Alchemy

Alchemy is a primary profession that mixes herbs found by Herbalism and sometimes other reagents to generate elixirs, potions, oils, flasks and cauldrons with a variety of effects, as well as transmute minerals, gems, and elementals. Concoctions can be made to restore health and mana, grant temporary invisibility, grant temporary good luck through treasure finding, temporarily change appearance, temporarily improve statistics, and much more.

Alchemy is useful to all character classes. Melee fighters can use alchemy to create buff and healing potions. Spell casting classes can use alchemy to create mana potions and related buffs. Players can create potions, sell them to others, or give them to their party members and friends. Alchemists are well loved when they hand out potions.

Official overview
''Alchemists use herbs to create strange, magical brews that heal, empower, and produce a variety of positive effects - invisibility, elemental resistance, mana restoration, and much, much more. They can also transmute mystic materials into rare and exotic new forms. With their power to create valuable consumables (one-use items), Alchemists are highly useful to groups and raids. By creating rare materials, Alchemists can make a great deal of money, enable the creation of powerful weapons and armor, and even influence the economy of Azeroth!''

Most alchemical brews can be created anywhere, as long as you have the appropriate reagents - supplies that you can buy from vendors, trade for with other players, or find in the wild.

Alchemy is often paired with the gathering profession Herbalism, since herbs found in the wilderness are required to concoct the majority of alchemical mixtures.

''As you advance further in the craft of alchemy, you'll be given an opportunity to choose a specialization. After completing a unique quest, you can specialize in either Transmutation, Potions or Elixirs. An Alchemist with a specialization has a chance to create bonus materials when working within their area of expertise.''

Alchemy training
% Kul Tiran and Zandalari proficiency is only available after purchasing the expansion Battle for Azeroth.

Advancing as an Alchemist
Alchemists improve their skill by creating items. For general information on levelling professions (including Alchemy) see Increasing professional skill level.

New recipes can be learnt when the alchemist achieves the requisite skill level. The method in which new recipes are learnt depends on the expansion in which the recipes are based. All pre-Mists of Pandaria recipes are learnt from alchemy trainers for a small amount. Some recipes can also be learnt through 'Discovery'. Remember to check with your alchemy trainer regularly for newly available recipes.

The method in which Mists of Pandaria recipes are learnt is a little different. Only two recipes are available from alchemy trainers: Alchemist's Rejuvenation (recipe) and Master Healing Potion (recipe). When making these potions, the alchemist has a chance to learn a new recipe. Recipes discovered in this way also have a chance to grant a new recipe to the alchemist. Only recipes appropriate to the alchemist's skill level will be discovered in this way. The result of this is that the alchemist becomes self-taught; all further recipes can be learnt simply through practicing alchemy. However, their discovery is somewhat randomised; although limited by the alchemist's skill level, there is no fixed order to the discoveries, and certain recipes may remain undiscovered for some time. The likelihood of discovering a new recipe is not tied to the difficulty of the item being crafted, and seems to be even for all recipes, with even recipes with a grey skill level having a good chance of teaching the alchemist a new one. Grey recipes can therefore be considered to be more worthwhile in the Mists of Pandaria era; although they will not advance the alchemist's skill level they can still be quite useful for making discoveries.

Vials
All Potions, Elixirs and Flasks will require a Crystal Vial, which can be purchased from any trade goods or Alchemy vendor.

Prior to Patch 4.0.1, there were five types of vials: Empty, previously used to create lower-level potions; Leaded, used to create mid-level potions; and Crystal, Imbued, or Enchanted Vials, used to create higher-level potions and flasks. Following the Cataclysm, all non-Crystal vials were converted to poor quality Shattered Vials.

Recommended Additional Professions

 * Herbalism - You probably can't afford to buy all your herbs at the Auction House, so you might as well harvest them yourself.
 * Enchanting - Not as good a second choice as Herbalism, but nice if you want to be a one stop item and buff shop.
 * Fishing - A secondary profession, which means it will not take up one of the two primary profession slots. Some alchemy recipes require fish as ingredients instead of herbs.

Herbalism is not technically required, but is highly recommended as nearly every alchemy recipe requires Herbs to make, and herbalism can alleviate most of the cost of leveling up. Also, the wide variety of different herbs makes it difficult to simply purchase what you need from other players, because many potions will require more than one type of herb to make, and the herbs are often very expensive.

Transmutation
High-level alchemists can perform transmutations on gems, elemental materials, and some metals for use with other tradeskills. Arcanite, which is used in pre-TBC Blacksmithing recipes, cannot be mined – it can only be transmuted from Arcane Crystal, which is derived from Thorium. Similarly, Truegold has no other source than alchemy. Many other transmutations are possible; see recipe lists.

Before an alchemist can perform any transmutations, he or she must create a Philosopher's Stone. Much like the blacksmith's Blacksmith Hammer or enchanter's Runed Copper Rod, this stone must be in the inventory or equipped to perform any transmutations. Making multiple Philosopher's Stones will not reduce the cooldown time. Philosopher's Stones are Soulbound and cannot be disenchanted, so it is not advised to create more than one. Higher level alchemists can replace their Philosopher's Stone with any Alchemist's Stone, such as the Lifebound Alchemist Stone introduced with Cataclysm.

Some transmutations have a cooldown. This cooldown is shared across any transmutation that requires a cooldown. The cooldown resets at 00:00 time on the server each day. So, a transmute performed at 23:00 server time will prevent any other transmutes requiring a cooldown from taking place for one hour, but a transmute performed at 08:00 server time will prevent cooldown-required transmutes for 16 hours.

(Previously, alchemy cooldowns required 24 hours and later 20 hours, but switched to a midnight reset system as of patch 4.0.1.)

Discoveries
Discovery is a mechanic used to learn certain alchemy and inscription recipes. You have a small chance every time you perform a transmutation or when you make a potion, elixir, or flask that was introduced in The Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King. The recipe is learned automatically.

In Mists of Pandaria, almost all recipes are learnt through 'discovery'. The recipes Alchemist's Rejuvenation (recipe) and Master Healing Potion (recipe) can be learnt from Alchemy trainers. When making these potions, you have a chance to learn other Pandaria alchemy recipes. Discovered recipes can also reveal additional recipes when created. However, you won't be able to learn some recipes until you reach the appropriate skill level. This is intended to provide each alchemist with a unique skill-levelling process.

Alchemy specializations
Upon reaching a Classic Alchemy skill of 300, trainers offer quests to learn one of three specializations:

Specializing gives players a chance to create an extra 1 to 4 (for a total of 5) items while crafting in the field you have selected. For example, a Master of Potions may be able to craft more than one Super Mana Potion for the same material cost as one. For more details on the probability, see below.

Changing specializations
To change a specialization in alchemy:


 * 1) Open the Professions tab window (default key: )
 * 2) Click the red icon next to the specialization (not the one to the left of the skill level bar)

Once unlearned, alchemy trainers in major cities will offer you a choice of three quests, one for each specialization. The quests involve bringing rare materials to a alchemy trainer. eg.: 4 Living Steel for Transmutation Mastery.

The specialization NPCs are:


 * Horde: Yelmak in Orgrimmar
 * Alliance: Lilyssia Nightbreeze in Stormwind

Specializations can be changed as often as desired.

Percentage explanation attempt
While the exact percentage of the specialization proc is unknown, people have speculated that this ability can happen as often as 10-25% of the time.

One theory is that each extra item created also has a 15% chance to create its own extra item. Probability in this type of case is multiplicative and luckily analytical – we do not have to do a Monte-Carlo analysis to determine the probability. It works the same way as the probability of flipping N number of heads in a row with a coin. The chance of flipping 1 head is 50% or a 0.5 probability. The chance of flipping 2 heads in a row is 0.5 *0.5 or .25 or 25%. The chance of flipping 3 heads in a row is 0.25 *0.5 or 0.125 or 12.5%

So, if the 15% assumption is correct, when creating an item, you have approximately a 15% chance of creating exactly two items instead of one, a (0.15^2) or 2.25% chance to create three items instead of one, a (0.15^3) or 0.3375% chance of creating four items instead of one, and a (0.15^4) or 0.050625% chance of creating exactly five items instead of one.

Alchemy perks
Alchemists gain a few perks as compared to other professions, namely the Mixology passive, reusable potions, and potions with combined instant health and mana regeneration.

Abilities
Alchemists gain the passive Mixology ability, which doubles the duration and increases the effect of many flasks and elixirs when used by the alchemist.