ToME WikiKhymChanur: For alchemy, there should be an Essence of Death, to complement the Essence of Life. Two reasons:
- Some of the recipies will make more sense. Weapons of Slay Foo can use essences of Death rather than essences of Chaos (why Chaos for Slay?); scrolls and staves of Genocide can use Death rather than Darkness. And so on.
- Currently, you can turn 3 Potions of Lose Memories into 2 Scrolls of Mass Genocide, or 4 Scrolls of Genocide. Seems sort of unbalanced to me; I currently have a large stack of Scrolls of Mass Genocide thanks to this. Instead, you could make a Scroll of Mass Genocide take 30 Essences of Death, give each Weapon of Slay Foo 1 death essence, and each Weapon of *Slay* Foo 2 death essences. Such weapons aren't exactly uncommon, but at least it makes you work for it some, unlike when you find a fountain of Lose Memories and get a whole cartload of Darkness essences.
SimonSorc: if gold was required to make ego items, write scrolls, fill a potion, etc (say the value of the item, or half that), then alchemy wouldn't be so catastrophically unbalanced money-wise. The alchemy spoilers has make-gold-quick schemes that make genocide scrolls look silly.
As for super-scroll making, I guess it's balanced since you need a rather high level to make those scrolls and you can't just pile up to near-infinity with no effort like it is for ID scrolls.
BlackSmurf: Oh, yes, yes! Let's require half the value of the item... and label it 50% discount! But please, I pray you, don't make it to explode in my face, if I haven't got enough funds!