Naria's Alchemy Adventures

Comments:

Silver bullets require goldsmithing 20-25, preferably more than 25. I did them with goldsmithing support and got alchemy and goldsmithing skill ups at the same time. I felt it was worth the ~3K loss when I broke and lost all the parts, since goldsmithing is so painful to level anyway past 20.

Holy bolt heads require smithing 14, which is easy to get. You'll need it near 30 for cannon shells much later on anyway.

Contrary to Mashengo's guide, I'm doing hi-potions to 60. I find they sell quite well at all AHs, and even if I buy malboro vines for 1K ea I still profit (except breaks). 170+170+1000+50 >> sells for 1900. (Note: by the time I reached 90, they sell for 3K ea, but vines are still just 1200.) The downside compared to glass fiber is that nothing stacks. I just do 24 synths every couple of days. Unless you're in a huge hurry I find it more fun than cramming flint stones. With /thf (TH1) you usually get 2 vines per stroper in ordelle's, btw.

Hi-ethers are a tremendous loss, at best I AH'd them for 2300, usually more like 1800-2000. Many I just sold to NPC for 1022ish. Contrastingly, remedies are slight profit to NPC if you don't break any. Only honey, mistletoe, and boyahda moss are AH/drops only. Mistletoe is 50k/stack, but the remedies npc for 3200 ea and the synth makes 2. You can sell them (slowly but not horribly slowly) on AH for up to 6k each.

Animas are an interesting option for 68-7X, if you have the key item. You might have to camp the AH a bit (or just hit those ENMs a lot, you get 3k exp and 3 memory clusters for winning). I made 80ish of each type (you get 10 per synth) because I plan to do photoanimas from 78-85 or thereabouts.

Paralyze potions were just the least annoying option for 71-75. All my choices were a big loss, but I could actually sell some of these for 20k/stack. There was also some mention of using them later for mamushitos.

Bloody Bolt Heads are one of the best alchemy skilling synths. They're profit/break even straight up from AH, in tremendous demand, and can be converted to bloody bolts for more profit or to level woodworking. The only problem here is that you need 2 or 3 mules to sell them fast enough.

I'm doing photoanimas mostly because they use up the elemental animas I made previously. Hopefully I can minimize my torture on the way to 90...

Torture minimized to 84 successfully, but the really hard part is from here to 100. (Correction, from here to 94 and from 98 to 100, 94-98 is pleasant if you have 2.5M gil on hand).

Cannon shells are only bad in terms of cost, really. If they had a decent market and sold for 15k a stack every 30 minutes it would be great… Sadly SE did not make the culverin cool enough, nor useful enough in BCNMs or vs gods. Seriously folks, cannon shells need "added effect: crushes huge monsters, like Tiamat." The valuable info I can give you is that I seem to lose the firesand the most on breaks. Luckily you HQ firesand fairly often at 84. I'm thinking I'll get a culvein and exp with these just to get rid of them. Either that or they're headed for the NPC so I can make room for more and just take the losses. The best part is… there is no best part!

Pant, pant… up to 88 now mostly on cannon shells, I did a few icarus wings in there, and it amounts to the same thing really, 3-8k loss per synth depending on various factors. Icarus wing parts are slightly more scarce and you feel worse per break. They sell faster though (at loss).

At 94, finally, cannon-shell-hell is over. From 94 to 96 you have to alternate panacea (cap at 98) with platinum nuggets (cap at 96). Past 96 you want to turn the panaceas into gold nuggets, which is a lower cap - meaning you won't break them. Shockingly, these are a slight profit if you don't break them (breaks are 100k loss btw, enjoy). Philospoher's Stones might be rare on AH and they cost me 1.2M per stack. I was able to do 2-3 stacks per week though, and sell out the nuggets over the weekends.

I HQ'd two Pro-ethers at 99… which is horrifying because they sell the same as NQs and I could have HQ'd a 7.5M synth instead. *cries* Ah well, at least I finally saw: