~<Cosette's Alchemy Guide>~

Hey hey my fellow potion punchers! Looking around this particular section of the forum, and lurking the RO2 general discussion, it would seem there isn't a whole lot of direction out there for us Alchemists. It is with this in mind that I decided to attempt to help you out here... but I still need some help myself.

Why choose alchemy? Well, you really only can choose between 3 other professions so this is really a silly question, but I digress. Alchemy provides to people the resources necessary to stay alive, remain doing damage, and to later refine equips of higher levels. All in all the goods alchemists make are always in demand as they are a consumable good. This equates to higher base prices and ultimately higher profits.


Alright, first off, lets get the basics down...

~The Basics~

Job Experience can be gained in 4 ways:

• Gathering Herbs
• Refining Herbs
• Making Potions
• Khara Quests

As Alchemists our main material specific to our job are these little buggers:



Which randomly give (from what I've seen) one or two leaves/flowers and potentially one fruit of either:

• Mint
  
• Aloe
  
• Hinalle
  
• Mastela
  
• Yggdrasil

Each of these is found in different maps throughout the game. For the sake of simplicity I will organize it with bullets~

• Mint is in the Mt. Mjollnir Zone - East/West Mt. Mjollnir.
• Aloe is in the Prontera Zone - South Plain.
• Hinalle is in the Prontera Zone - Izlude Hill, Payon Forest.
• Mastela is found in the Alberta Zone - Maple Forest, Divided Plain.
• Yggdrasil is found in the Morroc Zone - Verta Delta, Sograt Desert, Road of Blessed.

Some maps also give the previous tier's fruit as well such as in the case of Izlude Hill, Maple Forest, and Verta Delta.

The herbs mint, aloe, hinalle, mastela, and yggdrasil each give job experience for being harvested (up to 183 I believe for harvesting yggdrasil herbs) and are found in different areas throughout the map. The hierarchy of refinement for these is - as if you didn't know - leaf to flower, flower to fruit, and fruit to concentrated extract.

To get an extract from a collection of the lowest herb component (a leaf) you will need a minimum of 12 leaves. This is because it takes 2 leaves to make a flower, 2 flowers to make a fruit, and 3 fruits to make an extract.

Refining these materials gives even more job exp and, actually, a very large part of your leveling will come from refining these. Each tier of herb gives experience as follows...

• Mint Leaf -> Mint Flower 30 exp, Mint Flower -> Mint Fruit 128 exp, Mint Fruit -> Mint Extract 151 exp.
  
• Aloe Leaf -> Aloe Flower 484 exp, Aloe Flower -> Aloe Fruit 484 exp, Aloe Fruit-> Aloe Extract 538 exp.
  
• Hinalle Leaf -> Hinalle Flower 924 exp, Hinalle Flower -> Hinalle Fruit 995 exp, Hinalle Fruit -> Hinalle Extract 1020 exp.
  
• Mastela Leaf -> Mastela Flower 1450 exp, Mastela Flower -> Mastela Fruit 1490 exp, Mastela Fruit -> Mastela Extract 1534 exp.
  
• Yggdrasil Leaf -> Yggdrasil Flower 2000 exp, Yggdrasil Flower -> Yggdrasil Fruit 2064 exp, Yggdrasil Fruit -> Yggdrasil Extract 2129 exp.

Which comes out to, assuming you refine from ONLY 12 leaves of any of these...

• 715 exp.
  
• 4894 exp.
  
• 9549 exp.
  
• 14704 exp.
  
• 20256 exp.

And if you look at the experience table here then you can see how quickly you can level alchemy off of just refining these (for instance, at level 49 job, refining yggdrasil leaves, each set of 12 is 4.77% of your total experience for that level).

Including into your experience the actual potions you make at each tier and you will find yourself leveling quickly and frequently!

~Guardians~

These come with any job that you pick and each last 30 seconds upon activation, but depending on the job you pick their appearance changes. For Alchemist's we get a guardian called Hohenheim:



At job level 10 you get a quest in Prontera (in our case as Alchemists this is from our job's Expert in Prontera) which allows you to get your Guardian. As your job levels up you will receive more quests from this NPC which each relate to upgrading the ability of your Guardian. To access Hohenheim you only have to press the "V" key and he will give you his passive effects. Depending on the quests you have completed for the Expert your Guardian will either give you on of the following:

• Level 1 increases your movement speed by 30% and the [Beyond Limit] buff level 1.
  
• Level 2 increases your movement speed by 60% and the [Beyond Limit] buff level 2.
  
• Level 3 increases your movement speed by 90% and the [Beyond Limit] buff level 3.

The [Beyond Limit] buff gives you at level one a 10% increase to vigor and haste. This amount increases to 30% to both when maxed and ultimately means that you will have shorter casting times when your Guardian is active.

The Guardian, after being used, remains on cooldown for a time until the bar at the top of the screen looks like this:



As opposed to this:



Currently the Guardians only seem to give passive buffs to you upon activation (increased movement speed and lowered casting times). Eventually our Guardian is supposed to give us a passive increase to magic defense and give us a few extra abilities to use when active, but these have not been implemented yet.

~Subcategory: Guardian Tricks~

The Guardian movement speed buff does not work on mounts, however this movespeed stacks with movespeed potions giving you insane amounts of speed. If you haven't tried this out I would very much recommend doing so... it's quite fun

~Farming n' Stuff~

I know what you are thinking (actually I really don't... bear with me) "Coseeette, what use does knowing the experience have if I can't actually get that experience in a quick fashion?!" and I will say to that... NO FEAR!

In my ventures throughout the world map I have compiled for you my semi*- complete farming locations.

*I say semi because I actually skipped the harvesting of an entire tier... :3

A further disclaimer should be that these are, by no means, the only areas to get these herbs. If you have another area that is as efficient, or moreso, then by all means feel free to SHARE. The more information the better!

Now, for the areas I farmed. Each of the following gets you about 99 leaves (dis-including the fruits and flowers you gather as well) in 25-30 minutes.

For mint I went here: 7-9 plants.










For Aloe I went here: There are around 8-9 plants.












For Hinalle I went here: 7-10 plants.












For Mastela I went here: (Skipped this area, will search later, but for why I skipped this entire tier I will go into detail in a bit...)




For Yggdrasil I go here: 9 herbs.












Each of these combines a decent amount of herbs to harvest while being completely safe from monsters disrupting your gathering!

~Subcategory: Monster Drops~

For firmaments, traces, roots, and other materials you will want to farm in a low level zone with, preferably, AoE damaging skills. This guide here covers what you will need to know, but I will cover it as well.
The AoE spells you need do not need to be maxed out. In fact you only need to be able to deal up to 67 damage for the areas I gather materials from. These two areas are Flips and Porings. The Flips can be found in blue and the Porings in pink!







For Flips your AoEs needs to deal a maximum of 49 damage. For Porings you need a maximum of 67 damage.

It is also important to mention that the other drops aside from essences, traces, roots, etc. can be sold for some decent money.

A nice thing to note about the material farming from porings. A stack jelopys 99 will sell for 198 ruppies. While not much, every 5 stacks is good for 1 zenny and you will have a ton of these. Nothing else from the mob drops stacks as high. Bags take up slots, food is worth nothing, noob pots the same. [...]

As Sonic said a stack of jelopies sells for 198 rupees each, or 2 rupees per jelopy. With five stacks you gain a completely free zeny off of farming. These items tend to drop 2 at a time and drop very often and you will find yourself having 2 stacks of these within 10 minutes sometimes.This shouldn't be the sole reason you go to farm, but it is a nice benefit that you can can just by farming the junk you need to grind for the other junk you need, As for flips, they too have a basic drop. Theirs' is Dim Pollen and it sells for the exact same price as jelopies meaning that at either location this will occur.

~How to Level Quickly/Efficiently~

For me being fast is only part of the equation. I wanted to be fast and efficient. I wanted to level quickly but with the least cost for materials so that I didn't have to spend all my time farming.

For levels 1-11 the fastest leveling is found in gathering mint and making beginner red and blue potions. Making anything else is worthless unless you want to sell them. Making purples here is a waste of Roots and, furthermore, don't give much more exp above reds/blues to warrant using the extra bottle and extract.

For levels 11-21 the fastest leveling is found in gathering aloe and making basic red and blue potions. Once again, purples here are a waste of materials.

For levels 21-31 the fastest leveling is found in gathering hinalle and making crafted red and blue potions. At this point making purple potions, if you don't want to farm traces/firmaments solely, becomes "alright" as, by this point, you will have enough that it becomes worth it just to get rid of them.

For levels 31-41 the fastest leveling is found in gathering hinalle and making crafted red, blue, and purple potions.

For levels 41-50 the fastest leveling is found in gathering yggdrasil and making crafted blue potions. Red and Purple both take two extracts at this point. Making blues and purples here is fine, though! Anything to level you up at this point.

Now, why should you skip harvesting mastelas (like I did)? Well, this is rooted in some math and some common sense. At tier 3 you need essences, traces, and roots to create a potion while going into tier 4 you now need triple that since the tier 4 recipes call for the crystal versions of each of these. This is where some math comes in...

In my quest to find appropriate prices for crafted potions I did some number crunching on each particular tier's comparative HP/SP to rupee ratio and came with the appropriate NPC prices of each of the potential potions of each tier. After calculating the actual exp you get from refining the plants themselves (excluding the actual exp from gathering) the following is the minimum value to get the extract (12 leaves):

• Mint gives 715exp per 12 leaves.
• Aloe gives 4894 exp per 12 leaves.
• Hinalle gives 9549 exp per 12 leaves.
• Mastela gives 14704 exp per 12 leaves.
• Yggdrasil gives 20256 exp per 12 leaves.

*This doesn't include the random chance you get of picking up any of the other stages of the refining process as those are, well, random.

This seems all very normal and even. However, it is important to note that at after tier 3 an important change takes place in the recipe of each potion. This is, of course, the extra essence/spirit/whathaveyou cost of the higher grade essence/spirit/whathaveyou. After tier 3 of a potion, to upgrade your essences/traces/whathaveyou to a higher grade versionof themselves will cost you three times the previous amount at tier 3 which, when it comes to the following exp calculations, changes the actual values prior to tier 4 since you can make more with the essences you have.

• [T1]Red=181 x3 543+2145 = 2688 exp
• [T2]Red=3757 x3 11271+14682 = 25953 exp
• [T3]Red=7319 x3 21957+28647 = 50604 exp
• [T4]Red=11089 x1 11089+14704 = 25793 exp
• [T5}Red=15198 x1 15198+20256 = 35454 exp

To gain at or above 50000 exp on each of these between it would cost you, in resources:

• 6 traces and 6 extracts for tier 2.
• 3 traces and 3 extracts for tier 3.
• 6 traces and 2 extracts for tier 4.
• 6 traces and 2 extracts for tier 5, this option gaining 20000 more exp.

This essentially leaves [T4] in an awkward spot between the superior exp gains of both tier 3 and tier 5. What gives with this? Tier 4 requires you to double your output of essence for the benefit of reducing the extracts you need by one. If you are to include the potential of making money as an offset to this cost I must remind you that it takes 916 to buy the bottles required to make 2 tier 4 potions and 756 to buy the 3 tier 3 bottles. The actual selling price (if using the NPC calculated prices) is 2652 for two tier 4 potions and 2217 for 3 tier 3 potions. Include the costs of the bottles mentioned previously into this and you come out to 1461 for the three tier 3 potions and 1736 for the two tier 4s. A difference of 275 rupees at the cost of time spent collecting doesn't seem worth it to me.

Now, practically speaking, T4 potions are required to exist through the 30-39 phase of the game and, here, their benefit shows. However, when purely speaking on exp gains they are simply not as effective as tier 3s.

So, if one was to level up as quickly as possible they would want t bypass tier 4 potion creation altogether.

The stat potions can be an option as well, but only in the same way that purple potions are an option. For the stat potions you will need to use at least one more extract and one more bottle to create these. The advantage here is you gain more exp for each of these potions as these are higher-level potions meaning higher level exp values. The major downside is the material cost on everything other then the potion specific spirit/fragment. So, like purples, you really should only be making these when you don't want to farm the other materials. However, I am sure that between the refinement of the herbs and your basic health/mana potion creation you should have no need to venture into the buff-potion section of the crafting list.

~Potion Pricing/Making Money~

This really all comes down to the final part of my guide: potion prices. At this point in the game potion prices are everywhere since no one really knows how to gauge the value of the Alchemist's potions. To really gauge this value we have to look at why our potions are better then our only other competitor... the NPC!

• Typically can be stacked to a value 10 higher then the NPC's. This means more pots in your inventory.
• Have higher values for healing and mana recovery.

The first's value can be left up to you however you want to go about dealing with it. In my case I prefer to deal with the second in relation to the game's set value on potions. What this means is that I calculated, essentially, what our potions would be if they were sold at NPC price. This comes out to, per stack of 5 potions:

• [T1]Red 134 Blue 98 and Purple 203.
• [T2]Red 386 Blue 300 and Purple 577.
• [T3]Red 739 Blue 570 and Purple 1090.
• [T4]Red 1326 Blue 950 and Purple 1950.
• [T5]Red 2715 Blue 2206 and Purple 4097.

When it comes to potion pricing the only cost you need to worry about, unless you are buying your materials, is the cost of the actual bottle. Almost all of these potions needs 2 bottles of its tier (except for tier 1 purple potions) so this is:

• 44 (66 for purple)
• 132
• 252
• 458
• 958

So, what potion pricing really comes down to is making a profit. As long as you make sure your costs are covered you can really charge whatever someone will buy for. I charge for my calculated NPC price, you can charge for that or whatever.

Another aspect of potion selling is the amount you sell. I noticed this at first when I tried to sell full stacks of potions and they, well, didn't sell ._.
I'd say keeping the amount you sell in bundles of 10-20 would be best as this doesn't overwhelm the customer and it leaves you selling enough of your stock to be able to clear your bulk in a decent amount of time.

For the most up-to-date prices that potions are being sold for I would refer to the Auction House prices.

~Subcategory: Stat Potions~

Oh, and on the stat potions that can be made... these I have no idea how to price aside from setting a specific value to each point of the stat they give. The 30 minute boosts will sell no doubt as long as people like the price, but as for the 30 second boost potions... I can only really see these useful in PVP on bursty characters so until PVP becomes more prominent I'd really avoid making these unless you have a good reason to do so. As the market develops and the actual need for these potions increases I will post my findings on the prices I can manage to sell them for, but until then... :3

What I can say, however, is that these particular potions are not extrodinarely profitable until you either get the "Expert" variation of them OR you manage to find a "Master" recipe for the level 50 versions. These will both save you money that you really don't need to be spending on these recipes and will also at least leave you with buff potions you can use/sell more easily then the lower level counterparts.

~Subcategory: Master Potions~

Maestro potions are a special case in the potion world. Their recipes are dropped by certain level 50 mobs in the end areas of the game and are not sold by Alchemist Expert NPCs. They have no real NPC counterpart and they are the best potions in the game. This leaves us alchemists who have the ability to make them in a position to make some serious money. Lets go over the pros of them first:

• Massive values for healing and mana recovery.
• Best potions in the game.
• Same crafting recipees as their "Expert" counterparts.

Cons:

• Can only be stacked to 20.

If we are going by assumed NPC price it would be something like, per 5 stack, 4138 for reds, 3235 for blues, 6196 for purples.

These potions have, once again, no match in the game. They don't really take any more to make over regular tier 5s as well and this all comes together to allow for higher prices with the higher demand they will bring at level 50. For making money these are they way to go, but I digress


And that is my guide! I'll edit this for formatting and put in any recommendations you all have/anything I notice I left out. Hopefully what I have now may be of use to some of you and, above all else, happy potion makin' :3

Edited by Ephonie, 01 June 2013 - 03:08 PM.

This is amazing! Thanks for this great guide!

Really nice work! Thanks for that.

This is beyond awesome. <3

Thanks for showing us the graphs and mathematics of Alchemy in general. This definitely answers some people's concerns on farming herbs and which ones to go for. I was having fun with AH because people didn't know were to go for some herbs even tho there's guides everywhere. Easiest job to max wether or not you have hide abilities.

Nice :3 thank you!

Thank you all for the feedback. This guide is for the community so I am glad it has some use

I corrected parts of the guide for coherency and also added a section on "Guardians." If there is anything else I can think of I will continue adding it to the guide!

A nice thing to note about the material farming from porings. A stack jelopys 99 will sell for 198 ruppies. While not much, every 5 stacks is good for 1 zenny and you will have a ton of these. Nothing else from the mob drops stacks as high. Bags take up slots, food is worth nothing, noob pots the same. While not neccesay, if someone can find a similar farming spot in a higher level map that doesn't requre more than 1-2 aoe uses per kill then you can bump up money farming just a tad. This idea if for more lvl 50's though.

Another good spot for ygg harvesting is around the camp on coco beach on the Verta Delta map.. There are 4 plants there that you can harvest. It's basically a big triangle you walk that has plants at each corner and they usually respawn by the time you get around to it again. The corner with 2 plants will occaisionally have a quick respawn on one plant that will let you get an extra harvest in.

Hope this helps.

Great guide,you deserved a cookie!

Been studying the last few days for tests and haven't been able to respond, buuut now that that all is over~

A nice thing to note about the material farming from porings. A stack jelopys 99 will sell for 198 ruppies. While not much, every 5 stacks is good for 1 zenny and you will have a ton of these. Nothing else from the mob drops stacks as high. Bags take up slots, food is worth nothing, noob pots the same. While not neccesay, if someone can find a similar farming spot in a higher level map that doesn't requre more than 1-2 aoe uses per kill then you can bump up money farming just a tad. This idea if for more lvl 50's though.

I've gotten around 10 zeny total at porings by doing exactly what you mentioned above and, not surprisingly, I forgot to mention it... ._.

Flips have a similar basic drop that's selling price escapes me, but I do believe it is very similar in price. Flips too has trash drops like porings as well, but doesn't have as many I've found (bags in this case versus flip's low-level armors) and this is why I tend to farm them now instead of porings (well, that and I have a harder time picking up the drops from porings... >_>).

As for the higher level AoE spots... I don't know. Flips and porings have the advantage of being easy to kill, mobby, and a very fast respawn rate for the both of them. As the areas go on the mobs only get harder to kill and AoE damage in this game is not that spectacular on most spells (the exception being on high cooldown spells, hence not being as efficient). If such an area exists and if you can actually manage to kill them, quickly as you said, then it might just be worth it... I'll look around while I'm farming/leveling

Edit: Just put what you said about the jelopies into my first post. Thanks for the info

Another good spot for ygg harvesting is around the camp on coco beach on the Verta Delta map.. There are 4 plants there that you can harvest. It's basically a big triangle you walk that has plants at each corner and they usually respawn by the time you get around to it again. The corner with 2 plants will occaisionally have a quick respawn on one plant that will let you get an extra harvest in.

Hope this helps.

I think I know the spot you are talking about. I looked around that map and I'm fairly certain I found that spot, but once I found the spot I posted above I completly forgot it existed. I'll go check it out here in a bit to see how it compares and I'll report back to you (a.k.a. edit this post, heh).

Great guide,you deserved a cookie!

Thanks, I have always been partial to cookies <3

Edited by Ephonie, 16 May 2013 - 04:44 PM.

Thanks for this guide, I'm already a lvl 50 Alch but my combat lvl is only 37. Luckily I'm an assassin and I scuttled all the way to get ygg plants.

thanks for the guide is very helpful

Thank you thank you!

I hit 50 Alchemist this morning and made a BAJILLION pots for my guild (No joke, I made about 630 pots O_o)

Thanks ^^

The best spot to farm the Mastela that I've found in the very begining part of Divided Plains, near the first camp. I don't remember exactly atm how many plants there are, but I think its 9-10 plants pretty close together, in an area with no aggro mobs.

Master Potions cost 20 zeny for 20 bottles on AH. IMO, it's to cheap, and you won't make enough money from them, unless you farm all ingredients yourself (too much time spent, not much profit made).

Master Potions cost 20 zeny for 20 bottles on AH. IMO, it's to cheap, and you won't make enough money from them, unless you farm all ingredients yourself (too much time spent, not much profit made).

That's the way a player run (or in this case semi player run, since there's so many needed items that only come from npcs) works, just because you don't think there's enough profit in selling 20 master pots for 20z, doesn't mean other people aren't happy with that amount of profit. You can't do anything to change it, so you might as well just accept it instead of being mad.

I like this guide +1 off to make pot's and so far i don't see any craft really banking from any crafted stuff

That's the way a player run (or in this case semi player run, since there's so many needed items that only come from npcs) works, just because you don't think there's enough profit in selling 20 master pots for 20z, doesn't mean other people aren't happy with that amount of profit. You can't do anything to change it, so you might as well just accept it instead of being mad.

lol. Who's being mad? I shared my opinion, that's all.

Sweet Guide

This was very helpful, but after level 20 I just opted to keep farming the areas (beginning of divided plains is great) and channel change with each run until I had enough to craft and level up. You need tons of the ygg anyway for master pots, so it's worth it to spend all the time farming those items and not turning them into pots, but just process them into extract. My character is only level 20, so it was nice to have the herbs in very safe places and it's possible to get from map to map without flying or dying.

I love you for this guide! Thanks so much

wo, nice guide! +1

I am alchemy, i think im doing good job, coz im lvl26 and my alchemy is 32 lol (trying to lvl up alchemy fast, coz like a sm  have terrible sp problems)

.. i need better pots so.. thnx for this guide!

is very nice have locations of plants!! <3 that help me a lot!

Thanks for the nice guide  
I also like that you included pictures, it made it a lot easier to understand 

Edited by Luvnya, 10 March 2014 - 07:19 AM.