Guides/Beginners Chem

About

This page is all about getting people new to chemistry up and going, written pretty much as I do stuff. If anyone with more experience sees something I've missed, please add it in as a note.

Starters

What do you need?

• One Chemistry Lab, upgraded to Level 2, and fitted with a full set of glassware. High quality is not essential, but calibration is useful.
• A full 'set' of spirits, from Grey through to Rock, Wood, Worm, Grain, Vegetable, Mineral and finally Fish spirits. These can be traded for, or if you wish to create them yourself, you will need an alembic and some high tannin wines, as well as some high sugar wines. You'll also need charcoal to fuel the alembic. (I'll see if I can persuade someone who's scientifically looked at an alembic to write a guide or give me the info to write a guide).
• Some materials to make extracts from. These are things like herbs, resins, powdered gems etc.

What does Calibration do?

Calibration reduces the number of Essential Extracts required to make an Essential Mixture by 1 for each level. To be able to calibrate a lab, the mean average (add up all the qualities of the glassware in your lab, then divide by 5) must be over a certain level (Level 3 requires <=8000q mean average, others relatively unknown), and be divisible by 10 to get lvl 1 calibration, by 100 to get lvl 2 calibration, and by 1000 to get lvl 3 calibration. It also gives more powdered gem per gem.

How do I start?

The first thing to do is pick a type of compound, Geb, Maat, Set, Osiris, Thoth or Ra. Extracts of Geb require two attributes at 2 or better, Maat requires two at 3 or better, Set requires three at 3 or better, Osiris requires two at 4 or better, Thoth requires three at 4 or better, and Ra requires two at 5 or better. See the table below for what these numbers actually refer to.

You can see what the lab needs to create the Extract by going clicking on your lab and going to Manufacture->Extracts and picking the type you want to make.

Let's take an example. Let's say we want to make a Geb's compound. We go to the lab and find it is asking for Spicy(++) Toxic (++). Using the Extracts List page kindly compiled by Eldrad and Nchanter, we can find the 5 Essences that make up what we need. Why 5? Because each Extract requires you to use 5 different Essences. Here is a table of what each Compound request refers to in actual numbers.

Stat	Min	Max
-----	-15	-13
----	-15	-10
---	-15	-7
--	-15	-4
++	4	15
+++	7	15
++++	10	15
+++++	13	15

To understand where these recipes come from, you have to look at what an Essence is. Each Essence has 8 stats, and each stat can be -3 to +3. So if you wanted to create a Geb's extract, you would need two stats to have +/-4 or more. To follow how it actually works, look up the Essences in the Essences List. The final 'value' of a stat is the sum of the component values.

So now we know the basics, let's put it into practice.

We look at the table and find we need to end up with something with greater than 4 in Sp and To. A little bit of work later, and a recipe of Discorea, Hazelwort, Spindle Tree, Giant Cricklewood and Hawthorn emerges. This is by no means the only recipe, but it'll do for this purpose.

Now to do the Essential Distillation. Find the spirits you'll need, in this case, Grain, Mineral, Wood, Fish and Grey. You need in the end to create 10 drops of each, which means you'll have to do it all more than once. The number of drops is based on the *lowest* purity spirit used. Fire, the most commonly used, gives you 6 drops per use, and for the purpose of this demo I'll treat it like you're all using Fire. This means that you'll need to do all twice, except the Hawthorn one, which you will need to do 4 times, since grey spirits only give 3 drops per run.

To start, click on the Chemistry Lab => Manufacture => Alcohol Lamp => Fill lamp with spirits, and add the required spirits in. Then click the Chemistry Lab again, and go to Manufacture => Essential Distillation => Place Essential Material Into The Macerator, and add in the Material you wish to use. Once that is done, under the same menu, click on Start Essential Distillation. You now get to wait 2 minutes for the process to complete.

Once you have all your Essences, you need to mix them together. Click on the Chemistry Lab => Essential Mixture=> Add Essence to Compound, and add the required essence. In this case it's Discorea, Hazlewort, Spindle Tree, Giant Cricklewood and Hawthorn. Once all 5 are in, you can then Mix Compound. You will be presented with a message then asking you to name the compound. I would recommend naming it after the attributes, such as Ar(---)As(--)Bi(--)Sp(++)To(++). It's a long name, but it tells you everything you need to know. (Alternatively, you can copy the line from the Extracts Table that you used to find the recipe and use that.)

Once this is done, you can then Click on the Chemistry Lab => Extracts => Create Geb's Compound Extract, and select the Essence Mixture you just made. Congratulations! You've made a Compound Extract!