Formulation Bench

The Formulation Bench is the bench nobody builds, and it holds thirty six recipes that have almost nothing to do with each other. Fertilizer, candles, incense, embalming fluid, organ surgery and the one craft in the game that turns iron into gold.

It is also cheap and easy to miss, because the technology that unlocks it is named after the least interesting thing it makes.

Twenty points and a bronze bar

The bench costs four Wooden Plank, four Bronze Detail and one Polished Bronze to put up, which is a single Polished Bronze standing between you and everything below.

Demolishing it later gives back two planks, two details and the Polished Bronze, so the bar itself is never lost. Cancel the scaffolding before it finishes and you keep the lot.

Unlocking it is 5 10 5 on a node called Candles, one step off a church bench node that costs nothing at all. Twenty points total for a bench that makes gold, which is the best trade in the technology tree.

It turns iron into gold, and one of the two recipes wastes the stone

A Philosopher Stone is the most valuable thing alchemy can make, at five thousand, and this bench is where you spend it. There are two transmutation recipes sitting next to each other and they are not remotely equal.

One Iron Ingot and one Philosopher Stone makes one Golden ingot, which is worth ten thousand. One Iron Ore and one Philosopher Stone makes one Golden nugget, which is worth a hundred.

The stone is consumed either way, so the recipe you pick is the entire decision. Hover both before you click, because the icons are similar and the outcomes are a hundred times apart.

Six fertilizers, and they raise the bed rather than the crop

Every fertilizer in the game is made here, from Peat and a growth elixir. The cheap one takes two peat and a weak elixir, and the best takes eight peat and a miracle elixir.

What they do is add mastery to the garden bed, which is how a bed grows a crop your own Farming level could not reach. That makes this bench the thing standing between a starting garden and the good seeds.

The Compost Chemist perk doubles the output of every one of them, so it is worth having before you start a fertilizer run rather than after.

Embalming fluid is where the money is

Four fluids are mixed here. The plain white takes Melted Fat and a Preservative, the red takes Alcohol instead, and the two mixed fluids add a Comet’s Tail on top.

They sell for very little at the bottom and a great deal at the top: a first grade white fluid is a hundred coins and a third grade red and white is eight thousand. The grade comes from your Anatomy mastery when you mix it, so the same recipe is worth eighty times more in the right hands.

That is the quiet argument for pushing Anatomy before you start selling fluid. The ingredients do not change and the price does.

And the rest of the bench

Twelve organ improver recipes upgrade a body part to its best grade, which is the supply side of the graveyard. Three candles from Beeswax and thread, two incenses from Melted Fat and Fragrance, and two urns for ashes.

Dynamite is here too, from explosive dust and alcohol, and so is the paper liquid that feeds the writing chain: twelve Flax and a water for three of it, or twelve Wheat for one.

Flax is three times better than wheat for paper, which is worth knowing before you plant a field of the wrong thing.