Eternal Alchemist - #1 Alchemist!

That Awesome Moment when...

Okay, technically I'm tied for the #1 spot with giove, but that's still #1, hehe.

That happened with this:

You advanced to level 140 of alchemy!

How I Got There

Alchemy Goddess is of course a necessity if you're wanting high alchemy levels. That 20% bonus means MUCH less ings needed and mixing.

From level 100 to level 140 is 264,076,682 experience. To example this, with my rationality, it would take the following to get that much exp just by mixing HEs:
- With goddess (99exp per HE): 2,667,442 HEs
- Without goddess (83exp per HE): 3,181,647 HEs

That's over 514k HEs difference... a.k.a. 514k mums and 1.028 million silver.


There are many who think focusing primarily on bars and magic essies for experience is the best way to level.

Personally, I didn't. I did of course make those things, but primarily for actual use. I did on occasion in the past mix Magic Essies and sell them to the NPC, occasionally to other players, but that was rare, and mostly in my earlier play days (before Alch 100).

Bars on the other hand, they take a lot of time due to ings. I mixed those almost exclusively for personal use. (Rings, S2E projects, etc.)

After alch 100, I determined two methods to use for leveling focus. I of course had a lot of mixing outside of these two things since there are many essences and bars that can be mixed for actual usage, but these two things were done for the purpose of leveling:

1) Mix HEs - Those who harv silver in the MM cave regularly have most likely seen me sitting on a bag next to one of the silver-buying bots. I took food and mums to the bot, bought silver off the bots, mixed at the bot, left the cave with the HEs and silver with any free emu. Placed the HEs on my own bot (IWannaRock near gold-side entrance) and took the silver to storage for later at-sto mixing.

I found this better than magic ess for several reasons. Primarily, HEs are heavily used and sell quickly. Silver can regularly be quickly accessed on the bots in the cave. (Remember rule 5 if you do this, don't buy from bots you or any alt you have sells silver to. I never sold silver to the bots.) Having such quick access to silver, and mums being fast harvests, it made more sense to mix these than it did magic essies. Magic essie ings are much harder to come by for sale, so they mean self-harvesting, taking much longer to do than HEs. "Higher experience" does not equate to faster leveling, all things considered.

2) Mix Magic Essies in school on school day - While I did have to mix some outside of school for my own use (magic leveling and such), I would always work on keeping in stock 12k of magic ess ings reserved for school days. This was a good use of my "red harv astro" days... red astro + harv med = non-stop harvesting with essentially no medallion breakage, so I could focus on real life while leaving my char to harv stock for this.

If you remain focused for the full 6 hours, you can do 12k or more mixes of magic essies in the alchemy school in Glacmor.  With my rationality, I'd make 334 exp per mix... over 4 million experience for a full school day.

Mercury in the school? I tried it before alch 100, but times have changed... energy essies got more expensive due to rising silver and iron costs. Cinnabar once used to be regularly available on market, but it hasn't been for years now. That means stocking your own cinnabar, which is a very slow harvest and heavy requiring lots of storage trips. Add the higher energy ess cost and as well breaking alembics, and it's simply not worth it.

Better to try stocking for titanium bars if you're going to do something higher than magic essences. But even still, that's 96k titanium, 36k coal, and 84k fire essies to stock for a full school day... plus food.

My Stats

With only very few occasions played on different computers, my stats are as close to accurate as you can get.

Here's my full alchemy non-school mixing list. I said I'd mixed HEs heavily, and it shows:

Some of why I mixed so many (or so few) of certain items:

1- Health Essence - Explained above, it was a primary non-school leveling item.

2- Fire Essence - Honestly, no explanation needed. These are heavily needed. Sold them in early play, but only mixed for myself after level 60 or so, as I did S2E projects and such.

3- Magic Essence - I did use these for leveling pre-Alch 100. After I mixed outside of school for self-use: magic leveling (rad shield, MI, true sight) and engineering stock (items for the engineering daily)

4- Energy Essence - I tend to use the portal room a lot, so I eat these like candy on a daily basis. As well, I spent a period in the Eng School on Eng days mixing Point Defense. With heavy use, these are also good to mix to sell should you be looking for something to make gc on.

5- Air Essence - I never took the Mana Drain route for magic leveling that so many others do. I have mixed these items for others with their ings. And of course I've needed many of these myself to mix fabrics for tailoring.

6- Life Essence - For summoning of course. And now that I've just taken the Summon god, I expect this may well be my next "1,000,000+" mixes item. Possibly will end up mixing more of these than I have HEs.

... Honestly, most of the rest are self-explanatory, mixed when needed. A few of the lower-mix items:

7- Wolfram bar - Only 8 mixed, and those were done way, way, back, many moons ago when serpent stones didn't cost anywhere near what they do now. And as well, at the time I was unaware of their NPC price. I do not mix these anymore.

8- Tin Bar - Another from way, way back in my early game play when I thought it would be good to mix for experience. I stopped quickly though at 21, since it didn't take long to realize that mixing stuff that requires swords to harvest is not a leveling option.

9- Seridium Bar - Another I stopped simply because my only use for them was harv medallions, and it took forever to get the conglomerates mixed and such. Simpler to just buy the bars from the NPC.

10 - Matter Conglomerates - Gods, how I hated doing these. I haven't mixed one in years... with exceptions of the alchemy tutorial when it was added, and the harvest tutorial, out of necessity. Otherwise I would never touch these again without one hell of a game play change.

11 - Hydro Bars - I do plan to do more S2E/hydro projects in the future so this will continue to rise.

12- Spirit Essence - The mixes I did were from many moons ago when I was barely over the rec level for mixing them. Mercury was a lot cheaper then on market as well. Unless a drastic change to mercury price occurs, there is never, ever, ever a good reason to mix these when they're much cheaper to buy from the NPC.

13 - Mercury - All mercury mixes were done way, way back when cinnabar was in abundance on market and energy essies were cheaper. I have not mixed mercury in years, and never intend to again (short of a game change that makes it worthwhile).


If you're curious about any other items, post and ask about them.

Never mixed: Alch items that don't appear on my list above that are mixable:

1- Dvarium Bar - Mixed once for the alchemy tutorial, but otherwise they're very low use and those that can use them can most likely mix their own. I never had a reason to mix for this reason.

2- Bronze Bar - No reason to mix. Cheaper and easier to buy from NPC.

3- Copper Bar - Only use is for bronze bars. So no use.


They were of course mixed for the alchemy tutorial, but that's a mandatory exception.





That's it! I figured hitting the #1 alch spot was a good time to fully break down what I'd done in the skill. And done.


My alchemy future? It's a necessity skill, so I'll continue mixing, I just won't be focused on leveling. I'll mix what I need. Heavy mixing will be:

1- Life Essies - Summon god now, and many levels to go to reach my 100+ goal for it. As I mentioned, this could surpass my HE mix count.

2- Water Essies - I hate mixing these, but I will as needed. Crafting is replacing my Alchemy god, and I plan to use the school a lot. At least two full school days of polishing sapphires (24k WEs per full day) before I can upgrade to blank paper, which would need even more (60k WEs). Note that I plan for 12k of mixes, whether or not I can do that many.

3- Air Essies - I'm still slowly working on tailoring, and need to stash a ton of these for that.

4- ... magic ... Health, Energy essies primarily, I still go through a lot of these and will mix them myself excepting emergencies where I need some quickly.

5- Iron/Steel bars - I still plan S2E projects to mix hydro bars to buy nexus. The FEs... well, I'll mix some, buy some.

So despite ending my attempts to level this skill, I will continue to heavily use it.