The Alchemist

The Alchemist keeps the deepest counter in town. Forty eight lines pass across it and forty five of them are sold by nobody else in the game, so a run that never raises this stall goes without most of them entirely.

What makes it more than a long shelf is what those lines are. Twenty seven of the twenty nine alchemy formulas sit on it already mixed, which means every potion in the game has two routes: work out its rune combination at the Laboratory, or hand him the coins.

His plot is empty until Market Stalls III

Nothing here is available in the first hours of a run. The Alchemist shares his gate with the Jeweler, and both stalls stay unbuilt ground at the port until Market Stalls III is researched.

That node asks 150 and 50 by itself, and the branch that reaches it runs to 917, 87 and 120. One node on the way costs no spheres at all and opens at 50 reputation with Jack, so the foreman gates the alchemy shop as surely as the research does.

Raising the stall costs 8 Building Kit I, 6 Wooden Kit I and 3 Iron Kit I. The two upgrades want 10 Furniture Kit I with 4 Sculpture Kit II and four blank notebooks, then 10 Furniture Kit II with 4 Building Kit II and four hardcover ones, which is the shop asking for its own stock back.

The ordering is kinder than it looks, because the same branch builds the Factory. An assembly bench turns out a Building Kit I for one Stone Kit and a single Brick where a Woodworking Workbench wants six, so by the time you can unlock him you can make his kits cheaply.

The shelf is the formula list, already mixed

Alchemy in this game is discovery. A formula is a combination of red, green and blue runes, and until you find the combination the potion does not exist for you. The Alchemist sells the results of twenty seven of them, so his counter is the way around the entire mechanic.

His prices are the honest measure of what a formula is worth, because a full shelf sells at the base price exactly. Explosive Dust is the one formula he never carries, and Berserker Potion III is the odd case in the other direction: he will take one off you at his third tier and never stocks a single one.

Two of those are worth buying once even if you intend to do your own mixing. Alkali and Tannin Liquid each feed exactly one recipe, the best sword and the best armor in the game, and at 2,000 coins apiece they are cheaper than a wasted rune hunt. Spices and Umami raise the quality of cooked food and are the only reason a cabbage bowl is ever worth selling.

The Philosopher Stone halves the price of gold

At his third tier the Alchemist puts ten Philosopher Stone on the shelf at 5,000 each, and no other vendor in the game carries one. The description says what it is for and does not exaggerate.

Turns iron into gold.

Philosopher Stone

At the Formulation Bench one stone and one Iron Ingot become one Golden ingot in twelve seconds. That is around 5,160 coins of ingredients for an ingot the Jeweler charges 10,000 for, which is the cheapest gold in the game by a wide margin once his stall is at tier three.

Buy them while the shelf is full. Prices climb as stock falls, so the first stone off a shelf of ten costs 5,000 and the last one on it costs 15,811, and the same curve governs everything else he sells. The arithmetic behind that is on how vendor prices move.

Third Eye Salt buys two levels of every mastery

Third Eye Salt arrives at his second tier at 1,500 coins, and drinking one adds 2 mastery to all five tracks at once for 450 seconds. Anatomy, Farming, Building, Smithing and Book writing all move together, which no perk and no tool does.

Seven and a half minutes is enough for one craft you are two levels short of. It is the answer to a recipe you cannot start rather than a thing to drink regularly, and it pairs with graded recipes, where being under the line still lets you begin and then hands back nothing.

Compare it with the talismans the Jeweler sells. Those are permanent and they only feed Book writing, at +1, +2 and +4. The Salt is temporary and feeds everything, so the two answer different problems and neither replaces the other.

Every grade of embalming fluid, and nowhere else

Four fluids exist and each comes in three grades, and the Alchemist is the only shop that stocks any of them. Grade I appears at his first tier, grade II at his second and grade III at his third, where he holds exactly one of each.

The two families do different jobs. A Solution adds skulls of one kind to a corpse, while an Injection adds one kind and takes the other away, which is how you push a body toward the shape you want rather than improving it across the board.

Red skulls are what decide how many perks a zombie can carry, so an Injection for Zombies is the fluid that makes a worker better at its job. A collar refuses a body above its ceiling, so raising red skulls on a corpse you meant to raise with a Bronze collar can put it out of reach until you own a better one.

Making them yourself is a Formulation Bench job once Anatomy is high enough. A Solution for Corpses is one Melted Fat and one Preservative, a Solution for Zombies swaps the fat for Alcohol, and both Injections add a Comet’s Tail on top. They are graded recipes, so the grade you get is the grade your mastery earns, and Preservative is on his shelf at 400 as well.

The paper counter is the whole book chain

Behind the potions sits a second shop that has nothing to do with alchemy. Leather Scroll at 10, Clean Paper at 20, Paper glop at 25, Ink at 50 and Science Kit I at 50 are all on the counter from his first tier, in stacks of twenty.

The two notebooks are the reason to care. Blank Softcover Notebook at 80 from his second tier feeds twenty seven recipes, and Blank Hardcover Notebook at 150 from his third feeds ten more, including the Hypno Prayer and every hardcover book. Both are otherwise a Writing Desk or Printing Press job with a paper chain behind them.

Buying them outright is how a run reaches the expensive prayers without building a writing operation first. A hardcover notebook costs 150 coins on a full shelf and 671 on the last one, which still compares well against the Leather Scroll and Clean Paper it would otherwise take.

His purse, and what the upgrades change

Like every trader he starts with 100 coins and earns more each day as he grows. His purse is the reason a big sale stalls, though only the net of a deal is checked, so taking goods back in part payment settles a sale he could never pay outright.

He also buys for town happiness rather than coins, and the rate is always two smiles for a batch. Four Dream Dust, three Preservative and twenty Clean Paper each pay two at his first tier, and by his third a single Philosopher Stone or one Umami pays the same two, which makes the cheap lines the sensible ones to hand over.

His standing order is a supply crate that changes with his tier: ten Kitchen Utensils at first, twenty Engineering Mechanisms at his second and thirty Appliances II at his third. Those pay 20, 40 and 50 happiness and sit alongside everything else on town orders.