Alchemy for Beginners

[Darkmere]

Version 2.0 is live! Now with 50% less noobery! Special thanks to SageAcrin, Aerach, and the other forumites from whom I shamelessly cribbed for the updates to this guide. If it's good, praise them. If it's bad, blame me.

Introduction:

This is a guide for the Alchemist subclass of mages. Alchemists are ranged spellcasters who function primarily by harvesting gems from looted items and converting them into explosive bombs to attack enemies at range. Alchemists also maintain a golem companion and can dabble in ranged fire spells. This class begins unlocked and is fairly straightforward to play, and as such is ideal for newer players to get a feel for the game, as well as some unlocks.

Pros: You have a golem to protect you, which makes a solid buffer or distraction from whatever is trying to kill you. Usually. Bombs have a long-ish range and wide explosion area which makes them ideal for no-fuss clearing of large groups of weaker enemies. They also have access to a wide variety of damage types and several tactical escape/defense options. Stat allocation is simple.

Cons: Some of the class's extended utility is reliant on skill trees gained as escort quest rewards. Despite having good health scaling for a caster class, they are typically frail and shouldn't be exposed to direct combat. The easy nature of combat may lead to complacency and mistakes in the mid-to-late game.

Contents:
1. Race Selection
2. Stats
3. Skills
4. Escort Rewards
5. Inscriptions
6. General Levelup Plan
7. Prodigies
8. Miscellany


1. Race Selection

Scale: 1 = poor choice, 5 = best choice.

Cornac: 2/5. This class has plenty of generic points to throw around as it is, and racials are more useful than category points to us.

Higher: 3/5. We won't be putting points into Will, so their heal won't scale up for us. Sight range is useful for bomb targeting. Arcane caster bonuses are too narrow to be of much use, and mana-free casting doesn't help when our spells are so cheap already.

Shalore: 3.5/5. We won't be putting points into Dex, so their speed boost won't scale. Crit boost is helpful. Invisibility on hit won't happen often; we have a golem to tank for us. Timeless... could help get rid of debuffs sooner or extend a shield rune, I guess.

Thalore: 4/5. Damage and damage reduction bonuses are good, but won't scale with our base Will. Still good. Boosts to our weak saves, all resist, blight resist, and disease immunity are pretty great. Tree summons won't scale with our base Will, but could still be useful, and they're free/instant tanks.

Dwarf: 5/5. Saves on demand, saves as a passive that we fund with our gem transmutation, and another escape skill are all great. Very solid choice for almost everything, as per usual.

Halfling: 3/5. Crit chance is nice, but we'll have lots of that on our own, so overage is wasted. Evasion from duck and dodge isn't great, we want to be out of the line of fire as much as possible. Saves based on crowds aren't what we need, either, as our biggest threat is probably strong individual monsters. Removing stun/daze/pin is nice, but we shouldn't be getting hit with those that often, either.

Yeek: 4/5. This sounds good on paper. We don't have Will to scale to their dominate, but mental saves are good, global speed is good assuming you have abilities to fill it with (or to reposition if you don't), and more tanks could help. Golems might also compensate for yeeks' abysmal health pools. Might be worth a try.

Ghoul: 1/5. Has basically nothing to offer us that would offset the speed penalty. Also has abilities for things we don't want to do at all (like getting into melee and chewing on things tougher than us).

Skeleton: 3.5/5: Str/Dex doesn't interest us. Bone armor could be a nice shield supplement... but we don't need Dex, so it will scale poorly. Resilient bones helps the status effects that hit us be gone faster, and a heal/rez is always nice. -0.5 for steep XP penalty.

2. Stats

Magic > Cunning ~ Constitution. I recommend 2 magic + 1 Con per level, then 2 Cunning +1 Con per level when magic is maxed. If you take 1 point of armor training, a few points into Str to wear iron boots and helms won't hurt, we're not that strapped for stat points.

3. Skills

Class Skills:

Explosive Admixtures:
Throw Bomb: It's what we do. Max it, use it, love it.
Alchemist Protection: Keeps us from killing ourselves. This is a priority. Max this before anything else, as soon as possible.
Explosion Expert: Makes our booms bigger. Max this, but only after Alchemist Protection.
Shockwave Bomb: I found the range to be short and the usefulness limited. 0 or 1 point, to taste.
Overall: 5/5/5/(0 or 1)

Infusion:
Fire Infusion: Boosts the power of our bombs. It's passive, which means we always have it, even if something dispells one of our other sustains from this tree.
Acid Infusion: Converts our bomb damage to acid and gives it a chance to blind. Also causes damage to be done in one big burst, rather than fire's damage over time. Probably the most all-around useful infusion. Also converts a portion of ANY fire damage we do to acid, but without the blind chance.
Lightning infusion: The same as acid, except daze instead of blind. Decent.
Frost Infusion: The same as acid, except it has a chance to freeze, which actually makes monsters harder to damage. Probably the worst choice UNLESS you are trying to unlock the uttercold magic tree, which this should do very well.
Overall: (1 or 5)/X/X/X (Pick one you like)

Golemancy:
Golem Power: Most of the time, the golem's punches won't hold a candle to our bombs. However, this skill affects how much Refit Golem will heal our tank for, and so is useful for emergencies and coupled with Life Tap for a heal us/heal him combo.
Golem Resilience: Makes our tank tankier. This is desirable.
Invoke Golem: Teleports our golem to us, likely after we've teleported out of danger. Can also be used to bring the golem out of melee range for a heal, or to reposition it.
Golem Portal: Switch places with our golem. Can be useful, but I didn't miss it when I didn't have it.
Overall: 1(eventually max)/5/1/1

Advanced Golemancy (locked):
Life Tap: Heals you by weakening your golem. He can be rebuilt; you can't (at least not forever). Don't be afraid to use this if you need it.
Gem Golem: Lets you socket 2 gems into your golem, for stat bonuses. Excellent use of a resource we'll have in abundance. This is what fills the two extra slots on the right-hand side of your golems equipment page. They aren't labeled in-game and you can't do anything with them without this skill.
Supercharge Golem: Instantly rebuilds the golem, in combat, without costing us gems. You'll use this a lot.
Runic Golem: Adds rune slots to your golem, and slightly reduces the time you'll spend resting, waiting for him to heal up. Golems start with 3 rune slots even without this skill, so be sure to fill those with Shield runes and perhaps a Rune of Reflection, if you find one. After those are taken care of, any damage rune besides Acid Wave (they'll hit you with it. It'll hurt.) is just a bonus. Also, next patch damage runes are getting extended functionality, so this will be even better.
Overall: 1(to 5, as needed)/5/5/(3 or 5)

Fire Alchemy (locked):
Heat: It sets things on fire.
Smoke Bomb: Blocks line of sight for everyone (including us). This can give you cover from archers or dangerous casters. However, if anything in the smoke cloud is already afflicted by Heat, Smoke Bomb instead spreads the fire to everything else in the area and extends the burn duration.
Fire Storm: sets everything around you on fire, as is the theme of this skill set. Good damage, long uptime, but whether you want to be in range for it to work is left up to the reader.
Body of Fire: You turn yourself into fire, granting fire resist and automatically launching fire bolts at hostile targets in range. The sustain cost is high, and it drains mana while actuve, and it's still doing something your bombs can probably handle better. But it sounds fun and we have the mana to spare.
Overall: unlocking is optional, but we have the mana, skill points and (likely) category point to spare. Take it early to supplement bombs, or late to give yourself something extra to spend mana on. 5/5/x/x

Golem skill trees:

Fighting:
Knockback/Taunt/Crush/Pound: Melee abilities. Taunt is the most notable one, for keeping bosses away from us, most of the time. The others are a variety of distance closers and stuns that are useful but not overly so. Weapon damage for the golem won't be that great (with one exception, discussed in Prodigies), so don't worry much about them.
Overall: 1/1/1/1.

Arcane:
Eye Beam: Pew Pew Lasers! Your golem fires eye lasers. Worth at least a point because the damage starts at a decent level, and it costs you no mana.
Reflective skin: Doesn't actually reflect, as the golem still takes full damage, but worth it just for more free damage. Be warned, though, that it also works on friendly spells, so caution is advised around escorts and the first encounter with a friendly anorithil in the east.
Arcane Pull: Decent setup for our bombs, and crowd control. Our bombs have a massive blast radius as is, though.
Molten Skin: More free damage, resistance to fire, and a combo effect with fire alchemy, should you take it.
Overall: x/x/x/x, as you desire.


Generic Skills:

Technique/Combat Training:
Buy this at any weapon merchant in Last Hope. It's well worth the paltry gold amount, especially with our gems selling as they do.
Thick Skin: 15% less damage taken from everything. This is good on every character ever.
Armor training: 1 point opens up heavy gloves, helms, and boots. Worth it just to expand your equipment options. The rest is unnecessary.
Combat Accuracy, Weapons Mastery, Dagger mastery: Nope, nope, nope.
Overall: 5/1/0/0/0

Cunning/Survival:
DON'T spend a category point on this. DO get points here from escort quests, if possible. We'll have plenty of Cunning for them to scale with.
Heightened Senses: Good to have a point in just to see traps.
Charm Mastery: Nah. Not for us.
Piercing sight: A point here is good if you get two thief escorts, but take heightened senses first.
Evasion: Good for others, not for us.
Overall: x/0/x/0, from escorts. Not a huge loss if you don't get em, though.

Stone Alchemy:
Extract gems: Turn equipment you don't want (there will be a lot of it) into gems, which is ammunition and money. One of our core abilities, keep this leveled up high enough that you can extract gems from the gear that currently drops.
Imbue item: Adds nice gem bonuses to our gear. Makes decent gear great, and great gear amazing. Not strictly mandatory, but we have generics to spare and it's very nice. Level it along with Extract Gems to keep up with what we find.
Gem Portal: Escape skill that lets us instantly teleport through a solid wall. More escapes are great, but only 1 point needed.
Stone touch: Turns an enemy to stone, preventing them from doing much. Eventually it becomes a beam. I didn't like it, but you might. Add points to taste, or don't.
Overall: 5/5/1/x

Staff Combat:
Channel staff: Fires energy from our staff, that ignores friendly targets. Great to do more damage while our gem bombs are on cooldown.
Staff mastery: Boosts combat stats when wielding staves. This DOES apply to channel staff's damage.
Defensive Posture: Sustain for armor/defense bonuses. We shouldn't need this, in theory, but a few points won't hurt.
Blunt Thrust: Smack something in the head, with a stick. I suppose this could work with stone touch, but it's still not really what we're suited for. At all.
Overall: 5/5/x/0

4. Escort Rewards:

The main ones to look for are Celestial/Light from anorithils, and perhaps Divination for more damage and magic resistance. Indomitable will is good for automatic status effect recovery. The Cunning/Survival points from thieves are recommended, as above. If there's a reward list with absolutely nothing appealing to you, remember that you can give rewards to the golem as well.

5. Inscriptions:

First things first, dump the manasurge rune you start with in favor of a teleport rune for escapes. As soon as possible. Our abilities are cheap and we don't need manasurge. Second on the list is a shielding rune. Priorities should be something like this:

Teleport > Shield > Heal > Wild (mental) > Movement/Heroism.

The order can be shuffled around depending on your generics (Celestial/Light has a heal and shield, for instance), but you'll want some way to cover these abilities.

Your golem will want two shields, a reflect damage rune, and then damage runes as needed (preferably frost spear, do not use acid wave).

6. General Levelup Plan

Category Points:
Lvl 10 -> Advanced Golemancy
Lvl 20 -> Inscription slot
Lvl 36 -> 2nd skill tree of your choice
Vial -> Inscription if you need it, fire alchemy if you don't.

Skill points:
1-10 - Throw bomb, Alchemist protection (priority), Channel staff.
11-20 - Alchemist protection, Staff mastery, Life tap, your chosen infusion
21-30 - Explosion expert, Thick skin, other generics/racials

By this time you should have your basic toolset done and can fill in the gaps or just max what you use most, first. These aren't hard and fast rules, either.

7. Prodigies

Crafty Hands: This is basically Alchemist: The Prodigy. It requires 50 Dex though, so be sure to hang onto any +dex gear you can find (don't put points in it) so you can equip the dex gear, grab the prodigy, and then put your normal gear back on.

Draconic Will: Extra boost to saves, if you still need some.

Draconic Body: Helps prevent one-shot kills. Dying less is good.

Blighted Summoning: This is interesting. It gives your golem some skills from the Reaver class, which makes him hit harder in melee. They take up skill points, though, and he already doesn't have many. A very interesting choice, but probably not ideal for your first alchemist.

Worldly Knowledge: Useful to pick up a generic tree that you really wanted, but didn't get via escorts.

8. Miscellany

Extract Gems from everything you find. The early game cash is great to fuel dwarf racial saves, buy starting gear from town shops, and upgrade inscriptions. Later, you might be able to afford another randart from the merchant for your troubles.

Staff Command lets you change the damage type that Channel Staff uses. Usually you'll want to leave it at fire to take advantage of your infusion, but if you aren't doing much damage or are facing a lot of one type of enemy, changing damage to their weakness can save you a lot of hassle.

You can take direct control of your golem to scout ahead, but it's fairly slow and your regular body is dumb as dirt without you controlling it. Don't rely on it to save itself. You can also right click on your main character (when playing as the golem) to make it follow you closely (set leash distance), but that defeats the purpose of scouting ahead with the golem.

[Velorien]

Nice little guide.

I'm surprised you skipped the undead races, though - surely skeletons are a winning option?

[jotwebe]

It's a beginners' guide for a beginners' class. So it makes sense that it doesn't discuss races that need to be unlocked, if you want to keep it simple.

[Velorien]

Also, there's something very strange going on with the halfling paragraph. Copy-paste error?

[Aerach]

While it's perfectly reasonable to dismiss it due to the power of bombs... in what way does fire alchemy fill a similar role? That point only seems arguable for the PBAoE but not for the dot, vision blocker or spellproc delivery system. (The rest of what you say largely mirrors what I would have other than the golem itself for which i might have explored the alternative more thoroughly, tyvm for typing it out.)

[SageAcrin]

Advanced notes:

There's not a lot of advanced to Alchemist, but I may as well help out here.

Skeleton Alchemist is perfectly viable-Alchemist has a ton of spare Generic points, and can potentially float both the Skeleton full skillset and a category pointed Escort skillset to boot. And since you're out of the direct line of fire a lot of the time, one of the biggest status worries-Stun-is mostly mitigated.

Ghoul isn't the world's best idea, but there's worse things. You can't mitigate the speed penalty, but your bomb cooldown is your main issue, not your raw turns, for dealing damage-you lose less damage than you'd think, though there's still some defensive issues with letting enemies effectively double turn you. And your Golem doesn't mind your speed...but Retch'll hurt him as far as I'm aware. So, it's so-so.

Shockwave Bomb isn't useless...it's just not much. The main use is to toss one after a bomb for more area clear against very tough enemies. Normally I'd toss this from consideration, but if you'll notice from the guide, the listed class points come out to around 35-around L25-30 you're going to start seriously wondering where to put those Class points. (An average run gets 65-70 Class points depending on what decisions you make with Alchemist potions, if you actually get the big bonus at 50, etc.)

Cap a second infusion, on a related note. Two lets you have two elements, so you don't get walled by, say, Luminous Horrors if you picked fire.

Acid is really the best infusion here-25% flat rate spellpower based chance to blind people is better than Daze or iceblock, in general. Fire does the most damage and requires the least points to get to-and it works if you get your sustained spells disrupted by a jerk of a Dread-so I prefer Fire and Acid. Frost's really good if you don't have the Ice spell category unlock yet, though! Definitely the best way to get that, that doesn't involve autocasting Glacial Vapors on yourself.

Golem Power is a definite 5, long term. There's just no point in making your Golem do less damage, when you have so little to worry about for Class points. However, you can get by with 1/1 on that tree for a startlingly long time-Golem dying a few times more is rarely a big worry. Resilience is the more important skill for sure, though.

I would 3 Runic Golem for the two extra slots. "Golem caster" is actually a Golem that has extra damage, straight up, for a few more points(as I will discuss, in fact, I consider caster Golems superior, but they are harder to start for a newbie.). If you're not interested in the details, just slap random attack runes on him that aren't Acid Wave, for those slots.

Fire Alchemy is indeed largely redundant...but there's two things. One, bosses don't drop to one bomb, and Heat can be used in the down time. Heat is amazingly damaging-breaking 1500 isn't unusual-and due to some quirks of burns, there's ways to accelerate how fast it does damage. The other main draw is Body of Fire-if you want it or not is debatable, but it's finally stopped smacking your golem, so it is constant extra damage and fire resistance for a small mana charge...and Alchemist has so little mana worries that it doesn't need a Manasurge, so...

The second issue is of course 30 or so major class point investments-your alternative is dumping class points into things like Infusions, near the end there. Fire Alchemy is a lot more meaningful than that, long term. Obviously, not a big deal, though, and you have to question if another generic category or rune/infusion would work better.

Stone Touch turns into a ranged beam (5 range, I think) at L3. This makes it actually useful! I'm still not sure how often you'd want it, but I've heard people like it-I personally didn't get it on my clearing Alchemist, though.

Defensive Posture is good, honestly. I'd 3 it-it costs you a little of that Generic that you're still not terribly strapped on, in exchange for a decent chunk more Defense and Armor. The Armor's not as hard to leverage as you'd think, either. Blunt Thrust is iffy, though...you probably just don't need it, not that it's bad on paper(good long Stun is never bad on paper).

1 Armor Training is all you need...but 3 isn't a terrible idea. Massive armor on an Alchemist generally requires equip swapping, but for an Alchemist, this tends to consist of "Find a good Strength armor somewhere and put your best stat boosting gem into it"-it's less equipment swapping and more remembering stat gems exist. So, it's easy to do.

Regardless of if you go heavily into armor or not, keep an eye out for good Mails. There's only a few good earlygame Robes, and it's quite possible to never see any of them-something like Mail of Bloodletting isn't better than, say, Flowing Robes, but it's quite a lot better than trying to get good milage out of ego robes(which are, in my opinion, quite bad).

Don't worry about having to spend a few Strength points on this, if it comes to that-you've got points to spare, really.

A heavy armor Alchemist does a little less damage very late, when the good robes start showing up, but in the earlygame they're largely superior, in my opinion.

Golem stuff... 1/1/1/1 physical tree, 5/1/1/5 the arcane tree, is optimal, in my opinion.

Golem never gets good damage multipliers on those physical skills, no matter how hard you try-only Pound does anything notable, because it has AoE. Otherwise, they're great L1s, but don't do much beyond that.

Eye Beams are good no matter how much spellpower your Golem builds, oddly-they have a huge base damage bonus so that they are useful-and Molten Skin is amazing. Not only does it do pretty good constant damage that doesn't harm you, and raise the Golem's resistances, but it also, due to merge mechanics, basically makes Heat do its damage in half the time. Fun! Also, you get a nice little bonus set of damage from Reflective Skin L1 bouncing the abuse of the Golem back to your enemies.

Of course, the question is, how do you reach this? And the simple answer is: Go to 20 Magic early with Golem, get Eye Beams to 5, then work on the physical tree from there. If you're forced to tote around some equipment for a bit, relax and look at the damage Eye Beams is doing, and you'll know it was all worth it. Trust me. This is the better way. Once you get Strength up to 50 or so, you should be able to hit 60 strength with two stat gems-from there, boosting Magic again is the way to go.

(If, during this, you can't follow the pattern, due to not having enough stat points to level up Arcane stuff in the mid-game and not wanting to save the points, level Pound instead of Molten Skin. Molten Skin is IMO better, but it's not a huge difference. The important thing is the eye beams.)

For Prodigies, Blighted Summoning is interesting, though very not beginner-basically it lets you run a full on Strength Golem, 1/1/1/1 the Arcane tree, and marvel as it actually can do something approaching real damage between dualwielding and Eye Beams+physical smack. If you want a physical Golem, get this.

Finally, your runes. Give your Golem any Shielding Runes you don't want(generally most of them), until he's got two, and slam the AI priority way up on the Shieldings, so that he'll spam them a lot. If you get the Rune of Reflection, toss that on him, too. This amounts to a large durability jump, even with fairly bad Shieldings.

For the other two or three slots from Runic Golem (I believe it says you get three, if you cap it, but is bugged for the last one and never actually gets it), give your Golem any non-Acid Wave damaging Runes you see. The Golem will occasionally ditz out and smack you with Acid Wave, but Heat, Lightning and especially Frost are really nice to have on him, providing free damage for the few points that it takes from Runic Golem. 200 or so instant damage every so often isn't to be sneezed at, even if it's nothing on your bomb.

Finally, a not advanced at all tip. Indeed, something I suggest to every single Alchemist ever made.

Are you here? Reading this?

Ditch your Manasurge and replace it with a Teleport at the first possible opportunity.

Nothing will keep you alive more, and your Manasurge is totally unnecessary. If you feel like you need it, get over the feeling-any other class in the game has far worse resource issues than you do. You'll be fine, relax. Even with Fire Alchemy and Stone Touch, you'll almost never miss it.

A Teleport, by contrast, lets you get away and make your golem again, when he dies. Far away. This is a huge thing and something that can save your life time and time again in the early and midgame. Make this a priority. I cannot state this enough. It is really a huge thing.

[Darkmere]

Copy N Paste errors fixed. That's what I get for posting when I'm tired; thanks for proofreading.

I did skip the undead races because they require unlocks. Basically, I typed up everything I wished I'd known when I started, and posted it here for someone else. I made some basic mistakes on mine for lack of a simple plan to build on, so hopefully this thread will help others avoid my noobish trial and error. The advanced input is most welcome. It answered some questions I had myself, if I ever play another alchemist.

Re: fire alchemy, it's a way to deliver fire damage at range, but you have to kill things for 10 levels without it. I had forgotten about smoke bomb and hadn't considered the magical golem, though.

I did think about discussing inscriptions, but I don't know what more to say other than regen, wild, shield, teleport... shield/movement?

[jotwebe]

Maybe discuss what to do with category points? That's something people often ask. My advice there would be extra rune/infusion slots, and maybe the Light tree from escorts for providence.

[SageAcrin]

Catpoints are simple, and there's two builds I know of for them.

The first: Get Celestial/Light if you see it, find a good Generic point sink if you don't, for your L10 point.

Anything is better than nothing here-Chants and Conditioning are solid backups if you can't get Celestial/Light, as is Divination. (Celestial/Light is good enough on an Alchemist so that it may be worth considering Worldly Knowledge, as mentioned. But that still leaves you wondering what to do with Category points.)

Get that as soon as possible, then once you hit 20, take Advanced Golemancy, then an inscription at 36. (Shielding/Healing/Regen/basically anything that's generally useful is good. I can't hammer on Teleport enough, but otherwise, it's your preference.) If you want, you can wait until L20/36's category point so that you get Celestial/Light rather than another sink-you'll have more escorts by then, which increases your odds of getting that category.

For your bonus Category point(gained by returning from the East and defeating the backup guardian in Sandworm Lair-for more info on that, there's a Backup Guardians entry in the Wiki), either pick up Fire Alchemy or another Generic sink. Harmony's good if you want the latter-1/5/0/0 in Harmony grants a highly variable, but surprisingly solid, set of bonuses.

The second: Basically get Fire Alchemy first, then Advanced Golemancy, then either Celestial/Light(or similar Generic sink) and an inscription, or two inscriptions.

This is mostly because Heat is really much better early, before Bombs get rolling as a world destroyer, than later. It's pretty good for a bit there and can be used to crutch your way through Tier 2 dungeons. If you're still not getting East with your Alchemist, I'd try this.

[Darkmere]

I think this is just a playstyle/experience difference. I maxed bombs and channel staff as soon as possible, so I didn't notice lack of options. I also found a very solid (+21 armor) artefact chest piece around dredfell, so I pumped some str on the golem to get him into that early. Good call on the category points, though. I had leftover skill points not doing too much, and my 5th inscription slot went to a movement infusion (specifically for the race to disrupt the ritual) which never got used much. Wild/regen/teleport/shield covers just about all your needs.

I saved the golem strength points until later to boost the refit golem heals after I life tapped it, but the arcane golem damage setup sounds more interesting and useful early, especially with molten skin. One caveat about damage reflect: Golem caught part of an AoE from the anorithil you meet in the east. The damage reflect turned her hostile, and she had to be put down. Might want to disable it just for that fight.

[SageAcrin]

One caveat about damage reflect: Golem caught part of an AoE from the anorithil you meet in the east. The damage reflect turned her hostile, and she had to be put down. Might want to disable it just for that fight.

I think she can't turn hostile anymore, though I might be misremembering an SVN change there.

Though, yeah, I had that problem way back when my first character hit East(which was an Alchemist). Kinda was confusing and saddening to me at the time.

And yeah, going for four inscription slots is very valid. That's what my Alchemist did. I'm not necessarily sure I should suggest it, but I admit-I feel if your Golem's dead and your initial damage salvo didn't deal with the enemy, chances are that escaping with a Teleport and regrouping is going to do far more for your chances than trying to stand and fight with defensive inscriptions, or using mobility ones like Movement or Controlled Phase Door.

Within that, it can be useful to look at how much defense you really need. Four slots works pretty well, it gives you a Regen/Wild/Shielding/Teleport combo that I find good enough for the most part.

(Oh yeah, I should probably link that character. Here you go! )

[Darkmere]

Alright, it's been bugging me how shoddy this guide is, so I'm re-writing the whole thing to incorporate everyone's suggestions (with full credit given, of course), add the other races in, etc. etc.

It'll be a day or two while I write and polish, but I wanted to ask if anyone here is currently playing the SVN with new versions of the attack runes and would like to share insight into the new stuff. I'd like to put in some liner notes about golem offensive rune slots now, and update the whole list when the new runes come out, but I don't generally use SVN software out of laziness. Anyone?

[peacedog]

Catpoints are simple, and there's two builds I know of for them.

The first: Get Celestial/Light if you see it, find a good Generic point sink if you don't, for your L10 point.

Anything is better than nothing here-Chants and Conditioning are solid backups if you can't get Celestial/Light, as is Divination. (Celestial/Light is good enough on an Alchemist so that it may be worth considering Worldly Knowledge, as mentioned. But that still leaves you wondering what to do with Category points.)

Get that as soon as possible, then once you hit 20/36, take Inscriptions. (Shielding/Healing/Regen/basically anything that's generally useful is good. I can't hammer on Teleport enough, but otherwise, it's your preference.) If you want, you can wait until L20/36's category point so that you get Celestial/Light rather than another sink-you'll have more escorts by then, which increases your odds of getting that category.

For your bonus Category point(gained by returning from the East and defeating the backup guardian in Sandworm Lair-for more info on that, there's a Backup Guardians entry in the Wiki), either pick up Fire Alchemy or another Generic sink. Harmony's good if you want the latter-1/5/0/0 in Harmony grants a highly variable, but surprisingly solid, set of bonuses.

The second: Basically get Fire Alchemy first, then Celestial/Light(or whatever sink for Generic you find), then two Inscription slots.

This is mostly because Heat is really much better early, before Bombs get rolling as a world destroyer, than later. It's pretty good for a bit there and can be used to crutch your way through Tier 2 dungeons. If you're still not getting East with your Alchemist, I'd try this.

On my current character (dwarf Alchemist). I got celestial light early so I unlocked it with a category point at 10. At 20 I decided to unlock advanced golemancy as I figured that would help more in Dredfell (which I am about to enter). But that leaves me with just the 3 starting inscription slots and no fire alchemy. Was this a mistake? Dredfell is probably going to be a failure either way. . .

[Amphouse]

What kind of gems should I throw/does it matter much?

Also, when you remake the guide I suggest adding a level up guide that shows where to put your points at level 1, and what it should look at at levels 10, 20, and so forth.

[SageAcrin]

The big thing that matters is the tier of the gem.

Each tier has a damage bonus-Rank 1 Gems(which sell for 4) will do less damage than Rank 2(which sell for 8 ), etc.

The effects are secondary-if you find one effective, feel free to stick with it. I mostly used +%bomb damage.

Catpoints are simple, and there's two builds I know of for them.

The first: Get Celestial/Light if you see it, find a good Generic point sink if you don't, for your L10 point.

Anything is better than nothing here-Chants and Conditioning are solid backups if you can't get Celestial/Light, as is Divination. (Celestial/Light is good enough on an Alchemist so that it may be worth considering Worldly Knowledge, as mentioned. But that still leaves you wondering what to do with Category points.)

Get that as soon as possible, then once you hit 20/36, take Inscriptions. (Shielding/Healing/Regen/basically anything that's generally useful is good. I can't hammer on Teleport enough, but otherwise, it's your preference.) If you want, you can wait until L20/36's category point so that you get Celestial/Light rather than another sink-you'll have more escorts by then, which increases your odds of getting that category.

For your bonus Category point(gained by returning from the East and defeating the backup guardian in Sandworm Lair-for more info on that, there's a Backup Guardians entry in the Wiki), either pick up Fire Alchemy or another Generic sink. Harmony's good if you want the latter-1/5/0/0 in Harmony grants a highly variable, but surprisingly solid, set of bonuses.

The second: Basically get Fire Alchemy first, then Celestial/Light(or whatever sink for Generic you find), then two Inscription slots.

This is mostly because Heat is really much better early, before Bombs get rolling as a world destroyer, than later. It's pretty good for a bit there and can be used to crutch your way through Tier 2 dungeons. If you're still not getting East with your Alchemist, I'd try this.

On my current character (dwarf Alchemist). I got celestial light early so I unlocked it with a category point at 10. At 20 I decided to unlock advanced golemancy as I figured that would help more in Dredfell (which I am about to enter). But that leaves me with just the 3 starting inscription slots and no fire alchemy. Was this a mistake? Dredfell is probably going to be a failure either way. . .

Oh, right, I completely spaced out and forgot about Advanced Golemancy when saying that. Sorry about that.

Anyways, no, that's a fine decision-Advanced Golemancy should be taken at 10 or 20, Celestial/Light at 10/20, then either two inscriptions or one and Fire Alchemy later, or Fire Alchemy->Advanced Golemancy->Celestial/Light->One inscription(or a different Generic sink, or two inscriptions).

You should always take Advanced Golemancy, for Supercharge(and other skills to a lesser degree, but Supercharge is really good). I feel stupid making that mistake when detailing that, it's fixed now.