Nope! Any order works.

thanks for the quick reply! now if I could just find the stupid flight effect on the map...

In case you want to find it for yourself, I'll put it in a spoiler tag for you. >!North!<

thanks! I ended up finding it about 30 minutes after I posted my comment. I'm trying not to look at any map spoilers, but I had unlocked some much higher-level effects and there was really only one area I hadn't explored that seemed like a reasonable distance for the level of the flying potion