Alchemy

Knowledge Treasures (24 pts)

  • /way #2339 30.7, 70.5 Earthen Iron Powder (Alchemy)
  • /way #2248 57.6, 61.7 Metal Dornogal Frame (Alchemy)
  • /way #2214 42.1, 24.1 Reinforced Beaker (Alchemy)
  • /way #2214 64.9, 61.7 Engraved Stirring Rod (Alchemy)
  • /way #2215 42.6, 55.0 Chemist’s Purified Water (Alchemy)
  • /way #2215 41.6, 55.8 Sanctified Mortar and Pestle (Alchemy)
  • /way #2255 42.8, 57.2 Dark Apothecary’s Vial (Alchemy)
  • /way #2216 45.4, 13.2 Nerubian Mixing Salts (Alchemy)

Tools of the Trade

Alchemy Specializations (4)

1. Alchemical Mastery

Alchemical Mastery improves your skill with everything you can do with Alchemy. The main node is an overall improvement, while each of the 5 sub-nodes improves your skill with recipes that use a specific herb, and grant a bonus to the chance to learn a new recipe that utilizes that herb. 

2. Fantastic Flasks 

Fantastic Flasks improves your ability to create flasks & phials (flasks are for combat, phials are for crafting/gathering). The main node grants skill to flasks, and increases their duration, and its capstone skill is the flask cauldron recipe. The subnodes:

  • Bulk Production: multicraft and resourcefulness for flasks & phials 
  • Profession Phials: skill and resourcefulness/multicraft procs for phials

3. Potent Potions

Potent Potions improves your ability to create potions. The base node increases skill & resourcefulness, and its capstone skill is the potion cauldron recipe. The single subnode improves multicraft & resourcefulness.

4. Thaumaturgy 

Thaumaturgy revolves around turning one material into other materials. The core node increases your skill in this process, as well as giving you more and additional interesting byproducts when transmuting. The core ability of this tree is called “Thaumaturgy” which lets you change common crafting reagents into other ones, with no CD. See the Thaumaturgist Build section below for more info.

The secondary nodes:

  • Mecurial, Volatile, and Ominous Materials: increase your skill with the Thaumaturgy ability, and the transmuting recipes that can be learned from that subnode. Opening up the node teaches you a transmutation recipe that uses that paricular transmutagen. At 5 points, you will be able to start discovering the other recipes related to that transmutagen. More points will get you more of that particular transmutagen when transmuting. The recipes learned & discovered through these 3 nodes are the ones that have CDs (which appear to have been reduced to ~5h).
  • Gleaming Transmutagen: This gives you access to making Blasphemite – the new JC diamond. That ability is called “Gleaming Glory”, and requires filling the node completely. On your way you’ll also get access to more Gleaming Transmutagen as a byproduct of transmuting (it requires 80 to make a single Blasphemite, no CD).
  • Transmutation: improves your skill with transmutations that have a CD, and allows you to do more of them. It does not improve your Thaumaturgy.

Things of Note

  • Flasks are the combat buffs, and Phials boost your crafting/gathering stats – both last 1 hour and persist through death. The duration of both can be increased up to 2 hours by investing in Fantastic Flasks.
  • Flasks and potions are simpler/smaller spec trees now, so it will be easier to master both
  • You can learn the base Flask and Potion cauldrons by completing the first node in their respective trees
  • You’ll still have Experimentation to learn new recipes. The cost of running an experiment is paid in herbs, and the type of herb you use matters – you will only discover recipes that use that herb as a reagent. So start by using the most common herb, which is in the most recipes- Mycobloom.
  • The new stone – Algari Alchemist Stone – is ONLY for Alchemists.
  • Alchemists make the new JC diamond, called Blasphemite. You learn that by specializing in Thaumaturgy→Gleaming Transmutagen. Blasphemite is also used as a reagent for Magnificent Jeweler’s Setting, and the basic epic rings & neck which will be in high demand.

Suggestions

Flasks and Potions will both be very important, but with them requiring a smaller number of points to max there should be more opportunity to diversify early on. Alchemical Mastery is a good choice, since it boosts skill for all of alchemy, and if you find yourself using a lot of the same herbs in your favorite recipes you can fill out the corresponding subnodes. Thaumaturgy has some interesting potential for money making (alerting all AH flipping goblin types!), and there’s no denying that it will be valuable for the Blasphemite crafting.

The importance of experimenting:

Experimenting is your engine for learning new recipes, which lets you get first craft points and fill more patron orders, which in turn gets you more knowledge points and acuity (to buy knowledge books). Alchemy one of the easiest professions to skill up because of this. Use your experimentation abilities on CD! You have 2 types of experiments:

  • Wild – you start off with this ability, and you can keep doing this experiment until it explodes in your face (or you run out of mats). Requires 20 herbs of the same type/quality, and 2 coreway catalysts.
  • Meticulous– you’ll learn this in the process of doing wild experiments. It has a daily CD provides a reliable skillup well into the 90s. Costs 5 acuity, 6 coreway catalysts, and 10 herbs of the same type/quality. It seems far less likely to end in an explosion than wild experimentation.

Investing in Alchemical Mastery is the best way to improve your experimentation results. Early on, most wild experiments will blow up in your face (esp. if you use Mycobloom which is more volatile). Having more skill and points in the Alchemical Mastery tree will improve results.

Build 1: I’m just here for the flask buff 

Select the Fantastic Flasks specialization, and spend 15 points in the base node. Ok, done, bye. 

Build 2: Potion/Flask Generalist

Getting Started

Start off in the Alchemical Mastery spec. It’s not the sexiest, but it’s the only thing that will make your experimenting more likely to result in learning a recipe instead of exploding in your face. The base node will give you skill for everything you can possibly do in Alchemy, so it’s a solid investment, and one you’ll have to make eventually. Use your experiments to learn new recipes, get first crafts, and skill up on whatever is orange. Make sure you invest at least 30 points in the base node to get the formulated courage recipe, so you can experiment even after an explosion. Unless you’re itching to get your flask extension buff, you might want to stick to this tree until the base node is full. Once your wild experiments are a bit more stable, you can move over to Fantastic Flasks, and invest 5-15 points in the base node to increase your flask duration.

Later on:

The initial goal is to fill the base nodes of Alchemical Mastery, Fantastic Flasks, and Potent Potions. That will get you both cauldron recipes, and enough skill to make them at quality 2 with cheap mats. After that, you can start investing either in the subnodes of Alchemical Mastery for more skill, or the subnodes of the other 2 trees for efficiency or skill in phials, depending on what suits your needs.

Notes on the subnodes of Alchemical Mastery:

  • All potions contain mycobloom, so that’s a good one if you’re interested in making lots of healing/mana pots (pairs well with Potent Potions→Bulk Production)
  • All phials contain Luredrop (pairs well with with Fantastic Flasks→Profession Phials)
  • Unfortunately flasks are all over the place in terms of ingredients, but only 1 contains mycobloom
  • Skill gained through these nodes applies to cauldrons too

Build 3: Thaumaturgist Build

The core ability of this specialization is “Thaumaturgy”, which has no CD. It allows you to convert a stack of 20 crafting reagents of the same type/quality into an assortment of other crafting reagents. While what you get out of it is somewhat random, it will adhere to these rules:

  • You will get crafting reagents from the same transmutagen family (see chart below)
  • The quality of the reagents will be the same as what you put in (at very high skill levels you might be able to improve them)
  • The process is destructive, so you’ll get fewer crafting reagents out of it than you put in
  • You will get some transmutagen as a byproduct, and it will be from the same family as the reagent you are using. Investing in the core node (35) will allow you to get Gleaming Transumtagen (required for Blasphemite), and investing in the secondary nodes will let you get more of other types.
Transmutagen FamilyHerbsOre, Skins, etc.
MercurialLuredrop, OrbinidAqirite, Gloom Chitin
OminousMycobloomBismuth, Weavercloth, Storm Dust
VolatileArathor’s Spear, Blessing BlossomIronclaw Ore, Stormcharged Leather

Right now, it looks like the most profitable thing is to use Mycobloom and hope for Storm Dust.

Investing in “Alchemical Mastery” DOES improve your Thaumaturgy skill, so you’ll want to pick up that entire base node if you decide reagent shuffling is your thing.

Blasphemite

Here’s the Thaumaturgy build you’ll need to make Blasphemite – it’s a 60 point investment. It’s not particularly compatible with being a good potion/flask maker, but might be great for an alt. I recommend watching SoulSoBreezy’s alchemy video guide on thaumaturgy*. The blasphemite transmute (called “Gleaming Glory”) does not have a CD, but does require 80 gleaming transmutagen, so you’ll need to do a lot of thaumaturgy to build up that reagent. You’ll probably want to fill the base node completly as well to get the additional transmutagens once a day.

*: Differences from the video: when the video was made, Gleaming Glory had a CD, and that is no longer the case, so I’ve removed his suggested 15 points in the Transmutation subtree, and put 5 more in the base tree, to get more Gleaming Transmutagen.

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