etting Started 

page 3

 

           

 

Tinctures - The Basics

Once you reach a skill level of 534, you will be able to make your first tinctures. Tinctures are based on a metal type and the metal type determines what level the effect, charge or reactive effect will start to work from. 

Referencing the metal chart above, an item would only work if the character using it is the same level or higher as the tincture imbued into it. Note that the item doesn't have to be made of the same material level as the tincture, but it can be used as a rough guide as to what level tincture should be put into what item.

For example,  you could imbue a Volatile Fire Fine Alloy Tincture into an Alloy Dagger. However by the time the character was of sufficient level to get the weapon to 'proc',  the dagger would be below his optimal choice for a weapon in regard to its DPS rating and weapon con.

For a tincture to be of any use it has to be imbued into an item and are divided into three classes: effects, charges, and reactives.

Definition of effects: These are applied to weapons/shields and work offensively, meaning they have a chance to proc when the player hits their target. Effects work in both PvE and RvR. 

Definition of charges: These are applied to weapons/shields/armor. They are activated by the /use command on the item they are imbued into and can only be accessed outside of combat. Charges can be used in both PvE and RvR. The number of charges available depends on the quality of the item being imbued:

100% quality = 10 charges
99% quality = 7 charges
98% quality = 6 charges
97% quality = 5 charges
96% quality = 4 charges

Definition of reactives: These are applied to shields/armor and work defensively, meaning they have a chance to proc when the player is hit. Reactives work in both PvE and RvR, with the exception of shields which have a chance of working in RvR only due to overpowering issues determined by Mythic.

Tinctures can only be imbued into player-crafted armor, shields or weapons, not dropped or quested items. Each player-crafted item has a slot for one tincture. Imbuing a tincture into an item does not affect the item's imbue points with regard to Spellcrafting because they are completely separate.

Note: Be very careful when imbuing tinctures into items. It is possible to imbue the wrong type of tincture into an item. E.g. an effect (instead of a reactive) into a piece of armor. The tincture will imbue fine, but since the piece of armor can never offensively strike another player or monster like a weapon does,  the effect will never ever 'proc'. You cannot remove or reapply a tincture once imbued so making a mistake will waste the tincture and the item.

Tinctures - How to Apply

There are two ways to imbue a tincture into an item.

First method:  if you are crafting for someone else, have the other person trade the item with you by clicking on the item in their inventory and dropping the icon on the crafter which will open a trade window.  You will then place the tincture into your side of the trade window by left clicking on the item in your inventory and dropping it into the trade window.  At this point your skill is checked to make sure that it is sufficient to imbue the tincture.  If you do not have sufficient skill,  you will receive a message in your chat box and will be unable to click "Accept".

However, assuming you have sufficient skill,  click  the Combine checkbox to turn the trade from a normal trade into an imbue and both the customer and alchemist need to click "Accept". When this occurs, the imbued item will be placed in your customer's inventory. I strongly recommend that when you do such a trade, that the other person submits their requested payment before you both click accept - therefore when the other person receives their item, your payment shows up in your inventory and you don't risk being "short-changed".

Second method:  an ideal method if you are doing your own imbuing.  To do this, right-click the item in your inventory that you want to imbue. Next,  press your Craft key (to find out what key this is mapped to, use the /keyboard command to bring up your current keyboard settings under "Craft".) When your craft window comes up, you have these options:

Clicking on the 'Craft' option will bring up the Self Craft window. It looks identical to a trade window but has the item already placed ready to receive the tincture and the combine checkbox is already checked.

Simply place the required tincture into your side of the window (as shown above) and click the Accept button. The tincture will be combined and the finished item placed in your inventory.

Tinctures - Charging and Recharging

As an alchemist, you are able to recharge player-made items that have charges imbued into them. Recharging does not require use of an alchemy table or tools which makes it convenient to do anywhere and at any time. However, recharging does require a check against your alchemy skill level  and if your skill is not high enough, a message will inform you that you are not able to recharge the item. In order to be able to recharge all types of charges, including the level 49 charges, you must have a skill level of at least 886. Special distills are available for recharging and each distill corresponds to a material level. The distill used depends on the metal type used in making the tincture, not necessarily the metal of the item that it is imbued into.

You should be able to work out the correct distill to use by delving the item and comparing the effect data with the effect listing in the Recipes section of this site. It is important to do this since recharging an item with a distill of a higher level than is necessary will still work, but will cost you more than is necessary to get the task done. (e.g. an Alloy tincture imbued into a Fine Alloy dagger would only require a Liquid Alloy Renewal, not a Liquid Fine Alloy Renewal.)

The table below details each of the distills along with their cost. The distills are available from merchants within your realm which are listed in the Merchants section of this website for their locations.

There are two methods of recharging an imbued item which are similar to imbuing an item (listed above) except you would place the distill in the trade window and then combine by clicking "Accept".

A couple of things to note: 

 - Unlike the NPC rechargers who charge according to the number of charges being recharged, that a single distill will recharge an item to full capacity, no matter how many charges were used up.

- When recharging,  unstack the renewal items in your inventory or the entire stack will be used.

- Alchemists can only recharge player-made items, not dropped or quested items with charges;  likewise NPC rechargers can only recharge dropped or quested items, they cannot recharge player made items.

1000 and Beyond

When you reach 1000 skill, a number of recipes will become available to you that require ingredients not found on NPC merchants. These are rare ingredients that can only be obtained by killing monsters in your realm and frontiers. These recipes make the strongest poisons, potions, tinctures available and often drop in batches of 3, 6, or 9 stacks at at time. The recipes that require dropped ingredients can be found on the Recipes page of this website and a list of mobs that drop the ingredients can be found on the Drop List page. 

Hopefully this guide will get you started on your career as an Alchemist. If you have any questions on alchemy or need more help,  either contact a legendary alchemist in game by doing a /who legendary alchemist or visit a DAoC crafting forum (listed in the Links section of this website).