My potions keep failing and the ingredients disappear. How does alchemy actually work?

Steps

1. Get a mortar and pestle. One player reads the item card aloud — its description is brewing potions — and concludes you need one before you can brew at all.
2. Buy it from the alchemy vendor if you can afford it. One player pays 500 gold in her shop; another finds one in a crate as loot.
3. Carry a blade for harvesting. One player cannot pull flowers with his fists and works out that an alchemist character needs a dagger ready.
4. Put ingredients together and read the number. The brew shows a fizzle chance as a percentage before you commit: one session reads sixty per cent, another forty-five.
5. Do not repeat an ingredient. One player tries to add a second of the same thing and finds the screen will not take it.
6. Expect to lose ingredients. A fizzle wastes them outright, and the same player fails three brews in a row before one works.
7. Keep going anyway. He then watches the fizzle chance drop and concludes out loud that the failures have been levelling his alchemy.
8. Get trained if you have the gold. The vendor who sells the mortar also trains alchemy for money, in two separate sessions.

What the brewing screen tells you before you commit

The number is the whole system. Two players on two different days read a fizzle chance off a brew before making it — one a sixty per cent chance on a restore-fatigue potion, the other forty-five per cent on a four-ingredient mix. That is two independent sessions describing the same interface element, which is as close to confirmation as player video gets here.

A failure costs you the materials. One player reads his own failure message as the ingredients being wasted, and nothing in either session suggests a partial refund. He fails, fails again, succeeds, and later fails a brew he had a fifty-five per cent chance of making.

Failing still counts. Midway through his second session the same player notices his fizzle chance is lower than it was, and says so: the alchemy skill is going up. That is consistent with how this game levels every other skill, but it is one player reading his own screen, so it is reported as his observation rather than as a rule.

Ingredient count is less clear. He describes a potion as taking about four items to make, wonders aloud whether adding more raises the odds, and never settles it. No source here establishes a maximum, a minimum beyond two, or what the percentage is actually calculated from.

Ingredient effects are hidden until you find them

You brew blind at first. One player picks up ooze residue, says outright that he does not know what it does, throws it in with some bread and gets a restore-fatigue potion out of it. He ends that sequence by remarking that it probably helps to know more of the effects before putting things together.

Effects are discovered by use, one at a time. A second player announces discovering the effect for levity, and later that he has discovered two fortify-alchemy effects. A third gets restore magicka from bone meal, fatigue and then poison damage from frog belly, and a health potion from slug meat and cork berries that he cannot explain.

Tasting is a real method with a real cost. The player who discovers fortify alchemy does it by eating things, and asks his chat why everything he eats is poisoning him. He stops at six health, sleeps it off, and continues. That is one session, and it is the only account here of what happens when identification goes wrong.

Discovery does not travel between players. One co-op session tests it directly by accident: one player hands his partner a mushroom and asks him to eat it, somebody reads out restore fatigue and poison damage, and the player who handed it over then says the effect was not given to him. He draws the conclusion on the spot — each of them has to consume the ingredients independently. An hour later he asks whether there is a way to share the effects you have learned, and his partner says not that he is aware of. Note what that session does not establish: the captions carry no speaker labels, so which of the two men read the effect aloud is unknown, and nobody says in so many words that the eater learned anything. What is shown is that handing an ingredient over does not teach it to the giver.

Update 7 is the developer answering that first player directly. NerveLabs lists, under Updated, that alchemy effects now show in the UI when discovered. A second line under Fixed says certain alchemy tags were deprecated and replaced with proper ones, with no explanation of which tags or what changed. Every recording cited on this page was uploaded between 17 and 20 August, before that update, so none of them shows the new interface.

The vendor, the mortar, and the two different numbers

The opening town has an alchemy vendor, and the tavern-keeper names her in the same speech that introduces the magic trainer. Three separate recordings transcribe that line the same way: she sells alchemy supplies in the southern swamp, and is very useful depending on your skill. Machine captions render her name as Bronwin in one track and Brunwin in two others, so this page does not spell it.

She trains as well as sells. One player is told he has to be trained to do alchemy; another opens her shop and reads off training in alchemy for money, a mortar and pestle, and healing tonics at 100 gold each with ten in stock.

Two numbers get attached to the mortar and pestle in this pool, and only one of them is a price. A player in her shop is short of the 500 it costs and comes back for it later. A different player finds a mortar and pestle in a crate and reads 250 off the item card — that is what the loot is worth, not what a shop charges. Confusing the two would produce a price discrepancy that does not exist.

There is also a wearable bonus. One player finds alchemist mittens worth 600 gold that give plus fifteen alchemy; another, in a different session, has plus fifteen alchemy from gear and says he wants the alchemist mitts. Where they come from is not shown in either recording.

One thing does not line up. The tavern directory places her in the southern swamp, and a second player reads the same line back from his journal. Yet a third session finds her indoors after walking back into town. This page reports the tension rather than resolving it, because no recording here follows a route to her from the tavern.

Requirements / limits

• Every recording cited here predates Update 7. They were uploaded between 17 and 20 August; the update landed on 21 August and changed how discovered effects are displayed.
• The two percentages are readings from two specific brews. They are not a formula, and nothing here shows what the number is calculated from.
• That failures level the skill is one player’s inference from watching his own fizzle chance fall, not a figure the game showed him.
• The four-ingredient observation is single-source, and that player is explicitly unsure whether more ingredients improve the odds.
• The one-of-each rule comes from one session, where the screen refuses a duplicate.
• The blade requirement for harvesting is one player’s conclusion after failing to pull flowers by hand.
• Named ingredient effects here — levity, fortify alchemy, bone meal, frog belly, slug meat with cork berries — each come from a single session. No ingredient list is published on this site.
• The vendor’s name cannot be established from machine captions, and her location is disputed between the tavern directory and one session’s footage.
• That effect discovery is per-player comes from a single co-op session. The two players there never find a sharing mechanism, but neither do they look for one beyond asking each other.
• NerveLabs’ deprecated-alchemy-tags line is unexplained in the changelog and untested in any recording here.

Common mistakes

• Committing a brew without reading the percentage. It is on the screen before you press the button, and sixty per cent means what it says.
• Treating a fizzle as a bug. One player’s co-op partner names it for what it is: this is an alchemy system where you can fail to make potions.
• Reading 250 as the price of a mortar and pestle. That is the value of a looted one; the shop in this pool charges 500.
• Punching flowers. Harvesting needs a blade in hand according to the one player who tries both.
• Identifying ingredients by eating them without watching your health. It does work — it is how one player discovers fortify alchemy — and it took him to six health.
• Saving your ingredients until alchemy is higher. The skill goes up by brewing, failures included, so hoarding delays the thing that lowers your failure rate.
• Expecting the game to tell you what an ingredient does. Before Update 7 nothing here suggests it did; NerveLabs added the discovered-effect display in that update.
• Splitting identification work with a co-op partner. In the one session that tries it, the player who hands over an ingredient does not learn its effect when his partner eats it, and concludes on the spot that each of them has to consume ingredients independently. Whether the eater learns it is a separate question that recording does not settle.

Still unverified

• What determines the fizzle chance?Not verifiedTwo readings exist, sixty and forty-five per cent, on brews of different sizes by players of different skill. Nothing separates the variables.
• Is there a maximum number of ingredients per brew?Not verifiedOne player uses four and wonders whether more would help. No recording tests it.
• Where does the alchemy vendor actually stand?Single unconfirmed reportThe tavern directory and one player’s journal both say the southern swamp; another session meets her indoors in town.
• What does the discovered-effect display look like?Developer changelogUpdate 7 states that alchemy effects now show in the UI when discovered. No recording here is from after the update.
• Which alchemy tags were deprecated in Update 7?Developer changelogNerveLabs says certain tags were deprecated and replaced with proper ones, and names none of them.
• Does paying for training raise the skill directly?Not verifiedTwo sessions show training being offered for money. Neither buys it on camera.
• Can discovered ingredient effects be shared in co-op?Single unconfirmed reportOne session finds they are not: eating an ingredient teaches only the eater, and neither player knows of a way to transfer what they have learned.
• Why are brewing sounds audible across separate co-op sessions?Single unconfirmed reportOne player hears potion-making from private sessions elsewhere and says he assumes it is a bug. No changelog entry addresses it.