Metal shards

[martinuzz]

Playing as an alchemist, I must say that this class is way overpowered in the monetary department.
The possibility to convert every worthless piece of weapon/armor into gems that sell for at least 4 gold pieces a piece makes it possible to buy everything you like with some effort.

To balance this, and to add some new stuff to the alchemist's bomb arsenal, I propose changing the way extracting gems works:

Instead of always yielding a gem, there is a chance that when extracting, you will gain some metal scraps instead of a gem.
These metal scraps can be equipped just like alchemist's gems, to use with the throw bomb skill.
I haven't advanced far enough in the game to be specific about damage numbers, for I wouldn't know what would be balanced in the mid and late game, but here's the idea:

- iron scraps: base throw bomb skill damage, no bonuses
- steel scraps: +some physical damage
- dwarven steel scraps: + more physical damage, causes bleeding
- voratun scraps: + even more physical damage, causes bleeding
- stralite scraps: + a lot physical damage, causes bleeding, stuns

[TheRani]

An easier alternative would be to have extraction result in a pile of alchemist gems, instead of a regular sellable gem.

[Marcotte]

Why not remove extraction altogether? If gems are going to be generated more often, then alchemists are not going to be lacking in them anyway, and it makes balance harder if they are the only ones who benefits from random weapons and armors that they cannot wield.

[Sirrocco]

...because if you force the alchemists to use real gems for their alchemist gems, they get horked over by the economy to a degree. That said, it seems like it might be worthwhile to change alchemist gems to metal scraps or whatever. Honestly, as an alchemist under the old economy, there were simply too many kinds of alchemist gems to keep track of - especially with the desire to use some gem types for golem interactions and others for bomb-throwing, and with the fact that gem differences were often too random and minor to really matter detectably. Remove the ability to carve gems into alchemist gems, remove the ability to turn metal gear into gems, add the ability to render metal gear down into shards (and under the curret economy, it wouldn't even have to be all that many shards, since you can render down almost every metal item you find with little to no real cost to you).

Results:
- If you reduce the shards per item properly, it makes shards a meaningful resource for the alchemist - not a *terribly* strictly limited one, but enough to actually pay attention to and think about, rather than just enough to realize that you've run out mid-battle because you weren't keeping track.
- Alchemists get basically the same economy as everyone else - they aren't pouring money into their powers, and they aren't getting huge windfalls from otherwise worthless items
- With simplification in the kinds of shards available (perhaps down to one type per tier, or perhaps a few) the stuff stacks better, and it works a bit more on autopilot - rather than wanting to memorize exactly which gems turn into which alchemist gems and what they do and swapping back and force, you just render down everything you get that you don't want to keep and (generally) equip the good stuff.