Noob question about alchemy...

[Lord_Drakken]

what bonus does an alchemist actually do? I see no ingame explanation for an alchemy bonus?

[Shovah32]

I think it just increases the amount of gold you recieve when alchemising fire/earth gems into gold(the value being the percentage increase iirc).

[llamabeast]

Yep. No advantage to gem-gem alchemy sadly, only gem-gold alchemy.

[NTJedi]

llamabeast said:
Yep. No advantage to gem-gem alchemy sadly, only gem-gold alchemy.

The alchemist also has a 300 gold cost which means an upkeep of 20gold per turn. So if you're buying an alchemist for his alchemy skill you'll want to alchemize at least 3 fire gems per turn to pay the upkeep.

[Lord_Drakken]

I don't know what the bonus of gem to gold is canyou tell me. Lastly if I have a alchemist pretender I don't pay any upkeep do I?

[llamabeast]

Can't you right-click on the alchemy icon to find out the bonus? Otherwise I don't know myself but I suspect it's a 50% bonus.

[llamabeast]

Sorry, what was the bit about upkeep? You don't pay upkeep for the pretender himself, you don't pay upkeep for any pretenders.

[Ewierl]

Lord_Drakken said:
I don't know what the bonus of gem to gold is canyou tell me. Lastly if I have a alchemist pretender I don't pay any upkeep do I?

The confusion here is because there is a recruitable alchemist mage, in addition to the Master Alchemist pretender.

Also, it would be unfair to say that a recruited alchemist needs to do alchemy every turn or he isn't worth it. He's a mage, after all, and he also brings in value via research.

[Ewierl]

llamabeast said:
Can't you right-click on the alchemy icon to find out the bonus? Otherwise I don't know myself but I suspect it's a 50% bonus.

Wait a minute. I just checked, and I don't see any alchemy icon on the Master Alchemist pretender, nor on the MA Tien Chi alchemists. Do you really have such an icon? If so, there may be something missing from the Mac build for 3.10...

[Shovah32]

I assumed there was but maybe not.