I mean escape in the Elise quest
On potions:
Once you put the pot down, activate it with the Open Cauldron or Add Ingredients (whichever it happens to be) command to put ingredients into it.
Then hit Cook and if your ingredients would combine into an object the game recognises, it'll pop back up with the resulting item.
Do not under any circumstances hit Cook first. Otherwise it WILL explode.
On escaping:
As far as I know, yes. The raft. But it takes time to build. The question and method has already been explained a couple of times on this thread.
Traps...
Well, I usually acquire the trap item (such as bombs or logs) from their sources - bombs from Lisa or logs from trees - and put them in a free EXT slot. Then set them with a Hotkeyed Set Trap button.
Mind you, I don't use traps all that often so my info on that might be faulty.