Creating an Alchemist/Fletcher/Cook

As told by Jacob the Alchemist of Leafcull

When I first made an alchemist, I made about 8 different characters before I found the combination of skills and statistics that I found best for me. In this article, I will describe the things I did to initially create my alchemist character. The character we will be creating is an alchemist/fletcher/cook, because alchemy is tied in with both fletching and cooking.

First off, you need to actually make the alchemist. Choose custom character. For your starting statistics select 60 Strength, 60 Endurance, 90 Coordination, 40 Quickness, 70 Focus, and 10 Self. You will need the Strength to carry your items. Endurance is needed because when making health potions, you lose 10 hit points for each attempt. It is necessary to have 90 Coordination because all of the skills you use seem to involve coordination (cooking, alchemy, fletching, bow, swords, etc…). You'll want 40 Quickness because without it you'll never make it to Cragstone, as the shreths and wasps will tear you apart. I chose 70 Focus because besides Coordination, it is the only other stat that gets used a lot. You're not making a mage so don't bother with Self.

Specialize in alchemy, cooking, and fletching. Make sure your train appraise item, appraise magic item, appraise weapon, assess person, bow, dagger, jump, loyalty, magic defense, and run. Since you're an alchemist/fletcher/cook, you'll want to make sure to specialize your main skills, because they will rise faster as you use them. I trained in the appraisal skills because I just hate to double click an item and get a lot of question marks. You'll want to take the bow skill because they rock, they are based on coordination, at higher levels you'll have another use for your special arrows, and lets face it, with 30 hit points you're not going to want to melee anything stronger than a rabbit.

Be sure to choose East Rithwic as your starting town. This is vital. Now that you've got everything down, you're ready to start. Create the character and wait until you're out of portal space.

Let's sort that inventory. Drag your mortar and pestle to quick slot 1 and put it in your other sack. Grind your azurite with your mortar, then stack the powder and put it into your other sack. Make arrows until you have 24 bundles of arrowheads and shafts left. Equip your practice bow and arrows. I never used the welcome letter, so I just dropped it. However, if you would like to complete one of the newbie quests, you can give it to one of the people at the outpost that asks for it. Use the bags of flour on the water to make dough, which you will use later. Your inventory is now sorted.

Go into the training hall portal and run to the straw creatures. Pick up some bruised apples and use the dough on them. If there are no bruised apples, don't sweat it. Don't bother talking to the NPC at the end of the hall. Just hand her your calling stone and wait for the potion. Drag it into quick slot 9 then put it into the sack. Exit the training hall through the portal. You will be facing 2 buildings: a barn and a building with a sign outside that says "Welcome Sign". Go into the 2nd one. Double click on 'Hydeatha the Shopkeeper.' Sell her your newbie dagger and bread. Buy 2 sacks from her. Drag your dough into one, and your pyreals and fletching items into the other. You now have alchemy, cooking, and fletching/miscellaneous items sacks. Select 'cooking items' and buy a carving knife. Drag it into quick slot 2 and put it in your cooking bag. Go outside and kill a cow or two. Use the carving knife on them and use the dough on the resulting steaks. Sell them to Hydeatha the Shopkeeper. Take the road to the Northwest and avoid all monsters. Keep going until you reach Cragstone. This will take quite a while and you may die along the way. If you get attacked by monsters, just try to outrun them.

When you get to Cragstone, use the life stone on the beach at 24.7N, 49.4E. Run to 'Hildar House' at 25.7N, 48.5E. Go inside and double click on Acina Hilmad. Under cooking items, buy a pot and drag it onto quick slot 3 and then into your cooking bag. Buy as many mushrooms as you can. Drag them into your cooking bag and use the pot until you have cooked them all. Stack them and sell them back to the vendor. Repeat this process until you have around 2000 pyreals. Run to the mage shop at 25.8N, 49.4E and double-click on Gondibyr Langarl. Under alchemy items, buy an alembic. Drag it onto quick slot 4 and then into your alchemy bag. Go to spell components and buy 50 Turpeth potions. Drag all 50 into your alchemy sack. Use your alembic on them until all of them are consumed. Go to you main pack and drag each one into your alchemy sack. They will stack themselves into groups of 12. See how many fire infusions you've made and buy an equivalent amount of aqua incantas. Drag them into your alchemy pack. Use the infusions on the aqua incantas until each one is gone. Go to your main pack and drag each vial of fire oil into your fletching pack. Use the oils on your arrowheads. Go to your main pack and drag each fire arrowhead into your fletching pack. Use the fire arrowheads on the arrow shafts. You should have a few fire arrows now. For future reference, the fletcher is at 25.3N, 49.1E. Go to the blacksmith at 25.7N, 49.2E. Estorl the Ox will buy each and every magical arrow you can produce. Just repeat the process of making oils and applying them to arrowheads, and you should be on your way to making a successful alchemist/fletcher/cook.

Creating an Alchemist/Fletcher

Can a character specialize as a craftsperson and be a viable, playable character? In short, yes. But you're going to have to treat this character like the skilled craftsmen that he is and not try to take on the Direlands. After all, your main priority is making goods to sell, so high adventure is low on your list of things to do. However, you will periodically need to wander into the surrounding countryside to kill some of the lower level creatures for the needed experience.

Making a successful tradesman requires that you understand a great deal about which attributes affect him the most. Here are the general guidelines for your starting attributes and skills. You can adjust these to your own liking, but this setup will yield the highest output in the shortest time.

HERITAGE: ALUVIAN
STRENGTH: 70
ENDURANCE: 30
COORDINATION: 100
QUICKNESS: 80
FOCUS: 50
SELF: 10
SPECIALIZE: CROSSBOW, FLETCHING
TRAIN: ALCHEMY, ARCANE LORE, ASSESS ITEM, HEALING, MELEE DEFENSE

First, let me address the issue of naming your character for a moment. Since you're a skilled craftsman you're going to want to advertise your wares. "How do you do that?" you're probably asking yourself. The answer is simple. Rather than spamming the chat channel in town you need to be creative when coming up with your name. One way to advertise using your name is add your skill to your name. For example, I might create a character named Wanxi the Fletcher. This way, whenever you're in town anyone who targets you will know immediately that you offer a service.

These starting stats assume that you'll be hunting the first several levels with your crossbow and your dagger. You're going to spend most of your early experience raising endurance, health and stamina so that you can survive long enough to take the loot you earn to town and start buying the alchemy and fletching supplies you need.

Once you hit level 5 or 6 you should start raising strength, coordination, and quickness since you're going to be lugging some heavy stuff around. Your target strength in the long-term will be 110-130 depending upon whether or not you desire to wear chain mail or heavier armor. You'll want to train Item Enchantment at level 9 for its ability to buff weapons and use portal spells.

From there, it is up to you to decide which skills you are going to train as you gain skill credits. Do all that you can to find a level I or II 'Creature Enchantment Mastery Self' wand and you'll be able to buff your trade skills nicely. As for weapon choice, pick up a standard heavy crossbow as soon as you can carry one and carry at least 200 quarrels. Also, be sure to get Gertah's Dagger for use as your backup weapon, in case you run out of arrows.

Now, let's move on to the trade skills.

ALCHEMY An apparently magical power or transmutational process

The tools of the alchemist are elegantly simple.

Alembic Apparatus used for distilling; something that purifies or transforms as if by distillation.

You'll need an alembic. Once you're equipped with one you'll need to figure out which potions to use it on to create Infusions. The Infusions include Acid, Bloodseeker, Electrical, Fire, Frost, Health, Mana and Victual. Elemental Infusions are the easiest Alchemical items you can make followed by Health, Mana and Victual Infusions. The most difficult Infusions to create are the Bloodseeker Infusions. You can create Infusions by double-clicking the Alembic and using it on the potion.

Aqua Incanta Liquid used for creating magically enhanced oils

Once you've created a quantity of Infusions you'll need to use the Infusions with Aqua Incantas, which are sold in stacks of 12, to create usable Oils. The Elemental and Bloodseeker Oils are used by Fletchers to create enhanced arrowheads. The Health, Mana and Victual Oils are used by cooks to enhance their foods.

Your Alchemy skill should be between 100-110 to successfully create a high percentage of Infusions and Oils. With a skill of 110 you'll have about an 85-90% success rate when transforming Infusions into oils.

This brings us to the reason for having Alchemy in the first place.

FLETCHING The skill of making arrows

Fletching, is the skill that makes a successful trade person, because it will bring in a great deal of money. However, you need to aim quite a bit higher than you did with Alchemy for this skill to be effective. Most failures occur when Fletching the arrowheads into arrows, more so than even creating the elemental arrowheads, the greater arrowheads or the greater elemental arrowheads. The last step, actually making the basic elemental arrows (fire, lightning, frost, acid) from the arrowheads will trip you up until you get this skill to about 110 at which point you'll make a tidy profit from your labor. To create the next level of arrows, the greater arrows, you will need a skill of 150 to fletch at a rate that makes it worth your effort.

But the Holy Grail of Fletching is the ability to create greater elemental arrows. Again, you'll have decent success getting the arrowheads ready to fletch into arrows, but even with a skill of 150 you'll be lucky to see success 1 in 10 times during the finishing process.

Often you'll fail so many times that you give up and step down to the easier elemental arrows just to reassure yourself that you're not really that bad as a fletcher. A minimum skill level of 200 is a good target number for the most basic success in creating greater elemental arrows. This means that you will probably need to take your merchant out into the wilderness to hunt. The easiest way to accomplish this is to find a good mage to tag along with you to buff your skills and debuff the creatures you'll be hunting.

STREAMLINING THE PROCESS

Now that you're familiar with Alchemy and Fletching you're probably thinking there's got to be a better, faster way to do it, and if so, you're be right. Buy a sack to hold the necessary potions as well as your Alembic. Then place your Alembic into Quickslot #1. Unfortunately, you can't place potions into a Quickslot. However, creating an infusion is as simple as going into the sack containing your potions, press the '1' key to use the Alembic, and click on the potion that you want to transform into an Infusion.

Voila! You've just made an Infusion (hopefully), which now sits in your main pack. Repeat this process for however many Potions you bought until you run out. Now open your main pack. See all those Infusions just sitting there in single file? Select the first one and press the 'F' key. You've just learned the quickest way possible to stack similar items in your pack. Infusions and Oils can only be stacked 12 high so you'll need press 'F' 11 times to create your first full stack. After getting 12, move to the next single infusion and repeat this process until you've got nice, neat stacks of 12 Infusions each ready for the Aqua Incanta. Luckily for you, Aqua Incanta is sold in stacks of 12 as well, which makes the creation of Oils a snap.

Place your Infusions in Quickslot #2 and your Aqua in Quickslot #3. Creating Oils is now only a matter of pressing '2' then '3' repeatedly until you've used all 12 of each item. Repeat the process until you've created all the Oils you can. Again, you'll want to stack the newly created Oils before moving onto the next part of the process.

Thus ends your use of Alchemy as a skill. The remaining steps are part of Fletching.

Take the neatly stacked Oils and place the first stack of 12 in Quickslot #2 followed by placing your bundle of arrowheads in Quickslot #3. Creating Elemental, Greater or Greater Elemental Arrowheads is now a matter of pressing 2 then 3 repeatedly until you've used all 12 of the Oils. Arrowheads can be stacked in piles of up to 100 so you'll likely not run out of them. Just keep putting the remaining stacks of Oil in Quickslot #2 until you're out of Oil. You're only one step away from having Elemental, Greater or Greater Elemental Arrows. This is the most difficult part of the whole Fletching process and the part where your failure rate will be high until your skill is well over 100.

Stack your Oil-infused arrowheads using the tried and true 'F' key method. They'll stack up to 100 bundles deep. Take these arrowheads and place them in Quickslot #2 and place the bundle of shafts (which can also be stacked 100 bundles deep) in Quickslot #3. Here you go again pressing #2 and #3 repeatedly until you've used all the arrowheads to make your arrows.

What you're left with will be finished, nicely valued arrows which you can now sell to another player or to the local Bowyer. Either way, with your skills at or over 100 you'll be able to make decent money in no time at all using these tips.

By WanxiBrodo