Ideal Alchemist Builds ?

[Nevuk]

Just a discussion of ideal builds for alchemists. I read somewhere that no alchemist winners exist and was rather surprised. They seem perfectly capable of it, so I've been experimenting around with them a lot because of it.

I just played 2 alchemists through dreadfell, experimenting around with different builds. One made it to the east, the other died upon walking into level 4 of reknor. The rng also hated this guy, he couldn't enter shops in angolwen and the farportal just never worked for him (I got 1 trip out of it with the other one)

I think that an alchemist is perfectly winnable with some luck with gear and spawns. I think I'm going to try one on easy rather than normal now just because it's been about 12-14 betas since I've ever bothered to go the east (orc prides are not how I remembered them).

The second alchemist was more of an attempt to focus on abilities to let him do well later in the game, a link is here :

http://te4.org/characters/3802/tome/7bf ... 25900d6212

He died upon walking into pretty much any of the orc prides, and bosses were always a little hard. It's hard to see how he could've gotten more lucky with weapons - the golem had a 29 armor/20 def artifact and the three fold sword of truth (abused gems to get it on him), 60-80 power arcane damage staff with 0.20 staff mastery. Maybe I should've farmed the west more to get 100% blind/confusion resist, as it would've helped out a LOT. (blindness is mainly what got me killed). However I did almost the entire west and hadn't found anything particularly useful in a long time (skipped sandworm lair, heart of the gloom, ruined dungeon). Failing to get Wayist bonus probably hurt my chances as well.

Orc/Adventurer parties I could kill all day, I killed probably 60-70 adventurer parties in the west and never once died on this one (never even came close). Orcs brought me close a time or two but I killed I think 6-7 before the prides ended me.

Comparisons to archmages
The main difference between them and say an Arch-mage is that it's possible to win with an archmage who maxes pretty much any of the damage dealing trees - they all have different strengths at different points in the game, but it's nothing like alchemists who have trees which are almost worthless at certain points in the game. So the build is more important. My basic conclusions are that the golem is extremely equipment reliant while bombs are extremely not, to the extreme that about 99% of the time it's better to max bombs over the golem. Maxing the golem makes the alchemist helpless versus bosses as they make mincemeat of the golem and then tear through to the alchemist doing 30 dmg from bombs and 10 from channel staff, and massive amounts of creeps are dealt with far more readily with bombs.

Why bombs over golems? More justification
The way I think about it is that even with no points in any golem skills the golem is still very useful. It scales decently without any class points at all, the only "must haves" in the west are 3/5 gem golem (for quartz) and 1/5 supercharge to instantly revive (supercharge is an excellent skill overall). Dumping 10 points into golem power/resilience is nowhere near as overall effective as throw bomb/fire infusion. Those 10 points will make your golem something like 72% more effective, but leveling the bombs makes them something like 300-500% more effective (depending on room size). Golem resilience is also something I think should be avoided until at least after runic golem as it makes resting a pain, even with increased rates.

The golem skills seem more of a very-late game skill to me - the major mistake I think I made was leveling resilience over the fire tree or other bomb infusions (and this was at level 25ish or so- I don't think resilience is needed until the Golem is being 2-3 shot by everything) - also, I got extra infusions far later than ideal. Frost is probably a lot better than fire, but the extra 12-15% damage was hard to turn down.

Race choice
Halflings seem like the best race for it by a small margin, their 12 hit points a level with only 20% xp penalty is extremely nice, the stats and even generic tree are excellent as well. Not totally positive on this one though - I think it doesn't make a massive difference. Ghouls I considered but the speed penalty won't let them kite with bombs and the strength serves little purpose. Skeletons are somewhat similar except that it's strength/dex, but dexterity isn't particularly useful. Throw bomb will always hit, so will channel staff. Accuracy means nothing. Bomb range isn't that big a deal.


Dungeon Order
Trollmire + Bill (I stairscum him to death. I'm lazy and can't be bothered to come back)

Arena in derth

Kor'pul/Crystal Cave (one then the other)

Get alchemist quests (not really sure how these work exactly, I just kill adventurer parties a lot)

Old Forest + Sher'Tul Fortress (If I can handle it. If I can't even make it to the beast I just leave)

(rhaloren fortress if I want to go slow)

Maze (with gem portal this is a breeze)

Halfing Ruins

Derth + Urkis (if I have sufficient stun resist)

Daikara

Mark of the Spellblaze. (To stay in character as a halfling I always side against zigur. I mean, who really expects the halflings in this lore to act for the greater good?)

DreadFell

Elven Ruins

Reknor

-> East
Spider Cave
Not sure where to go from here.

Skill build
My current skill build - max throw bomb/fire infusion, then explosion expert and protection. Generic points go into health and gem skills (3/5 extract and 3/5 imbue until dreadfell, 4/5 until the east), then channel staff and staff mastery. Militant mind I found very strong. However, I think maybe getting points in armor instead would have helped somewhat with equipment - the issue here was that it's hard to find the stat points to dump into enough strength to train armor.

The reasoning for gems over channel staff is that it let's alchemists get away with 7 strength and turn something like 150-175% profit off of all metal weapons and armor (that they EVER find, my alchemist had enough money to straight up buy artifacts after the old forest) with no weight used. This is necessary for them to be able to afford all the equipment they need. In addition, channel staff is very weak until an artifact staff or at least 20-28 power staffs exist - throw bomb is going to be the main source of damage until at least after the old forest. Also, Gem Portal is an amaaaazing skill. It's like probability travel with no mana cost, but a long cd.

I ignored the golem skills outside of supercharge golem and gem golem until very late. 3/5 gem golem for dual quartz is very nice.

This does result in my alchemist being "tankier" than my golem usually, but I think this is needed. The higher armor value of the golem let him take more physical damage but less spell damage - this rarely mattered, though, as 50% of most spell damage was still aimed at me.

On my golem I max taunt then pound. Stats- strength, then dexterity. I ignore magic, the runes alone I thought to be enough range damage. Eventually I planned on getting some but up to 33 I didn't see the point.

Stats wise on the actual alchemist, I max magic and constitution, putting 6-7 points to get dexterity up to 20 for bomb range. Items are very common for dex increase, I find it to be one of the less useful stats for an alchemist honestly - long bomb range only ever matters in rare arena levels and melinda's quest.

Best Gems
-
Early - Anything
Old forest on - Amethyst- 25 arcane damage is really nice
Dwarven-Steel on - Garnet. 5% max life healed per hit is extremely extremely nice and I don't think ever a bad choice. After looking up spoilers on gems, I think this may honestly be the best one all game. The slow/knockback have utility but this is a great all-rounder


Advantages/Disadvantages
Basically, the advantages alchemists have over other classes I do think are sufficient to be game winning -

-Adventurer/Orc parties never killed either of my alchemists.

-Something like 300-500% more gold

-Channel staff scales extremely well

-Throw bomb is insane - almost certainly the highest aoe damage per resource in the game.
-It also requires no equipment to be effective
-Easy, extremely early access to aoe debuffs
-The fire tree offers a ton of aoe, but requires very high willpower.

-Can get away with low stun resist until much later than other characters

-Escort quests are fairly easy - your golem can be resummoned over and over while you block the adventurer and the golem runs off to clear mobs (especially after you get supercharge). This goes for melinda and the lost merchant quest - especially with 100% protection, the bombs won't affect the merchant.


Disadvantages -
-Have the equipment requirements of both a fighter and a mage. (IE, they require 2 extra items on top of what the other classes do, but need those equips to cover more things)
-Channel staff/Golem EXTREMELY reliant on equipment.
-Require a lot of thought as to where to spend skills.
-Strong vs normal and even elite/unique enemies but can have trouble with Bosses strong enough to solo their golem in 3-4 turns. Ones who summon as well are even worse. (Namely the Master - it requires extremely liberal use of gem portal to beat him without stair scumming - but it's an extremely fun fight if you approach it in this way)
-AOE debuffs are twice as effective vs an alchemist
-Micromanaging gems can be tedious
-The golem can require different leash ranges for different dungeons and this can be tedious. (Mainly mazes are highly uncooperative at ranges past 2-3. Not much can be done about this, didn't bother me that much)
-Very buggy far portal behavior.
-Refit golem heals for almost nothing.
-Poor utility skills, mainly a lack of even a pseudo vision skill. (Gem portal is good, golem portal seemed unnecessary when he already has taunt and generally dies in 3-4 turns of a boss fight - especially when it takes 5 generic points for just a 100% chance of target switching with no other advantages)
-GOLEMS WILL OPEN DOORS, EVEN VAULT DOORS AND WILL DO SO WITHOUT ASKING this one is massive and just due to a mistake somewhere in their ai. This killed me twice in situations where no other class would even drop below 75% and made 3-4 levels of dreadfell a massive pain.

Random suggestions
-A suggestion about the golem - Their skills are counter-intuitive. All of them except for taunt require you to be further than 1 range away from a target- but he's a melee attacker and they all bring him INTO melee range except for knockback (which still does if they resist). So it's very hard for him to actually use all of his skills. I really think crush and pound should be usable at closer ranges while still retaining their charge capabilities. He also didn't seem to use pound often enough, despite it being a higher level and him being surrounded by creeps. I know I could fix this myself, but it seemed like such a small deal that it wasn't really worth the effort to modify his script thing.
-Please take away Golem's ability to open doors (when not controlled directly).
-Make one of the less useful 3rd tier gems restore 5% of the golem's max hp (maybe more for a 4th/5th tier).
-Refit golem could scale with magic (or dexterity, this would make dexterity actually useful for alchemists and makes moderate intuitive sense)
-Golems possibly giving vision is a touchy topic, I would support it within a somewhat limited range determined by cunning or dexterity. The reason is that they lack vision spells of any kind and this enables them to do some limited scouting with their golem (also makes mazes less of a pain). A gem vision spell would probably be a less controversial and easier to implement alternative (something like nature's eye or whatever it's called).
-Hard to check golem's complete stats (I wish it was possible to possess him, hit C, then bring up his attack/defense stuff or that it was a third page on the main Character sheet)

Conclusion
So, how should I alter how I'm approaching alchemists in order to do better? My current plans are to max frost infuse and maybe acid before really touching the golem. Apologies for the very long post.

[budswell]

Thanks. Some interesting tips there. I've always really struggled with Alchemists

[Dwarf_Hammer]

Did you check the vault? There's at least 3 Alchemist winners. Paradox Mage is the only class who doesn't have any online wins, but I doubt it's due to their difficulty. I made it the the Far East with a PM on my 1st try. Anyway, if you're aiming to make an ideal character build, then you should probably play on roguelike. Optimize or die! Or play around in the end-game content with wizard mode to test out talents.

[Nevuk]

Did you check the vault? There's at least 3 Alchemist winners. Paradox Mage is the only class who doesn't have any online wins, but I doubt it's due to their difficulty. I made it the the Far East with a PM on my 1st try. Anyway, if you're aiming to make an ideal character build, then you should probably play on roguelike. Optimize or die! Or play around in the end-game content with wizard mode to test out talents.

Ah, I just took someone's word for it. Good to know. Maybe I was just looking at an old thread? Not sure. Still a very low amount of winners, with only one being recent at all. (2 are 19 weeks +, so many betas ago). No roguelike winners either, so there's still that possibility.

I'd rather not play around with wizard mode ... it would take some of the fun out of it, I think. Roguelike is the eventual goal, I'm basically using adventure mode as a substitute for wizard mode - the idea is that by forcing myself to go slower with it it gives me a more complete understanding of the strengths of different builds at different points in the game.

The basic thing I'm wondering about now is if it would be better to put 7-8 points into strength to get armor training at some point, it widens up a lot of gear and I think I can sacrifice 1-2 points of health until later on. It would take some math to see really.

[Hedrachi]

In east, after spider cave you prolly wanna try to find the flooded cave and the temple of creation from within there. You'll also want to have 5/5 protection by then, since there isn't too much of a way to ensure your golem will be exactly where you need him to be, and you can EASILY be surrounded by meleeing things in the temple. DO NOT VISIT THE PRIDES UNTIL YOU'VE DONE ZEMEKKYS' QUESTS. They're easily the toughest zones pre-high peak, especially the &*#!ing Grushnak pride. But yeah, I agree, alchy can be screwed over a lot more easily from the RNG, and the golem's tendency to open anything without asking. MUCH easier when your golem starts with a dwarven-steel battleaxe of corruption, than say with an iron battleaxe of crippling. Skeleton -might- be equal to halfling because of its extra shield and "healurrect" generic. But overall, extra magic + spell crit + global speed bonus + free permanent invisibility rune (little iffy thanks to the chance component) means shalore would probably outrank halfling. They'd always be doing more damage, always have higher spell crit. And invisibility can really be a lifesaver, especially in the east where one hit that your golem didn't take for you could take away half your health. Timeless is good too, but probably not as good as it would be for other classes - it'll take away turns from bad things, and add turns to your infusion/rune effects but that's about it.

[Aquillion]

Comparisons to archmages
The main difference between them and say an Arch-mage is that it's possible to win with an archmage who maxes pretty much any of the damage dealing trees - they all have different strengths at different points in the game, but it's nothing like alchemists who have trees which are almost worthless at certain points in the game. So the build is more important. My basic conclusions are that the golem is extremely equipment reliant while bombs are extremely not, to the extreme that about 99% of the time it's better to max bombs over the golem. Maxing the golem makes the alchemist helpless versus bosses as they make mincemeat of the golem and then tear through to the alchemist doing 30 dmg from bombs and 10 from channel staff, and massive amounts of creeps are dealt with far more readily with bombs.

Maxxing the first three bomb talents is absolutely essential to Alchemists in the same way that Weapon Folding is absolutely essential to Temporal Wardens (even moreso, really) -- it's your only real way of dealing serious damage. The golem talents are not and will never allow you to do enough damage to get anywhere; even though they look better than PC combat boosts, the problem is that all PC combat classes have powerful attack skills to use those boosts with, while the golem's combat talents are exclusively focused on making it a better tank by putting it straight in combat.

Why bombs over golems? More justification
The way I think about it is that even with no points in any golem skills the golem is still very useful. It scales decently without any class points at all, the only "must haves" in the west are 3/5 gem golem (for quartz) and 1/5 supercharge to instantly revive (supercharge is an excellent skill overall). Dumping 10 points into golem power/resilience is nowhere near as overall effective as throw bomb/fire infusion. Those 10 points will make your golem something like 72% more effective, but leveling the bombs makes them something like 300-500% more effective (depending on room size). Golem resilience is also something I think should be avoided until at least after runic golem as it makes resting a pain, even with increased rates.

Basically, yes, though I would recommend 5/5 Supercharge eventually (the massive increase in the amount of hp your golem comes back with is a big boost, and honestly, it's not like you have that many vital class skills once you've maxed the bomb stuff.)

Skill build
My current skill build - max throw bomb/fire infusion, then explosion expert and protection.

I would go for Explosion Expert and Protection as soon as they become available, and wait on Fire Infusion (or even skip upgrading it for an infusion with a more debilitating status effect.) Explosion Expert helps a lot -- not just against big swarms like you'd expect it to, but for hitting enemies indirectly from outside of sight while your golem fights them for you (get Arcane Eye from a seer escort if you can.) And Protection is absolutely vital as soon as possible, since without it you're at a big disadvantage fighting at close quarters or supporting your golem.

I ignored the golem skills outside of supercharge golem and gem golem until very late. 3/5 gem golem for dual quartz is very nice.

Golem Portal and Invoke Golem are nice 'oh crap' buttons -- the fact that it has a high chance of forcing people to target your golem helps a lot. Originally I expected Golem Portal to be less than useful because my Golem would usually be in combat, but often what happens is that my Golem rushes off to fight some weak enemies and kills them easily while something much bigger approaches me. Golem Portal lets you correct that situation easily, and may even make whatever your golem was fighting waste time walking over to their new position instead of attacking you. Sometimes "I just need to not be next to this boss anymore, right now" is exactly what you need, and Golem Portal can do that even when Gem Portal is on cooldown (or when you're not next to a wall.)

This does result in my alchemist being "tankier" than my golem usually, but I think this is needed. The higher armor value of the golem let him take more physical damage but less spell damage - this rarely mattered, though, as 50% of most spell damage was still aimed at me.

I find that Golems are more of a decoy than a tank, really, especially with 5/5 Supercharge Golem to resurrect them regularly.

On my golem I max taunt then pound. Stats- strength, then dexterity. I ignore magic, the runes alone I thought to be enough range damage. Eventually I planned on getting some but up to 33 I didn't see the point.

I assume you put one point into each rush skill as soon as they become available? That's very important, since it ensures that your golem always has one off cooldown and can constantly get right up in the enemy's face -- ideally, sequential rushes will let the golem keep the fight far enough away from you that the enemy won't even see you until you've had a chance to toss several bombs at whatever they're fighting and soften them up.

Stats wise on the actual alchemist, I max magic and constitution, putting 6-7 points to get dexterity up to 20 for bomb range. Items are very common for dex increase, I find it to be one of the less useful stats for an alchemist honestly - long bomb range only ever matters in rare arena levels and melinda's quest.

Yeah, Alchemists have one of the most obvious stat distributions, since so few stats really help them.

Disadvantages -
-Have the equipment requirements of both a fighter and a mage. (IE, they require 2 extra items on top of what the other classes do, but need those equips to cover more things)

Honestly, I found this to be an advantage. It means you can use more of the equipment you come across, in a way, especially when you toss your golem stat-inflicting equipment like slime / ice stuff (and you should, duh.) I personally think giving the golem a shield is better than a two-handed weapon, since its damage is never going to stack up to your bombs anyway.

-Require a lot of thought as to where to spend skills.

I... don't see that? Maxing the bomb stuff is totally obvious. Putting one point in each Golemancy talent is totally obvious. You know you're going to want to max most of the low-tier generic talents eventually. From there, where you invest the remaining points is not a huge deal. There are really very few choices made in an Alchemist that make a difference, aside from whether you learn fire alchemy or not.

-Strong vs normal and even elite/unique enemies but can have trouble with Bosses strong enough to solo their golem in 3-4 turns. Ones who summon as well are even worse. (Namely the Master - it requires extremely liberal use of gem portal to beat him without stair scumming - but it's an extremely fun fight if you approach it in this way)

I didn't find summoning much of a problem, since, well, I can just blow them up. But yes, the fight against the Master is incredibly fun, especially if you have teleport-granting equipment or runes -- when I fought him, the fight basically spread out over the entire level, with me constantly summoning his golem and him summoning his stuff, throwing a few blasty things back and forth, then whichever of us was in more danger would teleport away and the other would follow.

Teleport equipment is very important for Alchemists, too, since the layout of the dungeon may sometimes make gem portal unreliable. Obviously, you want to have Invoke Golem for this.

-AOE debuffs are twice as effective vs an alchemist

I found that putting one point in all the golem's rush talents mitigates this -- usually, against hard opponents, I would retreat between bomb tosses while my golem advanced, so we wouldn't be close enough together for an AOE debuff to hit us both.

-Refit golem heals for almost nothing.

Yeah, it sucks.

-Poor utility skills, mainly a lack of even a pseudo vision skill. (Gem portal is good, golem portal seemed unnecessary when he already has taunt and generally dies in 3-4 turns of a boss fight - especially when it takes 5 generic points for just a 100% chance of target switching with no other advantages)

Yeah, I found learning Arcane Eye from an escort was essential. On the other hand, it's insanely powerful with their cheap AOE blasts.

(Huh, I wonder if Arcane Eye keeps your control over your golem from breaking? Must experiment.)

For Golem Portal, I found that one point in it is enough, but it's still nice to have when you end up in the wrong positions.

-Golems possibly giving vision is a touchy topic, I would support it within a somewhat limited range determined by cunning or dexterity. The reason is that they lack vision spells of any kind and this enables them to do some limited scouting with their golem (also makes mazes less of a pain). A gem vision spell would probably be a less controversial and easier to implement alternative (something like nature's eye or whatever it's called).

You can always devote one of your golem's initial rune slots to a vision rune, you know! They can only have two shielding runes anyway, and offensive runes are nice for them but not essential.

Conclusion
So, how should I alter how I'm approaching alchemists in order to do better? My current plans are to max frost infuse and maybe acid before really touching the golem. Apologies for the very long post.

I noticed you didn't mention what runes you gave your golem -- I assume max shield runes, then offensive stuff? Did you give him the Rune of the Rift?

[Nevuk]

I agree with most of what you stated, Aquillion

Disadvantages -
-Have the equipment requirements of both a fighter and a mage. (IE, they require 2 extra items on top of what the other classes do, but need those equips to cover more things)

Honestly, I found this to be an advantage. It means you can use more of the equipment you come across, in a way, especially when you toss your golem stat-inflicting equipment like slime / ice stuff (and you should, duh.) I personally think giving the golem a shield is better than a two-handed weapon, since its damage is never going to stack up to your bombs anyway.
[/quote]
Wait, he can use shields? I uh... did not ever realize this. I thought it was twohanded weapons only. It's really a mixed thing, if you spend the first 5 dungeons with an steel battleaxe it can get silly. My experience with shielding runes was probably the worst in this regard, not a single one dropped or spawned in a shop until after dreadfell and then they were weak ones. To get a decent piece of equipment always takes a small amount of luck, it's just that when you add 2 equip + 3-5 rune slots to it it requires an alchemist to be more lucky than other characters. Not that it's bad.

-Require a lot of thought as to where to spend skills.

I... don't see that? Maxing the bomb stuff is totally obvious. Putting one point in each Golemancy talent is totally obvious. You know you're going to want to max most of the low-tier generic talents eventually. From there, where you invest the remaining points is not a huge deal. There are really very few choices made in an Alchemist that make a difference, aside from whether you learn fire alchemy or not. [/quote]

It's an easy choice to decide what you want to max, but it's hard to decide the order in which you max (ie channel staff vs gems, infusions vs protection, etc. I tend to max protection with 1 point in expert, then expert/infusions). I'm also really unsure of fire alchemy. On paper it looks good, but unless you really focus on it bombs are always going to be better due to the manacost. Heat also feels really weak, even if it's maxed.

I didn't find summoning much of a problem, since, well, I can just blow them up. But yes, the fight against the Master is incredibly fun, especially if you have teleport-granting equipment or runes -- when I fought him, the fight basically spread out over the entire level, with me constantly summoning his golem and him summoning his stuff, throwing a few blasty things back and forth, then whichever of us was in more danger would teleport away and the other would follow.

Teleport equipment is very important for Alchemists, too, since the layout of the dungeon may sometimes make gem portal unreliable. Obviously, you want to have Invoke Golem for this.

Only issue was when the Master or someone of his caliber (say from a farportal) summoned master archers or boulder throwers who pinned me. Unless I was against a wall it's pretty much instant death. I usually have one rune slot with a phase door on it, but a teleport would probably be a lot better.

I found that putting one point in all the golem's rush talents mitigates this -- usually, against hard opponents, I would retreat between bomb tosses while my golem advanced, so we wouldn't be close enough together for an AOE debuff to hit us both.

This is what I did, the issue is basically in the prides - I definitely did the dungeons way out of order I now see. Too used to b12 or b13 where it was basically just spider cave + prides. Anyways I walked into the room and then me and my golem were both diseased, blinded, and confused instantly.

You can always devote one of your golem's initial rune slots to a vision rune, you know! They can only have two shielding runes anyway, and offensive runes are nice for them but not essential.

I did this a few betas ago and was too annoyed by having to constantly switch to use the spell. (He doesn't use it automatically, does he?). It's possible but makes an already somewhat tedious class feel completely mind-numbing (at least for me).

I noticed you didn't mention what runes you gave your golem -- I assume max shield runes, then offensive stuff? Did you give him the Rune of the Rift?

I didn't find any shielding runes until level 29 (none spawned in shops until after dreadfell). So it was all offensive, and then a single 130 shielding rune. Shields are of course always best. Rune of the rift I had floating around but I was indecisive as to whether or not it would help - my golem seems to always make the worst decisions, I would think he would somehow use it to kill me by taking someone out of time on the wrong turn (not even sure if this is possible).

Here's the easy one I'm messing around with : http://te4.org/characters/3802/tome/1c4 ... 25900d6212

I think I may have messed around enough, easy with this build is reaally easy. Not sure if I want to try roguelike while the golem can open doors though - that's just the game sabotaging you on purpose.

In the future I think I'll skip all points but one into fire infusion, cold infusion is extremely good and it gives me 4 extra points to mess around with. As for the vision rune, I didn't think he cast it automatically. (I've done it before and manually switched over everytime to cast it but it gets old pretty fast).

The biggest pain with the golem aside from doors is him getting stuck on targets that teleport away and then just running to max leash range over and over while things bash me to death (right click on him then change target doesn't even take a turn, but it's hard to know).

Other thing I didn't mention was golem gems - I went with dual quartz + quartz in armor in the west, then once I got bloodstone on 50% resist artifact armor I give him dual pearl for 20% resist all. If there's a significant amount of resist on the armor already then it makes him live a noticeably longer time.

Edit :
About halflings vs shalore - the invisibility is nice. But so is the up to +15 spellpower and +20% crit chance active (that doesn't even take a turn). Pop luck of the little folk, then throw a bomb at level 30ish and it's about a 70% crit chance on the entire room. I find this active (doesn't even take a generic point) to be invaluable.

In addition their higher luck value makes them more likely to crit anyways - not sure if it cancels the shalore passive out, but I don't think it's too far off. The higher hit die is what makes me side with halflings, though. Invisibility is a chance to live, while the hit die is guaranteed to help you survive.

[kazak 2]

I've got a shalore alchemist up to lvl 44 right now. I usually like playing skeletons for the survivability, but I originally was thinking I'd go for a high crit build here and try out a shalore.

That said, Timeless has turned out to be a surprise gem. Entering a big fight, I pop the speed talent, invisibility rune, fire storm, regen, shield, providence, and whatever else I can think of and then hit Timeless. Might be overkill, but I get over 10 turns of invisibility and high speed and all the other good stuff. Meanwhile, I'm hitting really hard on every shot. Channel staff is regularly doing 400-600 on every shot, an extra 100-200 from fire storm each round, and the bomb damage is obscene. The knockback bombs (onyx) can hit for over 1000, and the other ones routinely do around 400 to 600. This was by far the easiest ambush win I've had.

I was initially planning on dropping the golem in favor of extra damage. I grabbed the anorithil tree to boost my survivability (since I'm not playing a skelly) and I was also going to unlock the divination tree and pump keen senses for the crit boost. Poor planning though--with that idea, I'm running short of generic points and have way too many class points. And the golem has really turned out to be a useful decoy, so instead I'm thinking of just getting advanced golemancy with the last cat. point rather than divination. I'm already doing good damage, and by far the most (and maybe only) really annoying thing with this character is waiting around to heal the golem.

Ah, and for bombs I maxed acid and lightning infusions. Both are good at incapacitating crowds as well as doing damage, and so far I haven't really run into foes immune to both. I've seen a couple folks pumping fire infusion and I'm not sure I get it--the damage is somewhat higher, but you're trading crippling status effects for DOT.

With stats, I opted to pump cunning instead of willpower as the third stat. Despite that, I currently have like 570 mana and not a single point into willpower. I also didn't put any points into dexterity--equipment gives a good enough boost, and the increased radius from explosion expert gives all the distance I've needed so far.

Other random points:
- You really don't have to choose whether to pump the golem or not, considering the number of class points you have. It's more just whether you want to build up the golem early game or late.
- I found Bolbum's Big Knocker in Dreadfell. Surprisingly, the Lost Staff of Telerion, which I found soon after, seems to be doing better channel staff damage. Also, the Big Knocker is hitting for arcane damage instead of the physical it's supposed to. Has anyone else noticed this?
- I was going to try for a win with this guy, but I started enjoying blowing stuff up while invisible so much that I got sidetracked and started up an archmage focusing on fire trees and invisibility.
- For some reason I was under the impression that alchemist's damage suffered late game. Not the case at all.
- It's been mentioned elsewhere, but you can leash the golem to himself to keep him from following you into vaults or other places where he tends to open doors and screw you over.

[Aquillion]

Wait, he can use shields? I uh... did not ever realize this. I thought it was twohanded weapons only.

Yeah. I wasn't sure at first, but the other thing is that since your golem has so few equipment slots, it's probably best to use as many as you can, especially for defense. (That's really why it sucks as a tank, of course.) Obviously something like Titanic is best if you can get it, but a shield that does ice or slime damage to attackers is nice, too.

To get a decent piece of equipment always takes a small amount of luck, it's just that when you add 2 equip + 3-5 rune slots to it it requires an alchemist to be more lucky than other characters. Not that it's bad.

On the other hand, Alchemists make the most money and have one of the easiest times with adventurer parties, so you should be able to get something good eventually.

I noticed you didn't mention what runes you gave your golem -- I assume max shield runes, then offensive stuff? Did you give him the Rune of the Rift?

I didn't find any shielding runes until level 29 (none spawned in shops until after dreadfell). So it was all offensive, and then a single 130 shielding rune. Shields are of course always best. Rune of the rift I had floating around but I was indecisive as to whether or not it would help - my golem seems to always make the worst decisions, I would think he would somehow use it to kill me by taking someone out of time on the wrong turn (not even sure if this is possible).

Nah, at worst it's an annoyance when he delays killing an enemy you'd easily have killed anyway -- but in my experience having an extra few turns to prepare for dealing with an enemy is never a disadvantage, and if there's other enemies, that just lets you focus on them.

In the future I think I'll skip all points but one into fire infusion, cold infusion is extremely good and it gives me 4 extra points to mess around with. As for the vision rune, I didn't think he cast it automatically. (I've done it before and manually switched over everytime to cast it but it gets old pretty fast).

I don't think he does, no. It'd be nice if he did that.

[Nevuk]

Even with the Golem's leash range set to 2 or 3 he'll still run around and open doors, and it's too short of a range for him to charge someone and attack them. (I've done this in some dungeons, seen him charge someone and then run away - which isn't necessarily bad if he has all the charge's maxed, but if they're only doing 120% dmg and he's taking 3 extra turns to get them off it's possibly less damage in return for them generally chasing after him).

I set my weights like this :
Shielding 2
Taunt 1
Charges 3
Offensive Runes 4

Leash ranges in Dungeons :
Maze 1-2
Dreadfell 3
Prides 2 (he will open the entrance door if it's any higher than 3, but 2 lets you take a step off the stairs without him instantly opening the door)
Generic 5 (Ie old forest, trollmire, kor'pul, daikara)
Arenas 7-8 (I don't like him charging entirely out of vision)

I entirely avoid the sandworm lair, too afraid of the sand trapping the golem.

It used to be the case that he needed a 2 handed weapon, I guess that was changed when it let you equip directly on him. I guess I can stop extracting gems from titanic when I find it.

Bulbom's big knocker is what I was using when I found it. Not really sure why it is, but it does do arcane damage with channel staff. I think the reason why it is weaker than it appears is low spellpower - and spellpower increases channel staff damage. The arcane damage was the main attraction to it for me.

Also, key bindings I like -
1 channel staff (bound to left mouse click as well)
2 refit golem (eventually supercharge)
3 throw bomb
4 rune (regen/shield)
5 rune (utility)
6 rune (regen/shield)
7 gem portal/rune (eventually)
8 refit golem (after supercharge)
9 create alchemist gems/invoke golem
10 scrying orb
11 extract gem
12 transmog chest
ctrl 1 acid infusion
ctrl 2 lightning infusion
ctrl 3 gem portal
ctrl 4 frost infusion
ctrl 5 imbue item
ctrl 9 create gems
shift 1 racial active
shift - rest of these are devoted to other sustains I get from escorts

[Aquillion]

Even with the Golem's leash range set to 2 or 3 he'll still run around and open doors, and it's too short of a range for him to charge someone and attack them. (I've done this in some dungeons, seen him charge someone and then run away - which isn't necessarily bad if he has all the charge's maxed, but if they're only doing 120% dmg and he's taking 3 extra turns to get them off it's possibly less damage in return for them generally chasing after him).

I left his leash set to 1 and I never saw this behavior, not that I recall.

Did you set him to Tank AI? I think I always do that; maybe that changes how he acts.

I set my weights like this :
Shielding 2
Taunt 1
Charges 3
Offensive Runes 4

Hrm. I set charge at 1 so he stays away from me by charging constantly, especially right after I bring him back with a supercharge (though my need to do this might have to do with the fact that I left his leash at 1.) Having absolutely everyone targeting him isn't necessarily desirable, either, because he'll die so fast that it won't do much good -- I'd rather have enemies split between me and him. A well-built alchemist can take at least some hits.

I entirely avoid the sandworm lair, too afraid of the sand trapping the golem.

It's actually not that bad as long as you have Supercharge Golem and Invoke Golem (and Gem Portal and Golem Portal, obviously, for yourself.) This means saving it to a bit later, but it's worth it. The tiny chambers mean that most opponents are easily killed by your bombs, too. The only thing in the sandworm lair that really causes pain for Alchemists are those acid-breathing things, which are a huge pain (make sure you're not using acid for your explosion while you're in there, because you want to kill them quickly and they're immune to that.)

[Aquillion]

Also, does anyone use the magic tree for golems? Is it any use at all? It looked mostly worthless to me, compared to the charges.

[Frumple]

Laser eyes. I honestly don't care about the effectiveness. All my golems get 5/5 eye beam.

The rest of it's middling. That reflect thing (it's still there, right?) should be passive, or at worst sustained, full stop. As is, it's crap, and will never really be used. Arcane pull is actually alright now that it's not quite as insistent about getting your alchie surrounded and murdered. Molten skin is actually fairly decent, but iirc there was friendly fire issues -- Code checked, that's at least no longer a problem -- and it's expensive (both in the talent's resource cost itself and talent points to get the golem to use it), so I've never really invested in it. It could stand to do something extra. Fireburn added to the golem's melee attacks?

What I'd think would be pretty awesome, actually, would be for the golem to use magic instead, or as a supplement, (akin to augmentation) of strength for everything that takes into account (item reqs, damage, etc). Quite possibly for con and dex, as well. It's a magic construct -- it stands to reason that more magic would make it more better, instead of only somewhat better and at the expense of other things.

[Nevuk]

I set it to tank ai, yeah.

It's hard to determine what to level after CON. Cunning gives higher crit rates, but willpower gives more mana and probably lets you actually use the fire tree. Strength gives more armor options. It's weird because dex is described as their second attribute when it's by far their least useful one. The only real suggestions I would have about this are possibly letting Staff mastery add dexterity as a secondary modifier to staff damage (as it is staffs are +100% magic while other things are like +130% strength, ie to balance it out with other classes it could add 30% dexterity or something) and to make refit golem scale from dex.

On a sidenote...
My current alchemist is bugged, can't get the diamond to return to the west since briagh's lair got really... weird. (Was fighting briagh, game took up 850 mb and starting lagging really bad, so I left the place, reset, and returned and then briagh was totally gone and the layout was different - and Briagh didn't exist at all. It's probably possible to finish without going back to the west, but that just left a bad taste in my mouth).

[budswell]

After reading all this I'm giving alchemist a go again. Already died twice but we'll see how I go.
Couple of questions:
- Does staff master affect the ranged staff damage (i.e. does it combine with channel staff). Or is it just for melee
- What is the point in levelling "imbue item". There is no information in the description about why you should add to it.