~ALCHEMY~ Back in 'ye olde days', the Ultimate Goal of Alchemy was to make the Philosopher's Stone, or rather, to make Gold out of nothing through the process of Alchemy. I find it very odd(and funny) that this is actually possible in Dungeon of Dredmor. And all this item collecting, only to wind up with a Solution of Gold that either makes you literally urinate Gold or sells for a few hundred gold. So, what's the point for this skill in the long run? It's just one big Aqua Vitae Factory. That's where the Gold is. A Master Chemist can distill 18 bottles of Aqua Vitae with either 1 Apple or Pear. You buy an an apple/pear at a vending machine for about 50$. That's huge profit here. But in the long run of the endgame, money becomes useless since Store never ever seem to be on the right tier; it's just random items. You can find 10-Star equipment on Level 1. And if you can't find Rust/Powdered Aluminum to mix it with your ton of Aqua Vitae to make potions, well, your Alchemy skill has become very useless. If you have the Smith skill, it's even better since you can make/grind your own Iron/Aluminum. But then you sacrificed 2 skills for the sake of a few Healing Potions... Why bother with Alchemy when there's over 9000 piece of food per dungeon floor and better skill for Healing treatment? It's a dead-end joke-of-a-skill. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~SMITH~ Now wassup with that? You have a great system there. But Master Smiths out there should see a problem near their endgame. Here are 2 questions: What do you make of Electrum Ingots and Platinum Ingots? I hoarded over 20 of each of these Ingots all the way to Dredmor, yet I never found any recipe requiring them. When I started leveling up the Smith skill, I though maybe some new recipe would unlock, but nope. So, the whole process of "going up a tier" with every types of ingots seems useless in the endgame, since you can't craft any good armor or weapons. The highest tier for Swords and Armor in the stock list Steel. WTF? I want my Platinum Armor and my Electrum Sword! Anybody out there that feels the same?
No, there's no recipe requiring Electrum or Platinum ingots for a Tinkerer's stock list of Recipe. And I found none.
Platinum Ingots are used to make the Serpentine platemail, as well as Emerald Amulets, which are both the top-tier items in their respective categories. The recipes are on the wiki or the XML, whichever you prefer to use. And, for your information, you can actually craft Katanas, which I found was rather useful (until I found Doul's Possible Sword). As for Electrum Ingots, they're used to craft Chalcoelectronic Rings, which is a Smithing item.
Actually, the highest tier of non chest armor is aluminum, I believe. The best chestplate is the serpentine plate.
Elven Ingot Grinders are fairly common to pick up, and you can now turn some crappy iron equipment (and iron ingots) into rust - add in a press to make iron/aluminum ore into ingots and you're usually set up nicely.
And Alchemy is far more than just crafting potions, it's also about crafting Mage Staves and Orbs. And even if you cannot find enough aluminium/rust, the ability to distill weak beverages into lots of much more useful ones is still very much worth it for a Mage. Not to mention there's still a lot of other potions with decent effects which do not require aluminium or rust.
