Alchemy Powerleveling: Master to Guru

Heya,

this is the second part in my guide on leveling alchemy. In the first part I showed you how to level to master. This time we'll be looking at the journey to guru. This time things get a lot tougher and there is no one-fits-all solution to reaching your destination. That's why I'll show you a few different recipes so you can pick the one that best fits your playstyle.

Why Level to Guru?

Leveling up alchemy unlocks new recipes: at guru 1 you'll be able to craft purified lightstones

Leveling also increases your mastery, which leads to more items per craft and a higher chance at getting the big lottery drops like

Gold Bar 1,000G or

Sturdy Alchemy Stone of Life.

Leveling Alchemy? Good Luck!

I think Biceptimus puts it perfectly.

Alchemy is much more difficult to get into and level than its lifeskill twin cooking for a number of reasons, including having no mass crafting, lower EXP recipes and gated materials.

Conversely, the difficulty of getting to guru makes it a milestone in itself, which is a perfectly valid reason to level to guru :)

Before You Start

Vendors You Should Know About

Items	Vendor(s)	Price
Fortune Teller Mushroom, Dwarf Mushroom, Sky Mushroom, Emperor Mushroom, Arrow Mushroom, Cloud Mushroom, Tiger Mushroom, Ghost Mushroom	Brandio (Calpheon)	900-1,000 silver
Sunrise Herb, Fire Flake Flower, Silk Honey Grass, Silver Azalea, Dry Mane Grass	Nieves (Calpheon) and other herb vendors	500-575 silver
Purified Water	Waida (Sand Grain Bazaar)	5,000 silver

Material Substitutions

Some materials can be substituted by materials of the same group.

Example: To craft

Sinner's Blood you can use

Sheep Blood or

Deer Blood or any other blood from group 2.

Also, higher-quality materials can replace multiple lower-grade materials.

Example: In

Elixir of Perforation you can either use 5

Bluffer Mushroom or 1

High-Quality Bluffer Mushroom or 1

Special Bluffer Mushroom

Note that any excess materials go to waste. So while

High-Quality Bluffer Mushroom and

Special Bluffer Mushroom count a lot more than 5 mushrooms, they can replace a maximum of 5 mushrooms in

Elixir of Perforation. You don't get anything extra from using more materials than the recipe calls for.

Preparing for the Guru Push

Before you start the push for guru alchemy, you should prepare a few things:

• Utensils: You will need a lot of utensils to level to guru.
• Gear: You'll want to get your alchemy time to 1 second (for gear please refer to first part of the guide.)
• EXP buffs: For recommended buffs please refer to first part of the guide.
• Materials: You'll want to figure out which recipes you'll craft and start gathering/buying/pre-ordering materials.

A note on nodes: Trace/powder/sap/etc. nodes can be a nice way to bolster your supply of materials. But keep in mind that reaching guru takes way more materials than nodes alone can supply.

Utensils

The two main utensils for alchemy are

Advanced Alchemy Tool and

Supreme Alchemy Tool.

What makes them unique is their durability, being repairable and giving -1 seconds alchemy time reduction.

Advanced Utensils

You can craft

Advanced Alchemy Tool in a T4 workshop, for example Duvencrune 11-1.

One advanced utensil requires:

• 15
  
  Usable Scantling → chop (~60)
  
  Log
• 24
  
  Melted Iron Shard → heat (~48)
  
  Iron Ore
• 20
  
  Black Stone Powder → grind (~0.25)
  
  Black Stone (Weapon)
• 30
  
  Polished Stone → grind (~120)
  
  Rough Stone

You can find rotations for

Log and

Rough Stone on the gathering overview.

Supreme Utensils

The

Supreme Alchemy Tool is extremely valuable because it enables you to do long afk sessions.

You can get them from exchanging either of these items:

• 15
  
  Dark Spirit's Greed (Dark rift bosses)
• 40
  
  Resplendent Medal of Honor (Node wars)
• 100
  
  Golden Seal - [Imperial Alchemy] (Imperial alchemy)
• 25
  
  Oxiterr Crystal (Mountain of Eternal Winter dailies)

How to reliably get supreme utensils:

The

Golden Seal - [Imperial Alchemy] exchange from

Supreme Alchemy Tool is very good value. With 400 CP for example you can turn in 200 boxes, which give 200 imperial seals. That means 2

Supreme Alchemy Tool per day.

On the flipside, by turning in alchemy boxes you are giving up a lot of potential profit by not turning in cooking boxes. So consider this a way of buying

Supreme Alchemy Tool at a premium price.

As for which box to turn in, simply select the most profitable box from the imperial alchemy overview. A popular box is

Elixir of Spells.

Silver embroidered or mastery clothes for leveling?

You may be wondering which clothes to choose for leveling to guru:

• SE clothes: give alchemy time reduction and bonus EXP
• Mastery clothes: give alchemy time reduction and mastery

Both clothes give alchemy time reduction. So no matter which clothes you choose, you want to upgrade them enough to reach 1 second alchemy time.

It's important to note that alchemy mastery gives (slightly) higher alchemy profit but has no significant impact on alchemy EXP. Therefore the choice between SE and mastery clothes comes down to whether you prefer the EXP or extra money.

My recommendation:

• SE clothes: You want to level as fast as possible and money is not a priority.
• Mastery clothes: You craft high-income recipes or want to balance profit and EXP while leveling.

Overall, I wouldn't worry too much about this decision because the benefits are rather small in either direction.

Leveling: What to expect

In alchemy, there's always a trade-off between EXP, profit and effort to make a recipe. Unlike cooking, there's no single recipe that can be spammed out for good EXP without either throwing away money or running into material bottlenecks.

In practice, recipes can be

• Easy to craft and profitable: for example
  
  Clear Liquid Reagent
• Easy to craft and high EXP: for example
  
  Clown's Blood
• Profitable and high EXP: for example
  
  Spirit Perfume Elixir and high-tier elixirs like
  
  Elixir of Frenzy

but very rarely will you find a recipe that gives all three benefits.

Before starting the journey to guru it helps to think about how much you value each of these benefits, i.e. how fast you want to reach guru, how much effort you want to put into getting materials and how much money you are willing to spend on leveling.

In my eyes, spending some money to level can actually be a good investment. It frees up time that can be used to do other lifeskills to repay the investment and possibly even come out on top.

1. Easy Leveling: Reagents

Overview	Clear Liquid Reagent and Pure Powder Reagent
Recipe	Clear Liquid Reagent: 1 Salt, 1 Sunrise Herb, 1 Wild Grass / Weeds, 1 Purified Water
	Pure Powder Reagent: 1 Sugar, 1 Silver Azalea, 1 Wild Grass / Weeds, 1 Purified Water
EXP	400
Bottlenecks	None
Pro/Con	Pro: Easy to craft, profitable Con: Low EXP
Time to hit guru	200 hours (at +200% EXP buffs)

Clear Liquid Reagent and

Pure Powder Reagent are the most spammable recipes in alchemy. All ingredients can be bought from NPCs or the market. Reagents are profitable to craft, especially considering the lottery drops (

Gold Bar 10G,

Caphras Stone etc.).

Also, you'll have no problems selling them on the market or finding a use for them in other alchemy recipes.

Clear Liquid Reagent tend to be a bit more useful so choose them if you only want to craft one type of reagent.

The big downside is obviously EXP. Depending on your EXP buffs, it takes about 100 hours (at +400% EXP buffs) to 300 hours (at +100% EXP buffs) to reach guru, which is kinda absurd. You can check out the number of crafts and time to hit guru with various EXP buffs using the EXP calculator.

2. 'Fast' Leveling: Bloods

Overview	Clown's Blood and Sinner's Blood
Recipe	Clown's Blood: 1 Clear Liquid Reagent, 1 Powder of Darkness, 1 Spirit's Leaf, 2 Wolf Blood
	Sinner's Blood: 1 Clear Liquid Reagent, 1 Bloody Tree Knot, 2 Deer Blood, 1 Powder of Flame
EXP	800
Bottlenecks	Potentially Spirit's Leaf
Pro/Con	Pro: Easy to craft, good EXP Con: Expensive
Time to hit guru	100 hours (at +200% EXP buffs)

Clown's Blood and

Sinner's Blood are currently the highest spammable EXP recipes you can craft in alchemy.

They are a good choice if you want to reach guru 1 as fast as possible and are willing to pay silver to get there.

One hour of crafting

Clown's Blood (~3000 crafts) costs ~100 mil in materials:

On paper, you can recoup that money by selling the bloods to the market but in practice ...well

Recouping money

You actually make a decent chunk of the money back through side products from crafting:

• 
  Mysterious Catalyst (0.024 per craft → ~72 per hour)
• 
  Shining Powder (0.04 per craft → ~120 per hour)
• Lottery drops (RNG fest, ~10-70 mil/H in value depending on your mastery)
• Bonus quest (procs every ~1.4 hours, up to 60 mil value per quest)

All combined, you can get back 70-130 mil/H from the items above!

The bonus quest

The bonus quest can appear while crafting certain items (bloods, oils, elixirs). There are three variations:

Quest	Task	Reward
[Bonus] A Simple Test from Dalishain I	Craft 40 Legendary Beast's Blood	300 Trace of Ascension / Trace of Violence / Trace of the Earth / Trace of Despair / Trace of Forest
[Bonus] A Simple Test from Dalishain I	Craft 40 Sinner's Blood	300 Trace of Battle / Trace of Death / Trace of Origin / Trace of Wave
[Bonus] A Simple Test from Dalishain I	Craft 40 Clown's Blood	300 Trace of Memory / Trace of Chaos / Trace of Hunting

Notes:

• You can only accept one bonus quest at a time, therefore you want to hand it in as soon as you get it.
• If you craft for example
  
  Clown's Blood while getting the quest that requires crafting 40
  
  Clown's Blood it auto-completes after a few crafts, which is super convenient.

3.1 Profitable Leveling: Spirit Perfume Elixir

Overview	Spirit Perfume Elixir
Recipe	1 Dead Tree Essence, 1 Fruit of Nature, 10 Loopy Tree Sap, 10 Powder of Darkness, 2 colored flowers
EXP	2,000
Bottlenecks	almost all items :)
Pro/Con	Pro: High EXP and profit Con: Gather gather gather
Time to hit guru	40 hours (at +200% EXP buffs) + lots of gathering time

Spirit Perfume Elixir - what a recipe.

2,000 EXP per craft and insane profit:

.

The big downside:

The recipe requires gathering a ton of materials at multiple spots with multiple different tools (lumbering axe, fluid collector, hoe). So it requires quite a bit of investment to do efficiently.

I can recommend Bairog's rotation videos for Dead Tree Essence, Loopy Tree Sap and Flowers.

You can use multiple types of flowers for this recipe. On the recipe page, you can check substitutes for an item by clicking on the double arrows.

Fruit of Nature is the biggest bottleneck in crafting

Spirit Perfume Elixir.

Here are some ways to get it:

• Gathering: herbs and flowers → 30-100 fruits per hour depending on your mastery
• Farming: plant
  
  Dalvenia Alrea or
  
  Purple Mushroom in Velia (they grow in 2hr 46m) and once the crops reach 100% breed all of them. I highly recommend planting magical seeds to save time on planting/breeding. → 60-150 fruits per day depending on how often you breed
• Quests:
  
  [Daily] [Alchemy] Striving Towards Imperial Delivery → 30 fruits per day
• Pre-orders → depends on market RNG

3.2 Profitable Leveling: Market Alchemy

Overview	Market Alchemy
Recipes (examples)	Elixir of Will (400 EXP), Metal Solvent (800 EXP), Elixir of Demihuman Hunt (920 EXP), Elixir of Spells (920 EXP), Elixir of Frenzy (1600 EXP), Elixir of Perforation (1600 EXP), Grim Reaper's Elixir (1600 EXP)
Bottlenecks	fruits, saps, traces
Pro/Con	Pro: Potentially high EXP and profit Con: Material bottlenecks

Recipe chains

With elixirs, especially high-tier elixirs, you can form long recipe chains for massive EXP. For example:

Clear Liquid Reagent (400 EXP) →

Sinner's Blood (800 EXP) →

Oil of Corruption (1400 EXP) →

Elixir of Perforation (1600 EXP)

Clear Liquid Reagent (400 EXP) →

Clown's Blood (800 EXP) →

Oil of Fortitude (1400 EXP) →

Grim Reaper's Elixir (1600 EXP)

Getting the materials

Often, the challenge with crafting elixirs is acquiring the materials. Especially saps, traces and fruits are hard to come by and may require gathering, farming or pre-ordering.

You can find gathering rotations on the gathering overview (rightmost column) and recommended crops for farming on my farming sheet.

For low and mid-tier elixirs, getting the materials isn't too difficult. For example, you could gather

Cedar Sap and turn it into

Elixir of Demihuman Hunt

-4,508 $/h

(920 EXP).

High-tier elixirs often require multiple bottleneck materials and therefore take a bit of management.

(1600 EXP) has at least 3 bottlenecks:

Cedar Sap,

Fruit of Crimson Flame and

Trace of the Earth. If you manage to collect these materials and craft the recipe, you're rewarded with decent profit and lots of EXP.

In general, I recommend checking the individual recipe pages and noting down which materials you already have, can buy, or need to collect yourself.

Finding elixirs to craft

The alchemy overview can be used to scout recipes:

• You can search for recipes or ingredients, which brings up all recipes that use the ingredient
• The list can be sorted by 'Silver/Hour' and 'Daily Volume' to filter out low profit/volume recipes

Selling the elixirs

Alchemy has rather low market volume and only certain elixirs sell in large enough quantities to be worth the while. You can sell some elixirs straight-up because they have direct demand (for example from adventure logs and as PVP/PVE elixirs).

Other elixirs you can pack into draughts:

Verdure Draught,

Beast's Draught,

Giant's Draught. Draughts make selling elixirs much easier because they are essentially 9 elixirs bundled up. Though you'll want to carefully consider which of the elixirs that go into a draught are worth crafting and which ones are better bought.

Tips for maximizing EXP

Stack EXP buffs on high EXP recipes.

I recommend saving your limited EXP buffs to use on high EXP recipes. For example, before using the 24h

Birthday Cake make sure you have enough high EXP crafts to last for the whole duration.

Also, you can simple alch 3x

Mercenary's Life (60 min) (50% EXP) into one

Mercenary's Life (60 min) (150% EXP) scroll. Using use one 150% scroll on high EXP recipes will grant more overall EXP than using the 3x 50% scrolls on low or mid-tier EXP recipes.

Craft overnight

You can craft lightweight recipes like reagents or bloods overnight on a high-durability utensil like

Supreme Alchemy Tool or

Calpheon Traditional Alchemy Tool for a bit of extra EXP each day.

End of the guide. Hope I could help you prepare for the journey to guru :)