined and take you to level 25 — a fourth of the run for two-thirds of one percent of the bill. The last two steps are 81% of it.

The level gaps are a flat 10 apart and the gold never stops compounding. After the first step, every tier costs five to eight times what the one before it, and the price is paid again at the same cadence every time:

So the ladder is cheap, cheap, cheap, then not — and the not starts at level 35. That is the whole shape of it, and it is the opposite of what a per-level budget would suggest. If you compare against the gold farming guide, the honest reading is:

So: the level-65 potion costs more than everything before it combined, six times over. If you are short on gold at 65, tier 7 at 1,500 instant healing is three quarters of the way there for half the price.

Where to buy: the Alchemist, in all three towns

There is one recipe panel and one NPC in each hub. The area is labelled Alchemist's Shop, the panel heading reads Upgrade Healing Potion, and the three alchemists have names:

So: any one of the three alchemists does the same job and sells the same ladder. There is no town advantage and no recipe to unlock separately — the level gate is the only thing between you and the next tier.

Each of the seven steps also has its own unlock, and the game announces it: "You can now upgrade your potion to {0}". The seven unlock triggers sit at exactly the seven levels above — 5, 15, 25, 35, 45, 55 and 65 — so the moment you level, the next tier becomes purchasable and nothing else changes.

The one setting that decides whether potions ever get drunk

Deskrawl does not drink your potion for you until you tell it to, and the setting is one keypress away:

"Auto-used when HP drops below {0}. Adjustable in Combat Settings (C)."

"Your Health Potion is used automatically when your HP drops below this percentage of your maximum HP."

Press C in combat, open Combat Settings, and set the threshold. That is the whole procedure, and it is the single most-repeated question in the game's Steam threads — a one-line answer: "In the Combat Settings, press C."

Player source: Steam discussion thread on the combat potion slot — read 2026-10-04.

There is a second, narrower auto-use slot system in the game for combat potions, utility potions and food, each with its own unlock. That is the buff-flask family, not the health flask — different items, different panel, and covered alongside the other consumables on the gear and affix guide.

Where the potions come from

Potion charges drop on a separate switch from gear, which is why a trash mob can hand you a flask and nothing else:

So: every boss-tier kill is a guaranteed flask, and a trash mob is a coin flip. If you are short on potions, the answer is to farm bosses rather than trash — the full tables are on the drop rates guide.

Two affixes push that number, and both are worth hunting:

So: Potion Find is a four-slot affix, and extra charges are a Belt-only affix — the one slot that also rolls the potion-affix secondary pool. If you are running out of charges rather than out of flasks, the Belt is the only place in the game that fixes it, and one Legendary belt in the game adds charges as a fixed effect.

Two smaller facts: potions stack to 10 in your bag, and from patch 0.1.9a onwards the health potion and the town scroll can be clicked to use directly — you do not have to bind a key.

Official source: [0.1.12] New Content: Ancient Legendary, New Legendaries, Minion, Life Skills — "Potions now stackable to 10", published 2026-06-21. The click-to-use line is from [Hot Fix 0.1.9a] Variety of QOL and Bug Fixes, published 2026-06-17.

Who actually needs a potion

Worth saying plainly, because the honest answer is that most players need very few. A long, detailed clear report in the game's own Steam threads ends like this:

"Eventually, I was able to get through it and now just run the single target skills and don't even use a potion."

Player source: How to defeat final boss? — Steam discussion — read 2026-10-04.

That player also named the two upgrades that actually mattered: honing gear toward the build, and a ring with a stacking damage effect. Not potions. A potion is a bridge across a wall you have not closed yet — it is not a substitute for the gear wall described in our drop rates guide, and it will not carry you past Inferno.

FAQ

What is the best health potion in Deskrawl?

Tier 8, at 2,000 instant healing — and it is not close to the runner-up on cost. It costs 300,000 gold, which is 54% of the entire 558,600-gold ladder on its own. Tier 7 at 1,500 for 150,000 gold is the better buy if you are short.

How many health potion tiers are there?

Eight, from 25 to 2,000 instant healing. Every one has the same 3-second heal window and the same 5-second cooldown.

How do I upgrade my health potion in Deskrawl?

Go to any Alchemist — Mira, Solveig or Zahra, one per town — and use the Upgrade Healing Potion panel. Each step needs a character level, gold and plant materials. The seven level gates are 5, 15, 25, 35, 45, 55 and 65.

How do I make potions auto-use?

Press C in combat, open Combat Settings, and set the health percentage at which the potion fires. Until you do this, potions sit in your hotbar unused.

Where do health potions drop from?

Normal mobs drop a charge 30% of the time; elites, mini-bosses, bosses and mythic bosses drop one every time. Bosses roll up to three times per kill. The Health Potion Find affix raises the mob chance and rolls on Helm, Boots, Belt and Gloves.

Can I get more potion charges?

The Belt's Bonus Potion Charges affix is the only random source, and one Legendary belt adds charges as a fixed effect. The Potion Charge I life skill node reads as unlocked in the game's text but nothing grants it — ignore it.

Related Guides

• Deskrawl Gear Stats — where Potion Find and Potion Charges roll.
• Deskrawl Drop Rates — the separate potion chance behind every kill.
• Deskrawl Life Skills Tree — all 85 nodes, including the one potion node that does nothing.
• Deskrawl Gold Farming — where the 558,600 gold for tier 8 comes from.
• Deskrawl Zones and Level Order — which zone grows the two plants tier 8 needs.