Alchemy: A Beginner's Point of View

When I learned that I needed alchemy to begin creating scrolls for teleportation, I was excited. It sounded like a cool idea.

I soon ran out of the three provided for me, both for teleporting to friends and recalling to my bound location. I asked around to see how I could acquire more. "Why, Alchemy, of course," a nice gentleman told me.

Trying to avoid having to pick up a new trade, I searched around vendors. I came to realize that about two or three very large guilds monopolize the market on those scrolls. I was very sad to see it, to be quite honest. But I pushed that sadness aside, and sought to begin my journey as an alchemist. With a smile, I said, "I can do it myself! How hard could being an alchemist be?"

I thought beginning alchemy would be easy.

A simple potion here, another potion there.

I was wrong.

Dead wrong.

In fact, without the support of my guild, I can't imagine the great difficulty I would have had even attempting to begin training in alchemy. Reagents are few and far between to someone who hasn't been trained by 30+ releases of this game. And even then, the game has evolved so much that things are moving and changing - so it's confusing.

Recipes are expensive, as acquiring gold is unnecessarily strenuous. Reagents are expensive, too. Again, finding them in the wild, without (1) a huge guild at your disposal to feed them to you, or (2) a deep knowledge of the game/map... is, well, not an easy task.

The Wiki is outdated, and there are few guides to be found - if those aren't outdated as well. And how would a new player know where to find a crafting station to begin at all? The map pack that came with my pledge is in runic. Very few experienced players have the expertise to translate that - much less a new player who is already overwhelmed with the vast, unlabeled, unexplained world.

Again, it took a group of high level adventurers who possessed the aforementioned deep knowledge and, to be honest, deep pockets to assist me to gain any skill at all.

Please consider fixing this terribly difficult process. And please know I'm not seeking easy-mode anything.

The process to begin crafting - with ANY trade - should never be that difficult.

Thank you,
LB

 

I have no support of a guild... I only started back in release 34 or 35? I have found no issues with it at all. Crafting is expensive, but other than that...

 

I agree it was hard, but I found the constant grinding to earn gold had other rewards. I got enough experience to survive those areas where ingredients were found. Random skeleton encounters feature a bunch of them around the stone ruins.

I started by crafting healing and focus potions to aid fighting in the wilds. But honestly the best way to get the ingredients you need is to buy a house and grow them. Even with a row house you can grow enough garlic, nightshade, and mandrake to suit your needs.

They say this a lot, but once the economy gets rolling you should be able to find them in lots of places.

 

The guilds do not have a monopoly on the scrolls. I find scrolls for cheap in many small NPC towns. Never use them, but a lot of the player vendors have them. I have seen them as low as 70g each.

 

At which level is starting to learn alchemy viable? Alchemy is pretty high on my to-do list but people recommended to wait with it.

 

20ish or so. Before that I was buying recall scrolls a few at a time. Once you're making your own recalls the advancement in the craft pretty fast. I'll be happy to give you a bunch of nightshade once you decide to start. Friend me in the game - Numa Vorlanos.

 

Leveling crafting is pretty brutal at the moment. I haven't looked at Alchemy since right after persistence, but I didn't have too much trouble getting to the point of making my own scrolls. The real issue is probably leveling past 80 where experience costs start rising exponentially and you don't have a good way to earn experience. My advice is actually to start Mining. Get it to 60 or so, sell the ore(or keep it, I won't judge you) and once you're able to survive in 5-skull mines, go to one that has lots of gold nodes and farm them for the experience and for gold ore that you will need for enchanting. Currently there's no way to earn production experience as a pure crafter, which is a big problem with it in my opinion.

Another thing that will help at low levels is quests, since quests give you both adventuring and production experience. It's a good way to get experience early, and later on the values will be laughably small, so go ahead and do it while 5k experience is worth something.

For reference, as a high level blacksmith, I've been floating 1.5 million experience in my pool and recently decided that was too low. I'm currently at 2 million and deciding whether or not to go higher. That has a lot to do with material costs though(you need a truly ludicrous amount of silver and iron). Alchemy is probably cheaper and there are only two skills to raise so that may not be necessary for you.

 

The most difficult part of crafting is the grind it takes to get the basic resources and then there is the cost for the refining items.

As for Scrolls I use nothing but Scrap wood to make the pulp.

The cost for the reagents if not farmed is not to much but again you HAVE to grind to get the gold.

Now I made around 100 Scrolls a while back and it took the an entire movie in an extended form ( I cannot remember Star Wars or LOR) 3 hours.

3 HOURS to make I think like 75 recalls and 25 teleports. That was going from Bows / Wands / any other wood scrap items all the way thru to the scrolls.

3 hours of nothing but crafting, not one minutes spent gathering those items or the gold needed to pay for the reagents.

Sadly this is the game they have designed, and yes it is out of whack, but there so is just about every crafting skill you look at.

They really need to look at the grind type of systems they have created but not much will change.

But there is one bonus to their weak system it is the fact that you can make the scrolls and do stuff with minimum skill levels and actually training them is nothing but a waste of time since you really do not get that much of a boost at GM skill levels.

 

Does an greenhouse accelerate reagent grow? And how do i get the water? Would it better to place a greenhouse or small farming "field" close to a water source or doesnt it matter?

 

A greenhouse will accelerate the growth of anything that can be planted - even if it's something as exotic as the Immortality fruit. Water can be found in birdbaths, small and large fountains plus wells as long as these are publicly accessible.

The field can be close or far from a water source. The distance doesn't affect the growth rate.

 

Inside a greenhouse literally halfs the time. But also means your watering timers are shorter so can be annoying.
Water source is easy to make or buy a basic well ghag is placeable decoration and yields water, its just time consuming.

 

I have a birdbath but I haven't been able to get water out of it. Is there a trick to doing it?

 

My apologies - I heard this from somewhere but didn't confirm it myself. Also saw a POT where 8 birdbaths were all in one spot and automatically assumed these were used as a water source,

 

This is true...you know what would solve at least 60% of this problem? A good manual.

I don't expect it tomorrow or anything, but please please please, Portalarium: give us a good manual. A long, exhaustive manual covering all systems of the game, with tips and tricks. Like the old manuals used to be, when they were at least 50 pages long and came in the box. Better yet, like the $30 "official game guides" people used to buy. If it's a PDF, that's fine.

Without the forums/chat, many things in this game will take eons to decipher. Another game I like to play, Elder Scrolls Online, is in the same boat. There are so many intricate game systems (good!) with no real manual (bad!). Apparently the in-game help is exhaustive, though.

 

Isn't there one online? In patch notes form. It's pretty convoluted for new players but its something.

 

Haha...no no...these are ChangeLogs, not a manual or proper documentation. Remember buying a PC RPG back in the 80s/90s, and there was a nice thick manual in the box, explaining everything from what the stats mean to every system, every aspect of those systems, tips and tricks on how to begin engaging with these systems, a bestiary, etc.

 

Somewhat related: Does anyone has any idea why the "/help" command in chat doesnt work anymore or doesnt work anymore for me?

 

You should have a "New Players Guide" which is a manual.

 

I imagine a prettier, formal manual will be released when Episode 1 goes live.

 

It may be what you, or "modern gamers" consider a manual. Remember how SOTA is a throw-back to an earlier time, an earlier RPG? I want a throw-back manual.