I like to try characters with no roguelike campaign winners in the character vault, thus I try alchemist from time to time. In earlier tries I wanted to create a super powerful golem to kill everything for me, but that didnt really work out. The conclusion for my latest try was to ignore the golem and all the micromanagement related to it completly, and the result is pretty impressive.
Without golem we left with only a few offensive skills, but these are pretty impressive.
The main skill is obviously Throw Bomb, with its impressive 3 second cooldown, screen filling area of effect, damage type adjustment possibilities and status effects, as well as additional benefits through the gem type used for it. I used Acid Infusion most of the time for the blind effect.
The time between bombs can be filled with channel staff, a handy skill to finish off enemies and filling cooldown times, as it always hits and deals good enough damage for a low investment.
Another skill I use is Fire Storm, which deals close to 60 damage for 16 turns in 3 range at the moment ( 5/5 at level 28 ).
Sadly many skills dont scale with increased talent category level.
I think I was lucky to find a nice staff in the shop: polar yew staff of conveyance
This staff offers 2 teleports to get out of trouble, good damage and can freezes melee attackers for extra protection.
On the other side I dont find any useful shield runes and thus are stuck with the 100 rune from start.
The most importent events my game:
Found Blood of Life pretty early, sadly I'm a skeleton.
Lost my Re-assemble life to the spellblaze boss because you cant run away in the fearscape.
Gained Providence from escort in Dreadfell to remove harmful effects, especially frozen and diseases.
Defeated the master without stairscumming.
Survived the Orc Ambush.
I think all normal orcs died after the third bomb ( turn 9 ), as the huge area of effect easily covered all of them and the damage is high even in open areas ( ~300).
With a bit dancing around arrows, shields and teleport it wasnt too hard to survive these first 9 rounds. And the bomb used on so many enemies together with Bloodcaller completly heals all missing health.
Ukruk alone was no big deal then.
Im starting to accumulate skill points and I think about using them for the golem, with the final fight always in mind. Someone to tank, slow and deal additional damage certainly will be of help, now that I'm a pretty impressive killing machine myself.