Alchemy Tips

[aylad]

Some basic strategy to help my fellow Alchemists...

1.) Many times when you make something, you get more than one.... say, for example, you use Salt to make Philosophical Salt (PS). You put in 7 Salt and maybe you get 4 PS out. If you use_skill alchemy on all 4 at once, you have a chance of not identifying them as PS, and you are forced to sell the Piles at a much lower price.

To help with this, take the PS out of the Cauldron one pile at a time and identify them individually. Some PS might not identify but on the whole, you will come out with a bigger profit margin.

2.) Many times lately I've noticed that even when I had the correct ingredients in the Cauldron, the spell would result in me getting Slag instead of a sellable product.

I think I've found a solution to this. When you're making anything (except Water of the Wise), don't use the same recipe more than once in a row. If I try to make more than one batch of the same recipe, I usually do Water of the Wise in between castings. So far this seems to fix the Slag problem.

3.) Charisma! This is a great spell which raises your Charm attribute. My Charm jumps from 9 to 16 when I use this spell. What does it do? With the higher Charm, I spend less on ingredients, and the finished product sells for much more in shops. This is a very valuable spell! I paid 180+ platinum on it, but it was worth every silver. (I had to borrow 100 plat to pay for it, and I'm planning on paying my creditor 150 plat in appreciation.)

Don't cast Charisma more than once at a time, or your Charm will actually go down. At least it did for me the only time I tried it.

4.) Keep an eye out for recipes that you don't know. Every recipe you know will increase the amount of money you can make.

5.) Do math to figure up how much you're spending on each recipe, and how much profit (if any) you're making. I lost money on Philosophical Salt until I got Charisma..... but now as long as I make 3 piles of PS per casting, I make a profit! Don't make any recipe you can't make profit on, unless you need it for another recipe.

6.) Phosphorus and Gypsum have the same image. Don't get confused!

7.) If you're just starting out as an Alch, try to start with a spell that will let you level up in Magic (cheap to cast, low-level, and does damage to creatures). I got lucky and started with Magic Missile, Icestorm, and (as my random skill) Woodsman!

8.) You can use_skill alchemy to identify house stones. I'm not sure what good this does, but it gives you a -little- Mental experience and raises the price of the stones.

Extra: For more or less anyone who has Woodsman skill: use_skill woodsman on the mushrooms that Battle Mushrooms drop. You can find mushrooms with abilities like +30 Resist Fire (although they are very rare). You can also use the skill on Bomy Skins, for some reason -- I've never found any special skins this way, though.