Alchemists and Gem Extraction

[peacedog]

So I am really enjoying alchemist (but I appear to be making my bombs too awesome at the expensive of Golem Hardiness. Never mind that). However, I feel like the alchemist has re-introduced a significant amount of tedium into inventory management. Now, I love the chest. I have played a number of rogue likes where inventory management was crucial and that's all fine. But A lot of classic rogue like features get old after awhile; ToME is a breath of fresh air in it's current incarnation.

With the Alchemist, though, I find I have to spend a lot of time picking through the chest to save items just so I can turn around and extract gems from them one at a time. Now, when I get non-explorer classes to Dreadfell I tend to be swimming in gems at that point, so I probably shouldn't be super worried about running low on supplies. Still, I find myself extracting gems a good deal, and it's tedious.

What I desire is a way to bulk extract from eligible items. I wondered if it might be possible to do that through the chest. Maybe I shouldn't worry about it, but I'm running through gems pretty quickly, so it seems like I'll be extracting frequently throughout a run.

[Glitch]

it is actually worse than that. In almost all cases, the gem you extract from an item will then transmog into more gold than just transmogging the item. For instance, an iron weapon will transmog for 2 (ish) gold. An iron weapon turns into a tier 1 gem, which will then transmog for 4 gold.

So, if you want to maximize your gold, before you transition a level, you have to go through and gemify all the metal in your chest, and then transmog all the excess gems you do not want.

Yeah.

It is worth it, but I do wish there was an easier way.

[Aquillion]

Perhaps make it so, for those who have the gem-creation talents, the chest automatically converts things to gems (and adds the gems to your inventory) instead of destroying them if they would be worth more that way? You can then convert the gems if you want, but there's no reason most people would rush to do so, given that gems are weightless.

[Avianpilot]

That would work well up until the High Peak. Some of the items that you can get from the bosses are worth more than the gems that you can extract from them.

[eliotn]

That would work well up until the High Peak. Some of the items that you can get from the bosses are worth more than the gems that you can extract from them.

Then why not have those items give their gold value instead of their inferior gem value?

I see no problem with giving the player more gold for transmogrifying items, as long as you balance out the rewards.