User:Numaris/Practical Chemist

Welcome!

Welcome to the Practical Chemist. This document has two goals: first, to be a newcomer's guide to creating Compound Extracts via the Chemistry system, and second, to provide a reference for those who know the system but find the information too spread out. We'll address the latter goal first. If you're new to the system, you can skip past these charts for now.

This is very much a work in progress. Please be patient.

Quick Reference and Links

- - - - -	- - - -	- - -	- -	<-->	++	+++	++++	+++++
-13	-10	-7	-4	0	4	7	10	13

Extract	Requirement
Geb's Compound Extract	Two properties of at least ++ or --
Maat's Compound Extract	Two properties of at least +++ or ---
Set's Compound Extract	Three properties of at least +++ or ---
Osiris's Compound Extract	Two properties of at least ++++ or ----
Thoth's Compound Extract	Three properties of at least ++++ or ----
Ra's Compound Extract	Two properties of +++++ or -----

Essence Chart

Compound Extracts: Start to Finish

Terms and Definitions

The world of Chemistry can be very confusing. The biggest initial barrier to understanding it is simply the variety of substances and terms that need to be distinguished. Once you learn the talk, though, it's all really quite simple.

Spirits

Spirits are the result of distilling Beer or Wine in an Alembic. They are used to extract the Essence from raw materials. Spirits come in a variety of types (Rock, Wood, Worm, Grain, Grass, Fruit, Vegetable, Mineral, Fish, and Grey) and qualities (Grey, Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Life, Ra). Note that "Grey" serves double duty as a type and a quality. Any essences of type Grey are also of quality Grey (and vice-versa), which is the lowest quality possible.

Essence

"Essence" itself is the best word to describe these materials. They are the basic chemicals that make up a particular material, extracted and concentrated. Essences are made by macerating raw materials such as Herbs, Resins, Metal Salts, and Powdered Gems in a Chemistry Laboratory. They require Spirits as a solvent.

Essential Compound

An Essential Compound is a mixture of five different Essences in a Chemistry Laboratory. They are very simple and quick to make once you have the desired Essences made. Essential Compound creation is the only step of this process that benefits from Chem Lab Calibration, so if you have multiple available labs of which only one is calibrated, you'll want to perform this step there. Essential Compounds can be given any name you desire.

Compound Extract

The "final product" of this process, although in reality it is simply an ingredient in another recipe. Compound Extracts are nothing more than Essential Compounds that fit certain criteria demanded by the Chemistry Lab. There are six varieties, each named after a deity: Geb, Maat, Set, Osiris, Thoth, and Ra. Though in practice it can be said that Geb's Compound Extract is the "easiest" to make, and Ra's the "hardest", they all require the same amount of effort and material to make.

Preparation

In order to make compound extracts, you'll need access to the following:

• Raw Materials. The wider the variety of your stocks, the more options you'll have. Raw materials include:
  • Herbs
  • Resins
  • Metal Salts
  • Powdered Gems
• Wine and/or Beer. While any wine or beer will provide some spirits, wines with high tannins and/or residual sugar generally provide the most spirits. Spoiled beers may be used.
• Charcoal. To fuel the Alembic. A little will go a long way.
• Alembic. This building is used to turn your alcohol into spirits. If you don't have one, check with your local public works. With some advance planning, you don't necessarily need close access to it throughout the process.
• Chemistry Laboratory. You can carry out the entire process on one Lab, but with the bottleneck being the two-minute wait for Essences, having multiple Labs to run in parallel will be a time-saver. If you can acquire a set of glassware good enough to calibrate one Lab, you'll be able to work more efficiently, but it isn't necessary.

Back-to-Front: Planning

Now that we've collected all of our materials, it's time to get down to business. Here's a visual representation of the process we'll be following:

Before we can go diving in, though, it's important to note that each step along the way is going to require us to make choices based on our goals for the next step. Therefore, in order to plan this out properly, we need to start at the end of the line.

First, look at your goal: what is it that you're ultimately trying to make? By way of example, let's say we're looking for some Gear Oil. With Gear Oil, we have three choices: we can use Maat's, Set's, or Osiris's Compound Extract. Osiris's will provide us with the best Oil, but the decision is not entirely up to us.

Chemical Properties

Click your Chemistry Lab, and click Manufacture->Extracts. This will pull up a list of the 6 Compound Extracts you can make. If you click on one, it will give you a selection window to choose the Essential Compound to use. We haven't made one yet, but at the top of the window it shows you what properties are required in the Essential Compound, and at what strengths. For example, if we click on Osiris's Compound Extract, it might tell us:

Required:
Toxic (++++)
Salty (----)

Essences and Essential Compounds have 8 properties, often abbreviated to their first two letters:

• Aromatic (Ar)
• Astringent (As)
• Bitter (Bi)
• Salty (Sa)
• Sour (So)
• Spicy (Sp)
• Sweet (Sw)
• Toxic (To)

In an Essential Compound, each of these properties exists as a value in the range of -15 to +15. This range is separated into a number of steps as follows:

- - - - -	- - - -	- - -	- -	<-->	++	+++	++++	+++++
-13	-10	-7	-4	0	4	7	10	13

These steps extend all the way to the end of the bar away from zero. Thus, for example, if a Compound called for Aromatic (++), it would require the Aromatic property to be 4 or greater; values of 4 or 15 or anything in between would be valid. Likewise, a request for Sour (---) would require that the Sour property be -7 or less (-7 through -15 inclusive).

In our example, we can see that if we want to make Osiris's Compound Extract, we're going to need to make an Essential Compound with a Toxic property of 10 or above, and a Salty property of -10 or below. The next step is to find out if this is even possible with currently-known Essences.

There are pages maintained on the wiki devoted to compiling recipes for each type of Compound Extract:

• Geb's Compound Extract
• Maat's Compound Extract
• Set's Compound Extract
• Osiris's Compound Extract
• Thoth's Compound Extract
• Ra's Compound Extract

Armed with the properties you need, check the appropriate page. If there is a recipe for your particular combination of properties, it will likely be listed. (Note that the charts have the properties sorted alphabetically, which is not always the way they'll be presented by your Chem Lab. Order is not important.)

What if you don't find the recipe you need? Well, that probably means that we haven't discovered the right combination of Essences to produce those properties yet. The only way to reset the requirement is to make a different Compound Extract. Making any Compound Extract resets the requirements for all of them on that Lab. If we can't make our first choice, then, we just move on down (up, actually) the list. If our Osiris's doesn't work, we can check Set's next, then Maat's, then Geb's, until we get a viable recipe for one.

For sake of example, we started with Osiris's Compound Extract here. In practice, regardless of what you're ultimately going for, it's generally a good idea to start at Ra's Compound Extract and work your way up. You don't want to miss out on an opportunity to make a rare Extract, even if you don't have an immediate use for it. Remember: all requirements change when you make a Compound Extract!

Ok, now we've chosen a Compound Extract, and by extension, an Essential Compound to use.and have a recipe for the corresponding Essential Compound. The recipe is nothing more than 5 unique Essences which must be mixed together. The amount of each Essence needed depends on the Calibration level of the Chem Lab. An uncalibrated Lab will require 10 drop of each, but a calibrated Lab will require one less drop of each for each level of Calibration (down to 7 for the currently-known max of Calibration Level 3). Making a note of the five Essences we need, and the quantities in which we need them, we can finally move on to manufacturing.