Pick up most gaming supplements and count the active ingredients. Not the vitamins, not the fillers, not the flavouring. The actual active compounds doing meaningful work per serve.

For most products on the market, you will land between three and six.

Caffeine. L-Theanine. Maybe a B vitamin complex. Sometimes a proprietary nootropic blend with a total weight so small it raises real questions about whether anything in it is dosed to do anything at all.

Buffs has 14. Every single one disclosed with its individual dose. Here is why that number matters and what it costs a brand to get there.

Why Most Supplements Stop at Caffeine

The honest answer is cost and simplicity.

Caffeine works. It is cheap, well-researched, and produces a noticeable effect that consumers can feel immediately after taking it. For a gaming supplement brand trying to keep its cost-per-serve low and its margin high, leading with caffeine and rounding out the label with a vitamin complex is a rational commercial decision.

The problem is that caffeine alone is a one-dimensional solution. It delivers energy. It does not address focus quality, cognitive endurance, mood stability, blood flow to the brain, or absorption. Those outcomes require different ingredients, at meaningful doses, which means more cost per serve and more complexity in the formulation process.

The broader industry pattern backs this up: most products list the right ingredients on the label to look impressive, but the actual amounts inside the formula tell a different story. A supplement can include L-Tyrosine, Citicoline, and Nitrosigine in its ingredient list and still deliver negligible real-world effect if those ingredients are buried inside a proprietary blend with a total weight too small to contain effective doses of any of them.

Listing an ingredient and dosing it effectively are two completely different decisions.

The Five Categories in the Buffs Formula

Buffs organises its 14 ingredients across five functional categories. Each one addresses a different part of what a long gaming session actually demands from your brain and body.

Energy

Three ingredients. Caffeine Anhydrous at 150mg delivers the immediate energy response. L-Theanine at 150mg pairs directly with caffeine to smooth the delivery, reducing jitter and extending the usable window. TeaCrine at 100mg extends the energy arc further without the tolerance build-up that straight caffeine produces over time.

Most supplements cover this category with caffeine only. The three-ingredient approach costs more per serve but produces a fundamentally different energy experience.

Brain Support

Four ingredients. Tyrosine at 350mg. Citicoline at 150mg. English Walnut Fruit at 125mg. Mesembrine at 20mg.

This is the category most gaming supplements skip entirely or address with trace amounts inside a proprietary blend. Brain support ingredients are expensive. Citicoline in particular is one of the most costly nootropic compounds available, which is why it appears at meaningful doses in very few consumer supplements.

The decision to include four brain support ingredients at disclosed individual doses is a formulation philosophy decision, not just a cost decision. It reflects a belief that cognitive support during a gaming session requires more than stimulation.

Blood Flow

Three ingredients. Nitrosigine at 600mg. S7 at 50mg. Taurine at 400mg.

Blood flow support is almost entirely absent from gaming supplement formulas. Nitrosigine and S7 are patented compounds that enhance nitric oxide production, supporting circulation and oxygen delivery. They are more commonly found in pre-workout formulas for physical training. Including them in a gaming supplement reflects an understanding that sustained cognitive performance has a vascular component, not just a neurochemical one.

Absorption

One ingredient. AstraGin at 15mg.

AstraGin is a patented compound that increases the gut's uptake of amino acids and nutrients. Without an absorption agent, a percentage of every other ingredient in the formula passes through without being fully utilised. Including AstraGin is a decision that makes the other 13 ingredients work harder per serve.

Vitamins

Three ingredients. Vitamin C at 100mg. Niacin B3 at 15mg. Vitamin B12 at 15mcg.

A targeted vitamin profile rather than a broad-spectrum vitamin dump. Each one chosen for a specific reason rather than to make the ingredient list look longer.

What 14 Ingredients Actually Costs

More ingredients at disclosed doses means a higher cost of goods per tub. There is no way around it.

Each additional active ingredient at a meaningful dose adds to the raw material cost of every unit produced. Patented ingredients like Nitrosigine and AstraGin carry licensing fees on top of the base raw material cost. Manufacturing a formula with 14 active ingredients requires more rigorous quality control than a formula with five.

The commercial pressure in this industry runs in the opposite direction. Margins improve when you reduce ingredient count, use cheaper alternatives, or hide doses inside proprietary blends. The brands that choose not to do that are accepting a lower margin per unit in exchange for a product that does more of what it claims.

Buffs is priced at $59 AUD for 40 serves. That is $1.50 a serve for 14 fully disclosed ingredients across five functional categories, manufactured in NSW. The formula is what it says it is.

The Loadout

If you want to see the full formula, the dose for every ingredient is listed on the label and on the product page. No proprietary blends. No hidden doses.

Use code [NEVERPUNISHED] for $10 off your first 40-serve tub.