ToME Wiki
Alchemy
The power of alchemy is only available to the Alchemist class.
The alchemical techniques are accessed using the 'm' key. Alchemists may then 'E'xtract essences or add 'P'owers. The Alchemist MUST be wearing gloves to use their alchemy powers.
Most (but not all) potions, scrolls, wands, staffs, rods, rings, and amulets contain usable magical energies. An Alchemist taps that energy, using the technique "'E'xtract essences" to create one or more essences of a type appropriate to the original object. The drained object itself is now called "of nothing". Unlike any other kind of object, it can have new magics added to it.
An Alchemist can add power to such items by using essences he made or found. He does this with the technique "'P'ower". He can then select the object he wishes enchant, and the kind of object he wishes to create. Only object types that he knows the recipe for will be displayed, and ones for which essences are lacking will be displayed in red. Objects whose level exceeds his own are sometimes difficult to create, though he can always add gold to improve the chances of his success.
Alchemist's are also capable of creating their own artifacts, but this is a time-consuming, and costly, activity. To do so, they must first learn the ability Artifact Creation, which costs 70 skill points, and has some high pre-requisites. Once they have done this, they need to imbue an "ego item" with a number of essences of magic (equal to their skill level) and then wield the item. While using the item, it will gain experience, and this reduces the amount of exp the wearer gains during the time. When the Alchemist feels that the item is powerful enough, they can finalise the artifact by "buying" powers using the experience the artifact has collected. They will also require exotic ingredients to add the abilities.
A few pointers:
- Recipes are (usually) logical. (e.g. Acid essences don't make Dragon Slaying Weapons.) And you can always look at the recipes you know with the "recipe 'B'ook" command.
- Not all objects or ego-item types can be made using alchemy.
- Alchemy is mostly reversible. Most items that you can 'E'xtract from, you can later re-create, if you learn about them when extracting from them. You won't always get enough essences from destroying an item to recreate it, though the chance of doing so will get higher as you increase in skill.
- *Identifying* an object that you can destroy will always teach you how to create it (if creating it is possible).
- Since you can't create abilities in artifacts that you aren't aware of, make sure to *identify* all the artifacts you can.
- You can't *identify* things you buy in shops, so you'll have to extract from them and take your chances.
Recipes:
Any worthy Alchemist knows lots of recipes. By extracting from items in the dungeon, he learns to create more and more items. You can see the recipes you know using the "recipe 'B'ook" command. The Alchemist starts off knowing some basic recipes, and gains more recipes as time goes on.
(More details can be found in the Essences *SPOILER*).