Master Of Pottery Inspiration, Tea House, Spends

Inspiration is the daily clock in Master Of Pottery. Yen buys clay. Reputation buys apprentices. Inspiration decides whether you throw at all. You start at 100 a day, which is about two pots. Teaching an apprentice costs 10. Listing a piece in the pottery shop also spends inspiration. If you do both on a 100 cap, you may throw one pot, or none. That is why the Tea House matters, and why this page exists instead of a footnote on Getting Started.

The cap can be raised to 150 with five permanent drinks totaling 55,000¥. You can also spend extra yen for a same-day bump after those five, but the cap stays 150. Buy a drink while you are already full and you waste the money. Version 1.0 did not replace this economy with rooms or tokens. Public and private rooms pay online tokens. They do not refill the throwing pool.

The 100-a-day start

Treat 100 as two works. Plan them. One show pot, one warehouse dummy, is a healthy split once you know you will train apprentices. Two show pots is fine until reputation 500. Do not open a shop listing “just to see” on a day you also want two throws. The shop pays worse than a buy letter and still taxes the pool.

Inspiration is spent when you start a work, not per throwing stroke and not per paint stroke. Once the lump is on the wheel, fiddle. The SSS Rank Guide wants that fiddle. Rushing a pot to “save inspiration” is a misunderstanding of the resource.

Tea House orders: day 33 and day 41

The Tea House is a map location that stays locked until you complete two orders. Around day 33 a teacup design request appears in the top right. Around day 41 a teapot request follows. Accept each order before you throw. While decorating, the Tea House logo sits in the second pattern category. Miss the logo and you fail a brief you could have seen.

Players who decline or botch the cup worry they have lost the building. The cup order does not have a short expiry in the usual sense; you can finish it later. The teapot is spaced about nine days after. Complete both and the Tea House appears on the map immediately. If the cup vanished from your UI, still try the teapot window, and check mail. Orders are how this unlock is gated, not a random map fog.

Those two jobs are also your reminder to read the Exhibition Guide. Orders live in the same mail-and-brief layer as buy letters. The hall funds the drinks. The drinks fund more hall pieces.

Drink prices to the 150 cap

Enter the Tea House from the map (lower right). Inside, the lower-right Drink button (teacup icon) sells a permanent raise:

• 5,000¥ — max 100 to 110, and +10 now
• 8,000¥ — 110 to 120
• 11,000¥ — 120 to 130
• 14,000¥ — 130 to 140
• 17,000¥ — 140 to 150

Total 55,000¥ to cap max inspiration at 150. Each purchase is permanent. The Tea House refreshes after every exhibition day, so you can buy the next drink the day after, not once per season. 150 is the max inspiration ceiling. You can still use more than 150 in a single day if you buy extra after you have spent some, but you cannot store 200 as a new cap.

After the five drinks, an extra 50 inspiration (not max) can be purchased daily for 20,000¥. If you already sit at 150, that extra drink does nothing. Buy it only after you have spent down, ideally at 100 or less remaining, so the 50 actually lands. That route can push a day toward four pots. It is a yen sink, not a second cap.

What spends inspiration

Throws. Apprentice lessons (10 each, every two days). Shop sales. That is the triangle. Exhibitions themselves do not tax the pool; they consume the pots you already paid for. Ads spend yen. Decorations spend raw material. Rooms spend time if you farm tokens. None of those replace the 10-inspiration lesson fee.

A practical budget at 110–120: two pots and skip the shop. At 150: two pots plus a lesson, or two pots plus a shop clear, not all three unless you also bought the extra 50. Culture succession wants ten graduates. Tourist attraction wants 50,000 visitors. Both starve if you dump the daily pool into shop listings of cold C pots.

Play after the cap

Once drinks are done, inspiration stops being the story. Clay, glaze, booths, and kiln skill take over. Keep the Drink button in mind on days you teach and throw SSS attempts. Check updates if a patch ever retunes the cap; community guides still treat 150 as the ceiling after 55,000¥.

Do not wait on Tea House yen until the hall is empty. Tickets and letters fund the 5,000¥ first drink earlier than people expect. Buy that first cup, throw the extra pot, and let the extra booth fill itself. The resource is named inspiration. The habit is just not lighting 10 points on a shop tag you will regret when a student writes.