There was a balance patch on 19-Oct-2022, so the game should be easier now. These tips may still be useful.

**Disclaimer**
As of now I am only at day 12, so these are only starter tips to get the hang of the game and succeed on your 1st competition.

So checking out the forums I see a lot of people are struggling with the first competition. So here are some tips that might help.
I was able to brew all 3 of my potions for competition 1 good so that I didn't even need to haggle.

Engage with all the aspects of the game. This game is a mix of a lot of things and you need to engage a bit in everything to succeed. When the game tells you about a new thing, you should check it out and see what it does as soon as possible so you know what your options are.
This can be a bit hard because the game doens't really have an "encyclopedia" or tutorial menu that allows you to read back past tips and instructions. So, pay attention (hopefully they will add a guide book or something later?).

0. Your GOAL: It might not be super clear from the start, but your actual main goal by day 10 (that is till the night of day 9) is to craft at least 2 of the required potions. (all 3 is not actually required). Important, to note, that the potions have stars. When you hover your mouse over a potion it will show how many stars it have. for the competition you need common potions (that is level 2) with 4 stars! So a common potion with 1 star will not be enough. You make sure you win, you should aim for a greater potion actually. More on this at "potion quality".

1. Time management. This is super important, so that you can get the most out of your days. It is important to optimize and multitask. Always have a potion brewing in your couldron while you do something else, like travel or haggle. Keep in mind, not every task advances time. But also keep in mind, that many of them do. Time of day is in the upper left corner.

2. Inventory and budget management. Though the opening cutscene tells you you have to pay back your debt, it doesn't necessarily makes it super clear that you can only do that if you win the competition or that failing the competition will result in game over.
What this means, is that you don't need to worry about putting money aside for your debt. SPEND your money on ingredients, investments, equipement and upgrades. Of course you need to be careful what you spend on, but you shouldn't hoard thousands of gold. Your actual goal in the first 10 days, is to make the recommended potions.

3. Balance time and budget; have a PLAN. You obviously need to find a sweet spot of spending time on earning money (aka opening the shop) and spending money (aka travel). I personally travelled at least once/day, sometimes more. There was even a day when I travelled almost all day. But for this, you need a plan of what you want to accomplish for the day. This can be influenced by what upgrade you want to buy or what quest you want to take or if you have a good daily event that increases sales.

4. Traveling. Understanding how travel works is important, because you can only get anything that is not brewing or selling done while travelling. Travel costs 1 timeslot (of 6 total). The time for travel is only expended when you return home. You can visit anyone and everyone as many times as you want during the same travel phase without it costing extra time. Which is not really explained in game, but is super ipmportant. HOWEVER, any time you leave your home, you will have to expend 1 time again to get back home. So for example if you are on the last hour and travel, you won't be able to "hang out" or "rank up" NPCs. What is even more important is that you should plan your shopping AND upgrdes AND hero quests ahead of time. Don't need an exact plan, but don't forget to shop for ingredients before returning home, because then you will have to waste time to do it.

5. Ingredients: These are the most basic resource you have. So it is important to plan which ones you buy. It is better to have more than less. Keep in mind, that you can only acquire ingredients while travelling. Give ingredients to Quinn!!! This will make them available in her shop forever in basically unlimited amounts (refreshes daily). It is much more reliable than quests. Use quests to discover new ingredients and then give to Quinn and use the shop to buy what you need, when you need.
Stocking up on ingredients when they are cheap due to an event is a good idea (of course keep in mind if you ever actually use that ingredient).
The place you can source the ingredient from is represented by a small icon that you can recognize on the map when sending out Mint on quests.

6. Make friends: Give gifts to NPCs. You can only give 1/day, and you can give them any ingredient, it will stil count. Giving a gift does not cost time.
Rank up a few NPCs at least to level 2. Important, that this costs 1 time, so plan ahead if you want to do this. You can combo this with brewing and hero quests for maximum efficiency. You don't need to rank up everyone as much as possible, but this will give you a few extra cards for haggling which is very useful. I found that Muktuk and Baptiste give strong cards (extra patience and huge amount of interest).

7. Deckbuilding: I am bad at deckbuilding games, but at least during the 1st 10 days, it was not super hard. Keep in mind the "patience" cost of cards and find out what strategy works best for you. Most of the starter cards aren't super strong, but they have low cost, so keep that in mind. ("think Sylvia" is quite useless tho, because it basically wastes your time, all it does is you swap out that card for an other, but then why even have it in your deck? You can just replace it with a better card)

8. Quests: You can send Mint on quests. She can go just on her own, but won't get far without potions. Very helpful that you can 'test' before sending her. Sending her too often to the same place can cause a negative event the next day, but don't worry too much about that. Sending her on a quest does not take up your time, but time has to advance before she returns, much like potion brewing. A neat thing you can do is send her to the forst which takes 1 time only. Then go meet someone esle, rank them up then return to Mint and collect the rewards. This way you don't have to spend 1 time just to travel and come back to her and you don't totally "waste" your time on ranking up, you also get some ingredients.
If you give her potions to go on a quest, pay some attention to only give her an optimal amount. No need to have her at +15 health if she runs out of mana anyway etc. Also, "traits" and stars do not have an effect on quests, so give heroes your cheapest potion that still gets the job done. A 4 star common potion is not better for quests than a 1 star common potion.
Using sight enhancer can substantially increase the loot, so it is worth giving it to her when you can afford to give her enough health and mana to beat the boss.
Some important ingredients can only be found in the mushroom mire and the desert. So have some fire tonic and poison cure eventually and give it to her to get some quests in. I only sent her to the mushrom mire around day 8 and I was fine, but earlier couldn't hurt if you can afforf to.

9. Brewing Potions: This one is I think well explained in the game itself. You put the right balance of magimins in to get the right potions. Increasing the amount of the magimins will increase the quality of the potion. Adding more ingredients will increase the amount of potions you brew at once. It is good to always max out your ingredients and magimins to make the most of your time and ingredients.
Potion quality: on the bar above the cauldron you see how many stars your potion will be. Adding more magimins will increase this. If you fill up the bar, you advance your potion to the next tier (minor, common, greater etc). If your magimin balance is right, you will get guaranteed extra stars (1 or 2). This does not show up at the brewing screen! If you brew a perfect potion it is possible that when putting in ingredients it tells you you will get a minro 4* potion, but when bottling, it will actually become a common potion. Keep this in mind when making your potion for the competition!
9.5. Don't worry about sensory qualities. Some of the stronger early ingredients (like unicorn horn) have bad smell or taste. At this point in the game, it does not matter much. Also, as far as I can tell, stars and taste do not matter for Mint on quests, so give her the worst ones :D.
Your cauldron can only hold a limited amount of magimins. this limits the quality of the potion you will ever be able to brew, so upgrade.

10. Upgrades! Most importantly get a good cauldron. I got the glass cauldron and then upgraded it around day 7 or 8. Buying only costs 100 gold, which is super cheap and a great investement! It can hold a lot of ingredients which lets you brew relatively strong potions even if you only have crappy basic ingredients. But you will have to keep an eye out for max magimins, because the basic one can't make a greater potion! (needed for guaranteed win at the competition).
Also keep in mind you can only upgrade your cauldron if it is not placed in the shop, so plan ahead before you travel to upgrade.

11. Investments. Investing at Baptiste can give you guaranteed ingredients for a small sum. It only gives 1/investment (with a chance to get something extra if you are lucky), so use these to give to Quinn. Don't be afraid to invest, just don't overinvest in the area if you plan on sending Mint there the next day.

12. Buy fuel! Hay is very cheap and can speed up your production a LOT. So stock up on it. Keep in mind you can't lover the brew time below 1.

Well that is all the basics I could think of for now. I hope this will help some people out who struggle with the competition. Happy brewing!