Apothecary/Cultivation guide:
Why apothecary and cultivation together? Simple: They require nothing other than time and are super easy to level together.
Mods: I highly recommend 2 mods for these skills.
The first is Idrinth's remake/fix of MiracleGrow called MiracleGrowLight:
https://tools.idrinth.de/addons/miraclegrowlight/
The second is CraftValueTips which gives you concrete numbers to the mystical apothecary potion mechanics:
https://tools.idrinth.de/addons/craftvaluetip/
First step: Obtain the cultivation and apothecary skills.
Second step: Buy a level 1 seed for a main ingredient. The main ingredient is the primary component for creating a type of potion e.g. stat, healing, blast, etc...
Third step: Plant the seed. You only start out with 1 growing slot. You get more as you level up cultivation. You don't need any soil/water/fertilizer. Just grow the seeds.
On collecting your seed you can have one of four outcomes: A failure results in no plants. A success results in 2 plants. A critical success results in 3 plants. A super-critical results in a plant of the next tier up. E.g. on a 25 seed you'll get a 50 plant.
Fourth step: Once you have your plants, Ctrl+Right click them to turn them into seeds! Then go back to step 3. You'll want to hopefully stockpile plants and not have to turn all of them into seeds, as you'll want to make potions out of them.
When you turn a plant into a seed, you also get a resin. If you have CraftValueTip, you'll see that they're stabilizers. You'll need these. Save them.
Ideally you'll always get at least 1 super crit to get you to the next plant tier.
Once you have a good stock of plants you can start making potions. Since you've grown main ingredient seeds and have stabilizers from turning plants back into seeds, all you need is to buy vials from a trade vendor. The lowest level vials work for getting to 200 as you don't care what potions you make.
First step: Open your apothecary window and right click on your vial. This slots it.
Second step: Right click on your main ingredient to slot it. Now if you've paid attention to the tooltip you'll see a -Power value. You'll need to exceed that value with the +stability value from your stabilizers. The interface will turn green when you do. The bottom 3 areas you should fill with stabilizers until the interface is green.
Congrats. Now you're 200/200. What should you do?
Well, now since you care about what potions you'll make you need specific ingredients.
For stat /duration potions you're going to need: Blue vial, Main ingredient, Taut Gobswort (extender), 2x Majestic Goldweed (stabilizer). This creates 2 60m potions per main ingredient.
For instant use potions you'll need: Blue vial, Main ingredient, Majestic Fusk (multiplier), 2x Prime Arboreal Resin (stabilizer). This creates 5 potions per main ingredient.
For liniments you'll need: Lowest level vial, Liniment main, 2x Majestic Goldweed (sabilizer), Prime Arboreal Resin (stabilizer). This creates 2 30m liniments.