=== Alchemists === Description Alchemists are the only class that can harness the abilities of the essences found in the dungeon. They can add these essences to staves, rings, wands, rods, and sometimes weapons and armour to create new items or recharge old ones. They can also extract essences from magical items they find. Using these abilities, Alchemists can get very good items at low levels. The trouble is getting them to survive later on. Alchemists are extremely proficient with all kinds of magical devices, and have made a fine art of extracting, storing, and using these objects' magical energies. Because they neither fight well nor cast powerful spells, Alchemists rely on their craftsmanship to cope with the dangers of the dungeons. They will quickly learn to create damage- dealing wands, rods, and staffs, forge powerful weapons and armour, make highly useful objects of other kinds, and eventually, at great cost to other knowledge, they can learn the perilous art of artifact creation itself. Starting Stat Modifiers Strength -5 Intelligence +3 Wisdom +0 Dexterity +1 Constitution -2 Charisma +1 Bonus Blows 0 Hit Die +d0 Exp Penalty 30% Starting Skills: Skill Start Level Skill Point Gains Combat 1.000 [0.700] Weaponmastery 0.700 [0.700] Sneakiness 1.000 [0.900] Stealth 0.000 [0.400] Magic 3.000 [0.900] Magic-Device 1.000 [1.250] Geomancy Fire 0.000 [0.100] Water 0.000 [0.100] Air 0.000 [0.100] Earth 0.000 [0.100] Meta 0.000 [0.500] Conveyance 0.000 [0.100] Divination 0.000 [0.500] Temporal 0.000 [0.100] Mind 0.000 [0.100] Nature 0.000 [0.100] Necromancy 0.000 [0.100] Runecraft 0.000 [0.700] Thaumaturgy 0.000 [0.100] Alchemy 1.000 [0.800] Spirituality 1.000 [0.800] Prayer 0.000 [0.500] Monster-lore 0.000 [0.500] *An Alchemist cannot learn the Geomancy skill, but it is shown in his skill screen because the elemental schools are sub-skills of it. Innate Abilities: Ability Character level Perfect casting 1 Starting Equipment An Alchemist begins the game with: a Dagger six Essences of Explosion an Empty Bottle a Set of Leather Gloves Alchemy The alchemical techniques are accessed using the 'm' key. Alchemists may then 'E'xtract essences or add 'P'owers. The Alchemist must be wearing GLOVES to use their alchemy powers. Alchemist's are also capable of creating their own artifacts, but this is a time-consuming, and costly, activity. To do so, they must first learn the ability Artifact Creation, which costs a whopping 70 skill points to learn, and requires some high pre-requisites. Once they have done so, they need to imbue an ego item with a number of essences of magic (equal to their skill level) and then wield the item. While using the item, it will gain experience (which reduces the amount of exp the wearer gains during this time). When the Alchemist feels that the item is powerful enough, they can finalise the artifact by "buying" powers using the experience the artifact has collected. They will also require exotic ingredients to add the abilities. Most (but not all) potions, scrolls, wands, staffs, rods, rings, and amulets contain usable magical energies. An Alchemist taps that energy, using the technique "'E'xtract essences" to create one or more essences of a type appropriate to the original object. The drained object itself is now called "of nothing". Unlike any other kind of object, it can have new magics added to it. An Alchemist can add power to such items by using essences he made or found. He does this with the technique "'P'ower". He can then select the object he wishes enchant, and the kind of object he wishes to create. Only object types that he knows the recipe for will be displayed, and ones for which essences are lacking will be displayed in red. Objects whose level exceeds his own are sometimes difficult to create, though he can always add gold to improve the chances of his success. A few pointers: -Recipes are (usually) logical. Acid essences don't make Dragon Weapons. And you can always look at the recipes you know with the "recipe 'B'ook" command. -Not all objects or ego-item types can be made using alchemy. -Alchemy is mostly reversible. Most items that you can 'E'xtract from, you can later re-create, if you learn about them when extracting from them. You won't always get enough essences from destroying an item to recreate it, though the chance of doing so will get higher as you increase in skill. -*identifying* an object that you can destroy will always teach you how to create it (if creating it is possible). -Since you can't create abilities in artifacts that you aren't aware of, make sure to *identify* all the artifacts you can. -You can't *identify* things you buy in shops, so you'll have to extract from them and take your chances. Some Recipes: Any Alchemist worth his salt knows lots of recipes. By extracting from items in the dungeon, he learns to create more and more items. You can see the recipes you know using the "recipe 'B'ook" command. The Alchemist starts off knowing some basic recipes, and gains more recipes as time goes on. More details can be found in the Essences SPOILER).