Time travel in Pathologic 3 isn’t just a narrative gimmick it’s your primary survival tool. The ability to jump back to previous days, armed with knowledge from the future, lets you correct fatal mistakes, solve impossible puzzles, and optimize your approach to the town’s mounting crises. But this power comes at a steep cost: Amalgam, one of the game’s most precious resources.
Understanding how to consistently acquire Amalgam is absolutely critical. Run out at the wrong moment and you’re facing something most modern games don’t dare implement: a true, permanent Game Over with no reload button to save you. The stakes are real, and Amalgam is what keeps those stakes from becoming your final defeat.
Let’s break down everything you need to know about this mysterious resource and how to keep your reserves topped up.
What It Is Amalgam and Why It Matters?
Amalgam serves as the fuel for Daniil’s time manipulation abilities, and the game treats it as something he’s consciously aware of within the narrative. After completing the tutorial section around Day 5, you’ll receive a thorough introduction to this mechanic along with several crucial warnings.
How Amalgam Storage Works:
Your Amalgam capacity is visualized through multiple hollow sections representing unbroken parts of Daniil’s psyche. As you collect Amalgam, these sections fill with white, giving you a clear visual indicator of your current reserves. It’s not just a gameplay abstraction—the game frames it as literal psychological integrity being consumed and restored.
The Fatal Consequences of Running Dry:
Here’s where Pathologic 3 shows its teeth: if you die with zero Amalgam remaining, you get a Game Over. The game does offer one mercy—a single “re-do” where you’re returned to the mirror room with an opportunity to refill your Amalgam reserves. But after that safety net is exhausted? True Game Over. Your save is done. You’re starting from scratch.
This isn’t a scare tactic to keep you on edge—it’s a real possibility if you’re careless with Amalgam management.
When Amalgam Gets Consumed:
Understanding what actually spends your Amalgam is crucial for budgeting this resource:
- Changing days – This applies whether you’re jumping backward to replay earlier days OR moving forward chronologically. There’s no “free” progression through time. You can’t simply sleep to advance to the next day without spending Amalgam.
- Restoring after death – When you die or suffer a heart attack and reload your save, that restoration costs Amalgam. Every death is literally spending your reserves to turn back time and try again.
This dual consumption system means every decision has weight. Jumping back to Day 2 to fix a mistake? That costs Amalgam. Dying three times trying to navigate an infected district? That’s draining your reserves fast. Plan accordingly.
Method 1: Breaking Mirrors (The Most Reliable Source)
Breaking mirrors is your bread-and-butter method for Amalgam collection, introduced during the mirror room tutorial after Day 5. This isn’t some obscure optional mechanic—it’s your primary income stream for time-travel fuel.
How It Works:
Mirrors are scattered throughout the town in various buildings and locations. When you find one, simply interact with it to shatter it and collect the Amalgam within. The process is quick, and unless you’re already at maximum capacity, you should break every mirror you encounter immediately.
The Dynamic Mirror System:
Here’s something fascinating: mirrors don’t have fixed spawn locations. You’ll find mirrors appearing in locations where they didn’t exist on previous days. A room you thoroughly searched on Day 3 might have a fresh mirror when you return on Day 6. This dynamic system means exploration remains valuable throughout your entire playthrough.
Strategic Mirror Hunting:
Get in the habit of checking buildings thoroughly on each day you play, even if you’ve visited them before. Use Concentration Mode liberally to spot interactive objects—mirrors will highlight just like any other important item. The difference is that mirrors represent pure survival currency.
Some players try to “save” mirrors for when they need Amalgam urgently, but this is generally bad strategy. Amalgam capacity is limited by your psyche’s integrity, so hitting that cap means any mirrors you find afterward are wasted opportunities. Break them when you find them, unless you’re genuinely at 100% capacity.
Method 2: Completing Mind Map Thoughts (Quest Rewards)
Your Mind Map functions as Pathologic 3’s quest system, organizing your objectives into interconnected thoughts that represent Daniil’s investigation and understanding of the town’s crisis. Many of these thoughts reward Amalgam upon completion.
Which Thoughts Give the Best Returns:
In practice, thoughts that inherently require time travel tend to offer the most generous Amalgam rewards. This creates an interesting positive feedback loop: using Amalgam to jump between days to complete complex investigations often rewards you with enough Amalgam to justify (or even profit from) the time jumps you made.
Thoughts that can be completed within a single day without time manipulation generally offer smaller Amalgam rewards or none at all. The game is essentially rewarding you for engaging with its core time-travel mechanics rather than trying to solve everything linearly.
Balancing Quest Completion:
Don’t obsess over finishing every thought immediately, but do keep an eye on which active thoughts offer Amalgam rewards. When you’re running low on reserves, prioritizing these quests makes sense. Check your Mind Map regularly to see what’s available and what the rewards are—the game is transparent about what you’ll earn.
Method 3: Ending Days with Eva (The Daily Bonus)
This method was briefly mentioned in our beginner’s guide, but it’s important enough to revisit in detail here.
The Ritual:
Every day at 2AM, head to the Stillwater and speak with Eva. This triggers an extended conversation covering various topics throughout your playthrough. More importantly for Amalgam collection, this interaction grants a substantial 100 Amalgam bonus.
Important Limitations:
You can only perform this ritual once per unique day. You can’t farm Amalgam by repeatedly ending and resetting the same day—Eva will only have new conversations and grant rewards when you’re concluding a day you haven’t finished before. The game prevents exploitation while still providing a reliable daily income.
Why This Matters:
That 100 Amalgam represents a significant chunk of your reserves. It’s enough to cover multiple day transitions or several deaths. Making this a nightly habit ensures you’re constantly replenishing the Amalgam you spend during normal gameplay.
Think of it as your “paycheck” for surviving another day in the plague-torn town. Don’t skip this just because you’re eager to jump to the next day immediately.
Method 4: Mercy Killing Infected Citizens (High Risk, High Reward)
This is the most mechanically complex Amalgam source, requiring actual skill and careful resource management rather than just exploration or quest completion.
How It Works:
In infected districts, you’ll occasionally encounter infected people suffering from the plague. You have the option to help them reach a painless death through careful drug administration. The goal is to use whatever pharmaceuticals you have in your inventory to stabilize their heart rate within a specific threshold, allowing them to pass peacefully.
Success rewards you with Amalgam. It’s a grim transaction, but this is Pathologic—everything carries moral weight.
The Risks Involved:
Failure at this task doesn’t just mean you don’t get the Amalgam. It actively damages Daniil. If you’re already low on health or lack healing supplies, attempting mercy killings becomes genuinely dangerous.
You need to weigh several factors:
- Do you have the right drugs to stabilize heart rate?
- Can you afford to lose those drugs on a potentially failed attempt?
- Is your own health stable enough to risk taking damage?
- Do you actually need the Amalgam right now, or can you get it more safely elsewhere?
Strategic Considerations:
This method is best used when you’re already in infected districts for other reasons and happen to have excess drugs that work for heart rate stabilization. Going into contaminated areas specifically to farm Amalgam from dying citizens is rarely worth the risk compared to just breaking mirrors in safer locations.
However, if you’re already there, already have the supplies, and successfully perform the mercy killing, it’s a solid Amalgam bonus that would otherwise go unclaimed. Just don’t make it your primary collection strategy—think of it as opportunistic gathering rather than reliable farming.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much Amalgam should I always keep in reserve?
Never let your reserves drop below what’s needed for at least two or three day transitions. This gives you a safety buffer for unexpected deaths or sudden needs to time travel. If you’re sitting at maximum capacity, you’re probably being too conservative use some Amalgam to experiment and explore, knowing you can replenish it. But if you’re constantly running on empty, you’re being too reckless. Find the middle ground where you’re using your time-travel abilities actively while maintaining emergency reserves.
Should I restart days even for small mistakes?
Not usually. The Amalgam cost of restarting a day needs to be weighed against the actual consequences of the mistake. Got a patient diagnosis wrong? That might be worth a reset. Had a slightly inefficient conversation that didn’t get you optimal information but still progressed the story? Probably not worth the Amalgam. Remember that the game is designed to accommodate imperfect playthroughs not every decision needs to be optimal. Save your Amalgam for genuine game-changing mistakes or to access critical information you discovered too late.
What’s the maximum Amalgam capacity, and can it increase?
Your capacity is represented by the hollow sections in Daniil’s psyche visualization. The game doesn’t give you a hard number, but you’ll see when you’re at maximum because the visual indicator will be completely full. As for whether capacity increases—that’s tied to story progression and the state of Daniil’s mental integrity. Without spoiling specifics, understand that your relationship with Amalgam and time-travel evolves as the narrative unfolds. Don’t assume your early-game capacity is your permanent ceiling.
Can I lose Amalgam I’ve already collected?
Amalgam doesn’t decay over time or get taken away randomly—once collected, it stays in your reserves until you actively spend it on time travel or death recovery. The only exception would be story-related events that affect Daniil’s psychological state, but the game telegraphs these moments clearly. Your bigger concern isn’t losing Amalgam you have, but running out and not having enough to continue. Treat it as a spendable resource that needs constant replenishment, not a permanent stat increase.
Amalgam management is one of Pathologic 3’s most distinctive systems, turning something as common as save-scumming into a meaningful resource economy. By breaking every mirror you find, completing thoughts that offer Amalgam rewards, visiting Eva at 2AM each day, and opportunistically helping infected citizens when safe, you’ll maintain healthy reserves throughout your playthrough.
Just remember: the game’s permadeath threat is real. That one free restart is your only safety net. After that, running out of Amalgam means starting over from the beginning. Stay vigilant, explore thoroughly, and never let your reserves hit zero.
For more essential survival tools, check out our guide on refilling the Prototype, another crucial piece of equipment for navigating the plague-stricken town.
Time is a resource, Bachelor. Spend it wisely.
