Alchemy 101

A novices guide to being an Alchemist in Greece.

By Natolie

 

So, you want to be an alchemist…

If you’re not considering being an alchemist, why ARE you reading this guide? An alchemist is perhaps the most expensive profession to join, in terms of dinars.

And early on, one of the weakest…

So…why would you want to be an alchemist? Because we rock at foraging! Well…outside of that. It’s a profession for the inner pyromaniac! Again, beyond that?

In H&X it’s one of the two ‘magical’ professions, the other profession being Priests. Alchemists have at this time, 95 formulas at their disposal some of these are not for combat however. And while they may not be as weapon savvy as…pretty much any of the other professions, the formulas can make up for a lot.

But if you want to swing a sword like a warrior, go be a warrior.

 

And, if you have any questions that this document doesn’t clear up, DIR MENTOR and RING BELL to talk to a Mentor.

 

I AM assuming you know some of the basic commands, how to talk, handle items, and move from room to room, and also using the DIR and HELP commands. GET a PAMPHLET from the rack in the Shaded Garden when you first enter Athens. Reading through that should help give you some ideas of the basic stuff.

However, some of this later on is reiteration (and personalization) of that crinkled scroll that should be in your hand when you come out of the Mangler.

Mangler AKA, Character Generation

 

Think of it not as patronization, gentle reader, just me being thorough in making sure you know the whole part and package of the whole Alchemy deal. At least, this person’s slant on it, none of this is intended as “YOU MUST DO THUS!” But more of a “this is one way of going about it.”

Okay, enough with the intro, into the meat of the document.

 

Gods and monsters…

So, what race and god are ‘best’ for being an alchemist…

For gods, Apollo and Demeter seem to be the deities of choice. I personally follow Apollo.

Apollo isn’t as big into the alchemical teachings as Demeter is, but he teaches them. However, he’s willing to teach mechanical stuff more than she is, and he’s more comfortable with weapons. He doesn’t like acrobatics though.

Demeter teaches alchemy very well, but the sideline stuff, she isn’t too keen on, and she definitely doesn’t like combat, offense, or defense.

Persephone is also favorably inclined toward alchemy. In fact in some ways more than Apollo, but she is rather negative toward the weapon skills, nor does she really like mechanical skills. Her real forte is the arcane skills.

 

For races…you have three to pick from, Human, Giant or Centaur.

Humans are pretty all around good. No bonuses, and no penalties in their stats or skills learning.

Giants are stronger than, but not as coordinated as humans are. I don’t often see Giant alchemists, mainly because they also have an intelligence penalty. They have bonuses to skills in physical, and brawling groups, and penalties to their arcane and acrobatics.

I myself am a centaur. Awful coordination, and slightly stronger than a human, but not as much as a giant.  The big plus of being a centaur is role-play capability. Skill wise, there’s a weapon bonus, a large acrobatics penalty, a mixed bag of bonuses and penalties for brawling. In physical, bonuses for all except for stealth, which is penalized.

Humans seem to be the top choice for alchemists, with Centaurs as a second. Given that your success/failure for mixing is also determined by your intelligence, in addition to your alchemy skills, I’m sure you can see why those choices.

This isn’t that big of an issue usually, but, more intelligence means less screw ups, and you can mix some formulas before their actual level with a larger success rate.

To recap: top choices for being an alchemist are human or centaur, I leave the choice up to you.

 

Show me the money!

Well, I already stated that being an alchemist is a money sucking profession…and that we’re rather weak when we’re young.

Where does that leave you, if hunting isn’t your forte?

Errands! Town hall has little errands you can run for some small change. (Type: DIR EMPLOYMENT while in the NW quad.)

You GO STAIR in the town hall and GO ARCH to the job office and ask for a job. You may have to try a couple times, but when you get one, you’ll be given a slip of paper, which you must deliver to a shop owner. They will give you an item to be taken to a second shop owner before you are paid. All these jobs are within the NW quad and most of the locations can be found using the DIR command, the errands pay between 2-6 dinars.

Which is enough to buy some scrolls, or a sizable portion of the fee for one.

Don’t worry about your debt, you have that so you have money. You can pay it off when you’re ready, DIR DEBT.

We WILL tackle hunting later! If you didn’t manage to get a job, you can try skipping on ahead.

 

“You like SO have to buy THAT!” (What to buy for equipment)

You have a surplus weapon in your knapsack when you arrive in Athens; you can exchange that for another surplus weapon on the rack in the Shaded Garden up till around level 3. That light leather that your wearing, however thin it is, is armor, and with our combat system, you don’t have enough skill to wear heavier armor effectively. You also have a small shield.

You don’t need to go rush out and buy THAT kind of equipment.

You’re okay for armor and weapons for the time being. You’ll want to read more about armor in the combat section, a few pages down the guide.

 

For an alchemist, your greatest asset will be your formulas, and how do you learn more? You buy scrolls!

Scrolls!

Scrolls!

Scrolls!

Alchemists as I stated have 95 formula, a very large portion of those are between the circles of 1 and 10.

You can go to Ismena’s shop in the NW quad, or you can go to the shop in the SW quad. To get to the SW shop, type DIR CATACOMB, don’t cross the bridge, but rather, go SOUTH 6 times and then go NW, SW, GO SHOP and NE into the scroll room. Don’t be afraid to explore, you can always get DIRections back to a more familiar part of the city, when in doubt DIR MENTOR. Where you can get some slightly better deals, which when you’re tight on dinar, price shopping is important.

Type ORDER when you are in a shop and go from there, the system is pretty self-explanatory. The whole haggling thing is an art form. To see the in-game documentation on shopping just type HELP MERCHANT

You’re ‘born’ knowing one formula, the rose-honey elixir, Formula #1

But, some basic ones to buy beyond that are…

A stained green papyrus scroll: The tiny wand formula.

This formula is a mainstay, and a level one formula. You carve a wand and then pour this slimy green ooze on it, and you’ll be given a hefty round time as it turns into a tiny wand, this scroll can only be found at the SW Quad Alchemist Shop. More on this tool later.

A sticky yellow papyrus scroll: the wand feeding formula. (Level: 2)

The when the tiny wand runs out of juice, you have to feed it.  You simply pour the ooze on the wand to refill it fully. This formula uses the result of another formula in its creation.  Again, only in the SW Quad shop

A yellow scroll: the eyebright and sunflower poultice or a pungent pulpy mash. (Level: 2)

This is perhaps the first reagent you’ll learn, and it’s used in many formulas. Foremost of which for you will be the wand feeder for awhile. A regent is a formula you use in the creation of other formulas; alone it has no use. You can find this scroll in nearly any Alchemist shop.

The red scroll: Mistletoe powder of Ch’in. (Level: 3)

Brown powder will be your first explosive. Brown powder can be thrown, or loaded into a warhand and used as ammunition. More on explosive tools later. It, like the yellow can be found in many of the Alchemist shops.

The golden scroll: the greater healing elixir.

While this scroll is level 4, and perhaps a bit high for you to be considering on your first day, it’s a good one to want to buy. As with the yellow and red, it’s a staple of scroll inventories.

 

All of the above scrolls can be found in the SW Quad alchemist shop. There are shops to buy scrolls in all four of Athens Quadrants.

The NW quad is rather standard in its wares, as you’ll find out.

NE Quad actually has two shops; one shop is called the poison hovel, housing poison as well as antidote formulas, and its not on in the DIRections for the Quad. It’s also a bit of a beauty shop Formulas that can change someone’s hair or skin or eye color. It also is the home of the scrolls for the detox gels, which I will explain later on in the guide. The regular alchemy shop in the NW quad has a pretty standard set of scrolls.

I don’t often go to the SE quad shop, but there are perhaps 3 scrolls you can’t get anywhere else but there, Cloak of Iris, Vine Summoning and Swarm Summoning, all for 10th or above.

 

Outside of Athens, scrolls are sold up in Midgard, which are only sold there, most of them are for circles 10 and above. Down in Piraeus, all of which are repeats of stuff sold in NW quad. Lastly one up in Thebes, which has a very nice selection of formulas only sold there in addition to some of the more standard ones, which are for sale for higher prices, on fancier materials.

 

Up in Thebes is the final scroll I’d suggest for buying for your basic scrolls, if you can get someone to give you a ride up there.

A cyan parchment scroll: the barkskin formula (level 1, 5 dinars)

This little baby will help your defense. At the cost of some of your coordination, but the price I recall is more than made up.

 

You can also check at Tyche’s shrine for scrolls (DIR SOUTHEAST and then when you get there, DIR TYCHE).

Armor will set you back further in dinars than low-level scrolls will, and checking at Tyche’s will serve your wallet better.

When you’re in the temple, ASK PRIESTESS ABOUT CHARITY to get a rundown on the sections of the temple.

She’ll give you a list of stuff you could ask after, and then ASK PRIESTESS ABOUT ARMOR, if you choose to go the armor route.

Types of armor to look for in the bins would be, leather arm or leg greaves, if you’re a centaur, look for some barding, which would also be in the misc. item bin.

Scrolls would be found in the MISC section of the temple, when you ask the Priestess about charity, in the alchemy bin. But most of them would likely be for circle 10 and 15.

Going to the temple only works if you’re young and rather broke, and you can an item only about once a day.

And remember, when your older, you can donate to Tyche’s shrine for young folks.

 

Over time, you’ll have critters drop scrolls as treasure. Usually these are scrolls to remove death curses for departing Hades. But sometimes you’ll get others…sun infused water, poison of Atropos and the antidote of Clotho, tannin (dye color fixer) and the bottled smoke, those are likely the ones you’ll also find in Tyche’s bin.

Also, gold water is for Alchemists. So hold onto that.

 

Cramming for Exams! (Scroll Studies)

When you get your hands on a scroll, you can do a few things with it. You can READ it, which will passively give you the information on the scroll.

Hopefully it will look something like this:

 

>read scroll

You examine the green papyrus scroll.  It is written in a very archaic form of the Old Kingdom Egyptian hieroglyphs.  You know this to be the formula for the tiny wand formula.

 

It is not being studied.

 

This formula is for Alchemists who are circle 1 or higher in the Official Al Khemi Council Ranking System.

 

If that bit in the middle is different about someone else studying this scroll, you can’t study it. One person per scroll, period.

 

You can STUDY the scroll. This will start the learning process.

You do not learn scrolls in one study, and if you do not get a round time when you study, you are NOT learning the scroll. Study your scrolls once every 5-8 minutes to actually learn it. Depending on your level, and the level of the scroll, it could take as few as 2 studies to learn the scroll, if it’s below you. Or, depending how high above you, could take, a great many studies.

 

If you have more than one scroll, rather than waiting around to study one of the multiple that you have, until you learn it, going at it one at a time. Study one of the scrolls and then put it away, get out another one, study it, and so forth. When you’ve finished studying all those scrolls, you just wait out the time, and then study them all again. You can study as many scrolls at a time as you can carry.

 

Once you know the formula the scroll will crumble to dust and you know it for life, and through any trips through Hades you may make. So, no, you don’t have to re-learn any scrolls if you die.

 

You can now find the formula by checking with the FORMULA verb (also check FORMULA HELP for other details on using the formula verb). This is essentially your spell book.

 

Bubble, bubble toil and trouble…

Some wolf blood, a pome of rowan…pinch of this, dash of that…the meat and potatoes of the profession: Mixing formulas.

So, how do you go about doing it?

Well, first you have to know which formula you want to make, checking with that handy dandy FORMULA verb to see what you know. Type FORMULA #, where # is the number of the formula you want more information on how to make.

You’ll get a detail like this (using the result of the above scroll):

 

>form 87

You think back on the preparations for the formula classified by the Official Council at Al Khemi as "#87"....

 

Formula # 87 - A bottle of slimy green ooze, the tiny wand formula.

It uses 2 parts of a bottle of cool water and 4 parts of a dark green cucumber.

It uses your skills in conjuration to create and is circle 1.

You feel you have a good chance of successfully creating it. *

 

It is described thusly by your peers:

""The tiny wand creation formula changes a carved wand into a magical tool.  The wand will call forth living blobs to attack your enemies.  To target your enemies simply SHAKE MY WAND AT <target>.  And you will direct a blob at them.

 

Beware though, for if your target is too skilled for you, the blob may turn upon you.  For it will always seek a target to feed upon.

 

To make a wand first create a bottle of slimy green ooze.  Then forage for a stick.

 

Holding your stick in your hand, and a knife, CUT the stick.  This will trim it down to a size you can work with.

 

Holding your short stick, now CARVE your stick until you achieve a rough wand.  At this point you're ready for the final step.

 

Now pour your ooze over your wand to imbue it with magic."”

 

*This line is subject to change depending on the formula’s level, and your level and your skills, so keep an eye on it. It can read as “difficult for you to create” “fifty-fifty chance” and then the above good chance.

 

Well, you see the instructions for carving a wand above, I prefer to do that before mixing, so I have it ready when I’m done. When you’re first level, that will be pretty hard to do successfully. You have to use a stick of a specific type of wood: Cypress, maple, walnut, bamboo. Heavy sticks will not work. The first two types can be found in the Palace Gardens. You can probably ask an older player to take pity on you and carve you the wand. A knife is required to pull off carving, last I knew, fingernails weren’t the best of tools to lay into wood.

As it says, CUT STICK first and then, you should CARVE STICK a couple times. Shortly you’ll end up with a crude wand, CARVE WAND once more, it needs to be a rough wand.

 

So, you see the ingredients needed above, cucumbers and water. One of these can be obtained by foraging, the cucumbers.

Places to forage, typically the Palace Gardens is a good spot, and safe, in the middle of town. (DIR CATACOMBS, you have to pass through the gardens to get to the catacombs). Outside the Peiraic Gate (DIR PEI and GO GATE, go one west will get you into terrain you can forage from) But this area isn’t safe. So if you see a boa constrictor slither into the room, I’d go the other direction, however, it’s the only place local for you to find cucumbers, so go for it.

Type HELP FORAGE for a bit of information on this command.

FORAGE AREA simply gives you a vague terrain type. All rooms of this terrain type have the same things in it. You could find Deciduous Forest outside Athens, and a room up in Midgard would have the same list.

FORAGE LIST tells you ALL the things you can find in that room its at least a full page of STUFF. And bear in mind, pretty much all of it is used.

Lastly you can FORAGE <item> you may need to fumble around on what gets you what. But in this case, cucumbers are pretty basic.

 

Okay, so you forage up your cucumbers, if, by some chance, you loose track of how many you have, you can use the MEASURE verb. Which works on more things than just Alchemical supplies. Play around and measure things, from people, to food, to critters.

When you measure an item it should look something like this (mind you, when you’re level 1 you will only forage things one at a time):

 

>mea cuc

You would guess that there's 25 parts in a dark green cucumber.

It can hold a total of 300.

 

Don’t worry about getting stung if you go hunting for honey, that goes away when you attain your second level and gain more foraging skill, just don’t do it so many times that you kill yourself with bee stings.

Also with more foraging skill you will get more “parts per grab”. Which means each time you forage for an item (make a grab) you’ll get a number of parts, also your total will get bigger, as my above demonstration shows.

When you get both of your hands full with items of the SAME type, you can COMBINE them, into one handful, which is how you fill up your total, and when a formula calls for more than one piece of something, how you hold all the parts.

           

            For this formula you need to get some water (Go back inside the city. If you’re elsewhere in the city DIR PEI to orient yourself, and then go EAST 15 times, go around the middle of town on Metis Circle (S, SE, SE, E, E, NE, NE, N) and then go EAST, another 15 times, you should end up at the Diochares Gate. There should be a fountain in the room description. If you then type GET WATER, get and COMBINE your water as many times as you like, you only get it one at a time.

 

For this next part, you want to go back to somewhere safe (The Diochares Gate is safe), where you won’t have critters meander in and attack you. Have a seat, which I have noticed gives you slightly reduced round times on mixing.

And holding one component in one hand, and the other component in your other hand. Type COMBINE or MIX.

Yes, I know that’s an awful round time. But that’s part of the profession. There are things later in your career that will make it much more tolerable, and hey, you do get experience for mixing. Not much sometimes, but you do learn from it.

 

So, when your round time is done, and you have (hopefully, if you didn’t make a mistake in mixing) a slimy green ooze within your grasp. Go ahead and MEASURE it.

Your should see something like this:

 

>mea ooze

>A bottle of slimy green ooze is only one in number, and that's all it can hold.

It has a potency of 30.

 

            Potency is, as the name suggests, how effective it is, can mean things like, how long it will last, how much it will effect, how much it will hurt, etc.

However, wand oozes are an exception, as I’ll explain in the tool section.

 

            Grab that wand that you hopefully carved, or had carved for you, and POUR the ooze on it. POUR OOZE ON WAND.

            Again, I know this is an absolutely awful round time, but the end result is worth it.

 

If you’ve learned the yellow scroll, and the yellow papyrus scroll, I’d consider making up a batch of wand feeder. You need to make up some of Formula #3, as part of making the ooze. The sticky ooze is used when your tiny wand runs empty. When you make the wand, it’s full so you don’t need to worry right away, but you will find yourself running out of power quite quickly.

You POUR the sticky ooze on a tiny wand that you have already created.

 

A Hunting We Will Go…

Alchemist is probably starting to seem like the ultimate couch potato profession by this point. I can sympathize. What luck though; we can get you along into combat in this section!

So hopefully you have within your hand a tiny wand. Give it a few taps, four should be enough. I’ll explain what this does in the Tools of the Trade section.

If you haven’t already, why not mix up a few of that minor healing elixir, you’re born knowing this formula.

All right, so, hopefully you have:

A wand (or a few), you’ve tapped 4 or so times

Some wand feeder

Some minor healing elixirs

A melee weapon

 

Now it’s time for the big lecture on some of the finer points of combat, other than wand shaking.

Combat is circle based. Meaning that you don’t want to stray from the critters of your circle. You can get an idea of their difficulty by MEASURE <critter>. You’ll want to stick with ones that measure equal and worthy, stay away from dangerous and butt kickers.

            Defense depends on either your dodging, or your armor (which is based on athletics skill.) To use dodging, you pretty much don’t wear armor, if you do wear armor, you’re using your athletics skill.

Type SKILL to see how you can look over your skills. If you’re going to wear armor, I’ve found it better to wear more pieces of lighter armor, than one piece of heavier armor. You don’t want armor that’s too heavy, it will hinder you too much and you’ll get hit for more, check your INFO to see if your armor is hindering you. I’d definitely say go with armor as an alchemist rather than rely upon your dodge

Offense is based on your circle, with your skill in the type of weapon you’re using helping you to hit harder.

Every time you make an offensive move, be it swinging a weapon, or shaking a wand, you change your STANCE for the duration of the roundtime. When your stance goes up, your defense goes down, making you easier to hit.

So, if you wait to make a move until AFTER you’ve been attacked, your defenses will be higher while theirs will be lowered. While that might not be the biggest issue when you’re shaking wands, your stance does go up, making you vulnerable when you shake it.

If you’d like to find out how you handle a weapon, take yours out. Keeping in mind what I just said about stances, wait for the critter to attack and SWING <critter>.

There are other attacks to use, but why spoil your fun. You can try checking HELP COMBAT, and HELP BRAWLING, for more combat information.

You may also wish to know the RETREAT command. If you find yourself overwhelmed, and getting hurt, use it.

Now, as to why you carry the minor healing elixirs. Which are MINOR for a reason they only heal you if you’re slightly, or on the minor end of moderately injured. Check your HEALTH to check, and learn where on your health bar, those areas are for you.

For anything more, you need a greater healing elixir.

DRINK one of those if you find yourself going down in health…and get out of combat. No shame in leaving a fight.

If you find any of this confusing, don’t be afraid to ask for help! Go ahead and DIR MENTOR and RING the bell!

 

So, you go down to the catacombs, DIR CATACOMB and hunt rats.

Be careful for rat fiends and skeletons, which will kick the stuffing out of you, you’re only first circle after all. The skeletons are for 3rd and 4th circle and I don’t even know what the rat fiends are. So you arrive in the hunting ground…take off your shield, adding a measure of defense, perhaps it hinders you though (Check your INFO to see if your armor hinders you when you remove your shield, if it does, wear it.) and get out your snazzy new wand.

Now, when you find yourself a critter type SHAKE MY WAND AT <critter> (as per the formula instructions)

Now, if the critter is too far above your current level…that glob of ooze will come ZINGING back to bite you.

Hopefully it won’t.

Now if it doesn’t, GREAT. This time, SHAKE MY WAND will do, you’ll shake it at the same critter, rather than any new critters of the same type that have maybe entered the room.

Repeat that SHAKE MY WAND until you kill the critter.

If your hunting rats, put your wand away, wear your shield, get out your blade (Scimitar, longsword or dagger) and SKIN RAT, do it quickly, the rat corpses decay away into nothing rather quickly. When you get more than one rat skin, hold one in each hand and BUNDLE, so you can sell the bundle at the furrier later. It will take a few rat skins to get enough to be worth some money.

Don’t forget to SEARCH RAT, if only to make them go away. Also when you hunt things that carry treasure, you’ll need to SEARCH the bodies to find it, otherwise it decays away with the corpse. You don’t need your hands free to search.

You’ll also encounter bullies down there, I don’t believe they’re too hard, but be careful. They’ll toss sacks down, open these and get the goodies inside. Or drop boxes, which you’ll need to have opened for you, and run away. You’ll occasionally kill them as well, so you’ll have to SEARCH BULLY to get the stuff off their corpse.

Continue hunting, checking your EXP on occasion to see how close you are to circling. Collecting pelts, dropped treasure and whatnot, you’ll get a taste for what will earn you money and what won’t when you’ve hunted for awhile and tried and failed to pawn stuff. Bear in mind, some stuff, like copper bangles, bronze disk earrings you’ll have better luck selling them at the gem shop.

If the shop won’t buy it, don’t just drop it in on the floor, DISCARD <item> and keep Athens clean. Also, discard the sacks that critters drop after you’ve cleaned them out. It keeps you from being confused on which sacks you’ve emptied and which you haven’t. Don’t want to forget any treasure!

 

If you decide to go fighting a constrictor just outside the gate, and it manages to catch you in it’s coils type BREAK Constrictor to get out of it’s grasp. One squeeze and you’ll never want to be there again!

 

Lastly if your knapsack, or backpack, or whatever container gets full, you can get your mule: WHISTLE FOR STEED. Be nice to your mule. Just open the saddlebag on the beast, plop whatever you want to store off your person there, and then SLAP MY MULE, to send it back to the safety of the stables.

Mules will run from monsters, will not come if you whistle for them while at melee, and will not come to you when you are indoors, or underground or whatnot. The catacombs are underground, so you’ll have to go back out the crack to put anything on your mule.

 

How in HADES did I get HERE?!

Hopefully you will not head to Hades on your first hunting trip. I can’t give away secrets, and some of you may want to figure out things for yourself. Don’t panic! You can go about it two ways. You can…attempt to find your way out. Or you can DEPART.

Hades (the god) has set up puzzles in your path to prevent you from escaping his domain of the Underworld. There are a few ways out, but they are none of them easy. Take the time to learn your way out, don’t DEPART if you don’t have to. You can depart up until your 5th level, without suffering a death curse, after that…well there’s a variety of curses to be cursed with, not all of them are curable, and none of them are fun.

 

One small step for…

After a lot of shaking your wand at creatures (hopefully no wrist sprain!). And perhaps even collecting some dinars. Gods willing, you haven’t died.

You check that EXP of yours and…golly gee you’ve managed to earn those 1000 points, now it’s telling you to HELP TRAIN!

So…go forage yourself up some laurel leaves for your offering.

Following the HELP TRAIN instructions, find the temple of your god. All of the gods have a shrine in the Palace, and Apollo has a temple in the NW quad you can get DIRections for.

OFFER LAUREL LEAVES

DONATE 1 DINAR (donate a dinar value of your current level)

And PRAY!

The angels sing, stars dance…the ray of light shines down.

Welcome to level 2.

You have to make some choices now.

The numbers under Cost to Train, inside the parenthesis is the training point cost. The number alone is what we start with. Ranks per level is, which skills go up how much per level as an Alchemist.

 

Skill

Point Cost to Train

Ranks Per Level

Skill

Point Cost to Train

Ranks Per Level

Brawling Skills

Alchemy Skills

Punching

0 (10)

0.5

Healing

5 ( 5)

3

Kicking

0 (10)

0.5

Explosives

5 ( 5)

3

Throwing

1 (10)

0.5

Alterations

5 ( 5)

3

Grappling

0 (10)

0.5

Conjurations

5 ( 5)

3

Weapon Skills

Magic Skills

One-Handed

1 ( 8)

1

Spiritual

0 (12)

0.2

Two-Handed

1 ( 8)

1

Mental

0 (12)

0.2

Ranged

1 ( 7)

1.5

Alteration

0 (12)

0.2

Improvised

1 (10)

0.5

Relics

0 (12)

0.2

Acrobatics Skills

Mechanical Skills

Dodging

2 ( 8)

1

Locks

1 ( 8)

1

Escaping

2 ( 8)

1

Traps

1 ( 8)

1

Tumbling

2 ( 8)

1

Smithing

2 ( 5)

3

Catching

2 ( 8)

1

Gadgeteering

3 ( 5)

2.5

Physical Skills

Arcane Skills

Health

* ( 6)

2.2

Lore

1 ( 5)

2.5

Stealth

0 ( 8)

1

Foraging

3 ( 5)

3

Athletics

2 ( 8)

1

Art

0 ( 8)

1

Adrenal

2 ( 8)

1

Perception

1 ( 6)

2

*Depends on starting strength as to what your health starts at.

 

Now, there are other modifiers as to what goes up how. Your choice of god, and your race can have a significant impact upon your skills.

My advice is to train only your alchemy when you level, this will make your mixes more potent. What this does is, because you’re an alchemist, you can mix up combat draughts when you get into your teens. Or make use of a real variety of other tools.

They won’t have much effectiveness till even later. But if you choose to fight with weapons, it’s more cost effective in terms of skill points to spend 10 points on 2 ranks of alterations, rather than 16 points on 2 ranks of the weapon of your choice.

The name of the game for training is specialization. But stick with a path of training. Don’t train like an alchemist who wishes that they could fight as well as a warrior. It won’t work.

 

Don’t worry about training gadgeteering, or foraging, as you can see, they go up at a respectable rate on their own.

 

All the alchemy trainers can be found in the Northwest corner of the training Palaestra. You can find the Palaestra by typing DIR TRAINER.

Ask a trainer about training to see what they train, and how much it will cost you in terms of dinar and points.

ASK <name> ABOUT TRAINING and then when you decide to train with a trainer you TRAIN WITH <name>

 

I won’t tell you what to train, but given that some of our most powerful combat tools use either explosives, or conjurations, I would suggest those.

You can double train three of our skills. Or double training two and split the last two between the other two alchemy skills.

Don’t worry about training foraging, your natural profession training will be plenty.

 

Healing: Home to of course, the healing elixirs. But also, poisons, and antidotes, scarabs and life draining rings, which I’ll explain in the tool section.

 

Explosives: While home to only 5 of all your formulas, they are a potent part of your arsenal. The name of the section I think is description enough.

 

Alterations: Think of this as PHYSICAL alterations, home to your beauty products, which