ToME Wiki
Alchemists
Alchemists, while technically a mage class, are not spellcasters. Instead, Alchemists break apart the fundamental essences of items in order to create newer, better items.
The epitomy of the gear based "munchkin" character, Alchemists are the only class that can create their own pseudo-sentient artifacts, custom building them and empowering them in a specific way for their needs. While this takes time and skill credits (the Create Artifact ability costs 70 skill credits and is only available at level 46!), the benefits are clear.
Alchemists thrive best when they are able to put their extensive item customization abilities to the best use. An advanced alchemists's gear is hand picked (or rather, hand crafted) to be effective in the situation at hand. In addition alchemists can use their extensive abilities to create and maintain extremely potent wands, staves, and rods -- further supplimenting their gear. It is for this reason that most Alchemists take Magic Device (which they have an excellent skill rate in).
Money is seldom an object to Alchemists, even the youngest ones, as they can break apart readily available supplies in the town stores and create powerful -- and expensive -- devices out of them for a large profit. For example, wands of noxious clouds can be broken down into poison essences, which can make expensive Ammo of Venom.
Contents
Creating your Alchemist
Alchemy doesn't use mana, doesn't care about INT or WIS (except for getting artifact creation, and that's needed only once and easy), so a warrior-race is one good choice. Ent (for grow trees and no mana penalty) or zombie Troll alchemists are nice.
WIS and INT may become important in mid to late game if you get enough thaumaturgy from lost sword quests to specialize in it (alchemists have no other way to really deal with high level chain summoners); but when you do you'll be able to create artifacts to max all your stats anyways.
Weaponmastery and alchemy are the two recommended skills to max out; magic device is very nice too but doesn't need maxing in mid or late game (alternative: take Thaumaturgy instead if lost sword quests give you a decent modifier, and max it. Use lost sword quests for a few magic device points).
Alchemists gain new recipies for their art by *Identifying* ego items, such as "Chaotic Short Swords of Slaying". In this example, *Identifying* this item would give you the ability to add "Chatoic" and "Of Slaying" to other weapons. Destroying an item with Alchemy (Extract destroys 1, Leech destroys an entire stack) occasionally *Identifies* the item (and always Identifies the item), but this is rare, and should not be relied on with Egos that you really want.
Because the items in town are all pre-*Identified* (to prevent abuse of the Black Market), you may wish to take a large number of random Quests at character creation -- the items the Princesses reward you with are all unidentified ego items or better. You can buy anything that can be leached without destroying it, such as fireproof- and indestructible- things, even if you made them yourself, and rod tips after placing them on a rod. When leeched, these will be un-*identified*. This is probably a bug. You can also occasionally gain an insight from leeching something already pre-*identified*, but this is less reliable.
Alchemists in the Early Game
Your first step as an alchemist should be to wear your leather gloves, which all alchemists, regardless of race or subrace, start with. This is required for your alchemy, and unfortunately precludes you from wearing other, better, handwear -- but, fortunately, there are a variety of artifact gloves which are available to Alchemists throughout the game.
All alchemists start with a variety of simple recipies. In addition, alchemists start with the components to create a Potion of Detonations (which they know the recipie for). This potion is a powerful weapon, able to take out many monsters in a single hit (it does 25d25 damage -- up to 625 damage, more than the strongest's dragon's breath. This is enough to take out nearly anything before level 40 in a single attack).
This potion should be sold immediately to either the temple or the alchemist's shop -- either shop will purhcase the potion, but occasionally one will be staffed by a worker who has a purchasing cap of 5000 -- in this case, sell it to the other store.
After selling this potion you should have over 7000 gold available to you. At this point you have a few options available to you -- you can work on making even more money and begin scumming the black market for gear, or you can create additional potions of detonations and go for some quick and early experience then go for some money and gear.
Additional Money and Gear
Assuming you wish to go the additional money route, the easiest recipies at level 1 are Potions of Detonations -- buying scrolls of Enchant Armor and Enchant Weapon's Damage for additional Essences of Explosion. These are plentiful in the alchemists' store, however you retain a 90% success rate on the creation of the potion -- and a failure is an instant death. Most alchemists choose to instead enter the Barrow Downs for a short period of time, and gain at least one level. An attractive alternate is to do the Bree House Quest, which will take you to Level 4 - 6 instantly.
At Level 5 Alchemy (available at Character Level 2 if you put all your points into Alchemy upon level up) a new teir of alchemy recipies is available to you -- Elemental Brand Egos. These "Brands" are the most basic of Ego weapons -- "Shocking", "Firey", "Venomous", etc. Most of these can be made fairly easily, and turn a rather large profit.
Special attention must be paid to Ammo of Exploding. I check the general store and weapon store each time I am in town for this semi rare type of ammo -- simply because purchasing a single arrow of exploding and turning it into a Venomous Arrow of Exploding makes it worth well over 17,000 gold -- not the best money you can make, but very, very quick.
Quick and Easy Experience
Assuming you wish to immediately gain some levels, the easiest way to do this is at level 1 is to make additional Potions of Detonations. One will be enough to take you to level 15 or so, depending on race/subrace, 3 will likely take you to level 25 or higher.
There are multiple options for using these potions when you are level 1 -- for example the entrance to Angband, or the swampland 1 square south of Bree. Another VERY quick way to gain 20 to 30 levels instantly relies a bit more on luck. First you need to produce at least two, better three potions of detonation. Then you travel to a deep water square and border dance until a Wavelord appears. Since Wavelords are initially friendly, you have time to position yourself. Throw the Potion of Detonation, and pray that the monster will not decide to cast a spell on you. Should you be lucky, simply throw the remaining potions and voilá! Instant midgame.
Bree Swampland
The Bree Swampland has Hydras of varying variety -- level 17 2 headed Hydras, and level 20 3 headed Hydras (Hydras with more heads are there, but uncommon). The occasional Lizard King (also level 20) and Lizardman (Level 16) also make their home there.
The basic idea is to set your speed to running (for the +4 speed boost), then hunt down a Lizard King or Hydra of some form. Once you are within range (3 or 4 squares), throw the potion. It is likely that a single potion will defeat the hydra in one shot.
Because the XP you get is based on your level difference -- if you kill a high level monster when you're small -- This should immediately take you to level 13-16, depending on character race. Unfortunately the experience peters out at the same time -- further kills may gain you one or two levels, but as you approach level 20 it will take significantly more kills to gain each level. Around 10-15 it is usually best to continue with the game, moving back to Bree to round out your initial gear.
Entrance to Angband
The other option is to travel northward, to the Entrance of Angband. This is a much more dangerous proposition -- the monsters there can easily 1 hit kill characters in their 20s or 30s, especailly those without appropriate gear. In addition it is highly likely you will be ambushed, which is certain death at your level.
Assuming you make it to Angband's entrance, your best bet to actually enter is is to move onto Angband's square, then one square south, and enter the wilderness there. This will place you 1 square south of the scene change, allowing you to easily step north to Angband's entrance.
Inside of this wilderness square, you will see dragons of varying forms -- none higher than a Mature (Level 35+). You will also see the occasional Troll, Giant, or even the occasional Giant Roc.
Our ideal goal is a mature dragon, Cyclops, Etten, or Giant Roc. Of the dragons, a Mature Black Dragon is the best XP -- over 70,000 for a level 1 character, although any of these should be enough to gain a great deal of levels.
The trick is the same as before -- walk up to a respectable distance, remembering that these monsters have ranged attacks that they use infrequently, and let loose a potion. It is advisible to carry several (up to 4) in the event that the target survives -- indeed, several of the target monster types (the Cyclops especially) have a great deal of hit points, meaning that it is vitally important to be able to react if the target survives the first potion.
Carrying a wand of manathrust -- which does unresistable damage -- is a good emergancy panic button, in the event that the monster survives all your potions with a tiny sliver of health.
After doing this, you should be at level 22 or greater, allowing you to make significantly more powerful alchemy combinations, at a lower failure rate to boot. There is an important caveat to this -- if your character is worshipping a god, leveling up this fast can lock you out of the rather significant free Prayer (which, in turn, gives you passive bonuses based on your god AND gives you a good variety of spells) skillpoints as a result of the god quests.
You randomly gain the god quests as you level up, but you cannot lose levels then regain them in an attempt to get the quests, and you cannot get the additional quests until you have finished the first god quest -- so it is somewhat important to do them as soon as possible. By leveling up a great deal of levels in one go, you can quickly run out of levels in order to do these quests, so take that into consideration before leveling up like this. Athiests do not have to take this this into consideration.
Alchemists in the Middle Game
As you approach the mid 20s, you should have several things under your belt. Your gear should all be enchanted, with decent Egos -- or barring that, it should be naturally strong (Dragon Scalemail, for example). You should have a good smathering of resistances, approaching the major elemental ones. Finally, if you have the magic devices skill, you should have a good mix of magical devices at your disposal -- ideally some way of disabling traps or
Around 25 is when it becomes important to start scumming for stat potions. The ideal place for this is the sandworm lair -- the monsters within are quite easy, and with a Lamp of the Eternal Eye or a Staff of Vision you should be able to hunt down vaults extremely easily. Once a stat increasing potion is *Identified*, you can mass produce them with essences that are available in town.
The first stat you should cap is Charisma (which affects shop prices), followed by Constitution (which gives you HP, which keeps you alive).
Alchemists in the Late Game
Soon.
Discussion
First thing to learn is they can make lots of money quick: /Money
You might need to know how to find essences in town: /Bree Essences
Midgame you'll want to know how good your ego items can get; look here /Maxes
About their late-game artifact creation ability, look at /First Artifact
-As your first action wear your gloves, make a potion of detonation and sell it. Buy enchant armor/damage scrolls and leech essences. Repeat. Think about not selling the last potion and throwing it at a 2-headed hydra for 20 fast levels (NOT good for making sure you have all God quest or easy beastmaster first quest, but oh so neat!)
-Make lots of curing and other useful potions to survive your first few levels!
-At level 2 you can have alchemy level 5. You should brand your weapon, uncurse and extract essences to retry if cursed. You can optimize your weapon by many attempts every 5 or 10 levels if you like. You should use enchant weapon-type scrolls before you add an ego, and after if possible (if not practical, just try again in 5 levels). The shocking ego is the one most monsters are the less likely to be resistant to. Also, get "of fearlessness" on your lantern ASAP!
-Ego lights ("torch of fearlessness", etc) are never cursed and are very cheap to make. Use (requires alchemy level 5+) to get you cash-started if almost out of cash.
-You can extract all essences from a wand and make a better wand with those essences - just create the wand in a deep dungeon and make 20+ attempts to get a really good one. Then you can add 1000 essences to it if you want. Just beware of monsters that heal themselves by draining your wands and some traps. As stated before, thaumaturgy is a superior option if you get a decent learning rate from lost sword quests.
-You can max your stats mid-game by *ID* of stat potions (especially the augmentation potion of the spider quest to cover all previous oversights) and mass production of such potions. All you need is some magic essences (leech *ID* scrolls a lot) and every other essence can be leeched from something cheap in town. Don't do this very early as you need some skill so the potion doesn't go boom and kill a very low level character!
-Farmer Maggot's vicious dogs can be killed and the quest left failed - just don't talk to Maggot again and you can farm the mushroom field repeatedly (with < and > to regenerate the mushrooms if you're a cheater - saves time on a boring task). The mushroom field becomes nearly useless at the level where the quest is easy to win, so you might as well win the quest anyway (throw potions of sleep at the dogs or wall them off or something).
-There are many nifty gauntlets and cesti you can wear in this game - but you'll prefer leather gloves because they're necessary for alchemy. In the orc caves you'll find some nice artifact gloves!
-Rods are nearly useless in mid- and late-game to attack. But they are nice utilities. You can use most spell-effects in the game, save for God-type effects from your wands/staves/rods, but high spell power from an artifact you make with some ordinary attack SPELL (no sticks!) is quite powerful, too. Manathrust (from worshipping Eru) is nice for that. Spell power doesn't help with thaumaturgy.
-Keep every filthy rag and rabbit corpse you get, INTACT, otherwise you'll have to hunt for days and days of game time for those when you get artifact creation. Rabbit feet even have their own FAQ at /Rabbit Feet Faq! An ancient dragon corpse of some kind is useful too (one black, one white, two blue, two red to cover 4 immunities and the 2 auras). Keep corpses of greater demon/undead summoners (hard to find, sometimes you may even want to use the scroll of mass resurection to get another chance at the Santa Claus unique) to brand your weapon.
-If you get the great rod tip of home summoning, you can zap it in each dungeon town for an extra home in that town you can't otherwise have!! This is useful for storing, say, 20 troll corpses to fix that oversight with +% life after you get a pval of 20 on an artifact you make.
Chatter
FeathinSilyar: Shouldn't all these other alchemy spoiler pages be subpages of this one, rather than independent floating pages? Like /Money rather than [AlchemistSpoilersMoney].
TheFalcon: Yes, they should.
TechieM2: Will using Research Item in a town teach you to make an item? Or must you use *ID* Scrolls?
JohnGilmore: Research Item does exactly the same thing using exactly the same code as an *ID* scroll. So yes, it will.
Grant: I tend to make artifacts (in 2.3x) by converting current artifacts (e.g. cesti of Finglofin) rather than starting from scratch. Is this frowned upon?
BucketMan: 'Frowned upon?' Well, I would say no...at least, not any more so than playing an alchemist to begin with. :P Yes, using fixed artifacts is highly recommended. In particular, Lebohaum, Cambeleg (the cesti of Fingolfin are metal, so you can't perform alchemy while wearing them), Elessar, and the Dwarven pick of Erebor are excellent choices to enchant, because they all offer powers or bonuses things that cannot be had from the usual alchemical enchantment process.
Anon: it's obvious, but alchemists have el-cheato-ID. just callup the "leech" option, things without useful brands (and artefacts, but you usually can tell them apart) do not show up. Find a Colorful Potion, leech it - tells you the name and often the recipe.
Samwise: What does "closing" an artifact (so that it can no longer acquire experience) accomplish? Is there some reason for doing this?
BucketMan: It does exactly what you described: makes it so they no longer accumulate experience. Why would you want this? Well, personally I never close any of my artifacts, but someone might want to close an artifact to rearrange the 'drain' rates. If you have five artifacts all gaining experience, for instance, they'll all be gaining very slowly. Since enchantment costs rise with higher pvals, it's far more efficient to enchant, for example, four artifacts to +10 than a single artifact to +40. Closing artifacts is simply an option to help control xp gains amongst your artifacts for those players who wish to do so. Totally optional.
Also, I've noticed that some random powers don't seem to be accessible as options for my artifacts (most notably immunity to cold) -- is there any obvious reason for this?
BucketMan: There are two:
- Alchemists are only able to enchant powers that they 'know' into artifacts. To 'learn' an artifact power, you must *ID* an existing artifact with that power. Both fixed, and random artifacts may be used for this. If you need Immunity to Cold, Forochel might help.
- Several powers (most notably the immunities) require your alchemy skill itself to be very high, in the 46-50 range.