Alchemy

Alchemy is a trade skill, and you train it by making potions. There are twenty recipes, one every five points of skill, and you start knowing none of them. Each one is a scroll, dropped by creatures from its home level to five levels above it. A kill rolls for one scroll only, picking one recipe or pattern from every trade skill's at that level together, and the higher a recipe stands the rarer its scroll: the first drops from 0.5% of kills in the wilds, the Flask of Spite from 0.05%. Every recipe's chance is in the table. A kill below ground drops it 2× as often, and a warden, zone boss or keeper 5×, but never more than 0.5%. The Flask of Spite is epic, and its scroll drops only from a boss — a dungeon's keeper, a castle's lord or a zone's boss — or out of a dungeon's hoard. Click the scroll in your pouch (K) to see what it teaches, then press Learn. If you already know the recipe, the button says so and the scroll stays in your pouch to sell or list. Sewing, leatherworking, armorsmithing, weaponsmithing and jewelcrafting patterns drop and are learned the same way, sharing that one roll.

Brewing takes 2 seconds a potion, up to 20 at a time, and every potion you make trains the skill. A craft bar over your action bar shows what you are brewing and how far along the batch is. Stand still: taking a step interrupts the craft, and whatever was under way is lost, though nothing is taken for it. Turning on the spot is fine. A potion refills a share of a pool's size, so it is worth as much at level 20 as at level

1. All potions share one 2 minutes cooldown, shorter with the Iron Stomach talent. Field Medic makes healing potions restore more. Every potion you carry stands on the potion bar over your experience bar, healing first; click one to drink it, or bind a key to each slot on the Potions tab of Key bindings.

Every potion you brew rolls its quality, as a sewn piece does: Standard, Fine, Superior or Masterwork, likelier the better your Alchemy, both past the recipe's skill and in all. A Fine potion refills a fifth more of its pool, a Superior two fifths more and a Masterwork about two thirds more, though never past the whole pool. Each also starts a shorter potion cooldown, a Masterwork's about two fifths shorter, so even a Major potion is worth brewing well. Better potions sell for more, and each quality keeps a stack of its own in your pouch. The Alchemy frame shows your odds for the recipe you have chosen, and H drinks the best healing potion you carry. The Steady Hands talent rolls quality as though your skill were higher.

You can only read a scroll or drink a potion once you reach the level of the zones that drop its tier. Buy one early and it waits in your pouch until you get there. Like everything else in the pouch, potions and scrolls sell to any vendor and can go up at the auction house.

See every recipe.