Here's the kicker though: the Manor is big and you have free untimed movement. By that point you might already know there's "enough cleaning supplies for a few months" in the storage room on the first floor, *several* closets "filled with cleaning supplies" in the side corridors and oh, some kind of cleaning bottles in every bathroom…

An adventure equivalent of "gold pile (empty)" prompt.

(The solution is to steal a bottle from a random staff member's wardrobe on the same floor. You add a whiff of it to the recipe and don't give the bottle back.)

There's a quest line where you explore one section of the Ye Olde Manor and come across a door glued shut. What to do? Naturally, the character finds a recipe and decides to make his own cleaning solution to scrub the sticky substance off.

There's no way to make this cleaning solution unless you have a bottle of alcohol on you, and I didn't. (Because this game punishes me for examining things so every click has to have a *reason* behind it.) There is a rack of chemicals in the kitchen and the PC just shrugs his shoulders and says "if only i had some alcohol for the recipe…"

There is a lot of free brandy around, but all of the bottles that I came across earlier - they're decorative. Pure examination. "Hmm, this bottle is almost full, someone took a swig" now why don't you use the rest, Sherlock? 🤷