I wrote this guide while bored when levelling up my hib alchemist as I thought it might be of some use considering the number of related questions I’ve seen in alb and hib, both in game and on the forums. Hopefully this will help more people who could not consistently afford barrels at market prices to be able to level their own alchemist and provide for themselves. At the least it should serve as in information source for (hopefully) anything that people want to know about barrels and their crafting.
The FAQ section contains first general questions and then those about levelling an alchemist. If you already have a high level alchemist and simply want to know how to turn potions into barrels, skip to the walkthrough section at the end.
FAQ
Q: What is a barrel?
A: A barrel is simply a stack of one type of usable potion – end regen, haste etc. The effect of /use-ing the barrel is in all respects exactly the same as if you used a potion of that type. The benefit of a barrel is that it contains 100 charges yet acts as a single item taking up one inventory slot and weighing almost nil, meaning you can carry around as many of any type as you could need for at least one heavy session of rvr, if not one weeks worth. Barrels cannot currently be made on the classic or US servers.
Q: What types of barrels can be made?
A: All except water breathing and trophy potions can be made into barrels. Those which come in multiple levels are named with a prefix to indicate the tier – weak, [nothing], improved and strong. Those with multiple values represent different tiers (the bracketed values represent tiers that are impractical to make, see below)
Barrel of endurance – instant endurance – 20%/ 40%/ 60%/80%
Barrel of power – instant power – 30/50/70/90
Barrel of health – instant health – 80/130/180/230
Barrel of invigoration – 2 minute endurance regen – 1/2/3/(4)
Barrel of replenishment – 10 minute power regen – 1/2/3/(4)
Barrel of mending – 10 minute health regen – 2/4/6/(8)
Barrel of speed – 10 minute melee haste – 8%/11%/14%/(17%)
Barrel of shard skin – 10 minute damage shield – 1dps/2dps/3dps/(4dps)
Barrel of strength – 10 min 20 value str buff
Barrel of fortitude – 10 min 20 value con buff
Barrel of dexterity – 10 min 20 value dex buff
Barrel of enlightenment – 10 min 20 value acuity buff
Barrel of might – 10 min 30 value str/con buff
Barrel of deftness – 10 min 30 value dex/qui buff
Q: How do I make barrels?
A: You need an alchemist of typically around 700 skill, to make the potions with. A very quick mini-quest with cheap purchased components will get you empty bottles and empty barrels which you fill with the potions by giving them to the old alchemist in the capital city. See walkthrough section at the end for specifics.
Q: How much does a barrel cost to make?
A: There are several tiers of barrels with increasing effectiveness, however with all potions there is only one level that is commonly used so I will base the prices on these. Barrels made from ‘healing potions’ – those which act to instantly give you a flat amount of endurance, power or health back, cost 304.1 gold for the usual 4th (strong barrel of ---- ) tier. Barrels made from ‘special potions’ – those which give end regen, health regen, power regen, melee-haste or damage shield all for a certain duration, cost 213.35 gold for the usual 3rd (‘improved barrel of ---- ) tier. Single stat buff barrels cost 74.2g and double stat buff cost 171g, though I have never known of these being used since they are far short of BB buffs. All these prices include the small amount for bottle and barrel components.
Q: What about the other tiers?
A: The lower tiers are simply less effective, for example the second tier power pot gives 50 power while the fourth tier gives 90. You could certainly use these if you wanted but almost nobody considers 3g per charge to be so expensive that they’d rather use a lower less effective version. On the other hand the higher, top tiers (5th in the case of healing pots, 4th for special pots) require unique drops to craft them, drops such as ancient pure mercury which only come from certain highish level mobs and drop at a low rate. It would simply take so much time to farm a barrels worth of these that nobody considers it worth the effort for the small gain in effectiveness – you wouldn’t want to spend 4 hours in pve for a barrel that could last under 10 hours in rvr if used heavily.
Q: How long does a barrel take to make?
A: The ‘miniquest’ to get bottle and barrel components can be done entirely in about 5 minutes once you know it. The bulk of your time is spent crafting the actual potions to put in the barrel. The crafting times are halved when an item is greycon for which you need 50+ alchemy skill above the item level, thus the times I give are based on the assumption the pots are grey to you, if they are not then double these values. The crafting time for 4th tier healing potions is about 13 sec per potion, so 26 minutes for all 121. Special potions require a specific equal tier healing potion as an ingredient (end pot for end regen pot for example) so you actually have to craft 242 potions total. The 3rd tier healing pots take about 11 secs and the special pots take about 9, so 20 sec total working out at 40 minutes. Thus a rough figure for total time to make a barrel is 30 minutes for a healing type and 45 min for a special type.
Q: How much will it cost to level an alchemist?
A: If you intend to simply use the alchemist for barrels then you will eventually want to have the minimum skill so that the potions you are crafting are greycon (and thus take half the time to craft). For 4th tier barrels (strong barrel of endurance etc) which are the norm, you will need 734 skill to achieve this. How much it costs to level here depends on your levelling method and to a certain extent, luck. Costs can vary enormously between people however a ballpark figure is 300g-900g, it shouldn’t be more unless you somehow manage to use an extremely inefficient method.
Q: How long will it take to level an alchemist?
A: Again the time taken will vary greatly depending on your method of levelling, but to reach 734 a very rough estimate is 10-25 hours.
Q: How do I become an alchemist?
A: Only the following classes can become alchemists:
Alb: Friar, Infiltrator, Minstrel, Paladin, Reaver, Scout
Hib: Bard, Champion, Nightshade, Ranger, Valewalker, Warden
Mid: Hunter, Shadowblade, Skald, Thane
It is probably worth making or using an alt for your alchemist even if your main chars are eligible, as you want a nearly empty inventory when crafting barrels to prevent wasting time running back and forth to your vault. With this character you become an alchemist simply by speaking to the alchemist’s master. This NPC is located in TNN at the alchemy table near the druid grove; in Camelot on the stairwell of Merlin’s tower which is near the entrance to the king’s throne room; and in Jordheim in the assembly hall outside the king’s throne room.
Q: What is the best way to level an alchemist?
A: I don’t want to make this too long, so I’ll start by saying that all crafters have different methods of levelling up, and after levelling 3 LGMs I’m convinced that the most efficient method will vary between craft and level. That said, there are a few general pointers. By the ‘best’ way you probably mean the most efficient method, but this is somewhat subjective as you are three things you could potentially want to minimise – time, cost or effort. While cost is probably the most significant factor at high levels (1000+), it’s not too serious at the levels we’re concerned with, in fact with potential total levelling times in excess of 20 hours, I’m sure everyone would not be concerned about spending a few hundred more gold if it saved time. So the aim for most of you will be to minimise some combination of time and effort - by effort I mean the number of times you have to go back and forth to the materials merchant. The perfectly optimal time-saving method would require you to change recipe every few levels on average, but most people would probably prefer to buy in bulk to an extent – so they can just sit their character at the crafting table and hit a button once every xx seconds whilst watching TV, reading, or doing something else in the background – at the expense of a small amount of total levelling time. At lower levels you can pick something 10-20 skill ahead of you, buy 40x times the ingredients and craft until it’s bluecon, however at higher levels I would recommend almost always choosing something no more than 15 above or 10 below your skill. The higher it is the lower your chances of successfully crafting it, and for those well above your skill you also have a chance of losing materials; conversely the lower it is the smaller your chances of a skillgain on a successful craft, so you need to find the best balance. Personally at the higher levels I tried to pick something between 5 and 10 above my skill, buy enough for 20-40 makes, which will often be 4-12 skill-gain, then skill on it until materials ran before choosing a new ideal level recipe. Some other people prefer to choose a recipe at their skill and craft until it’s 10-15 units below. I would suggest you try various methods so long as you’re always doing something within the +15 to -15 range, and see what you prefer.
Barrel Walkthrough
Note: Even if the following seems like a lot of steps, don’t worry because it doesn’t take long at all once you know it. I’ve just gone into a lot of detail to hopefully avoid any possible confusion. Also be aware that none of this is actually a quest, in that it will not show up in your journal.
1 – Go to the old alchemist located in your capital city. Hib: At the alchemy table near the druid grove; Alb: At the alchemy outside Merlin’s tower which it near the king’s throne room; Mid: At the alchemy table just outside the room bordering the king’s throne room.
2 – Purchase one enchanted seed and eleven trapped lightnings per barrel, plus an alchemist’s billhook if you don’t already have one. (NB. I suggest you buy multiple enchanted seeds so you can get multiple empty-barrels at the one time, then store them in your vault for future use to save time, rather than obtaining one empty-barrel every time)
3 – Port to your main SI zone (Domnann / Gothwait Harbour / Aegirhamn)
4 – Go to the specific location on a beach nearby to release the trapped lightning. Locations – Hib: 21730, 50642, Alb: 28600, 54800, Mid: 39242, 51424. (These areas are on a beach very near the main SI portal, but are quite small areas and easy to miss. I suggest you make a /faceloc macro i.e. ‘/macro location /faceloc 21730, 50642’ for hib, and keep spamming it when near to find the precise area. You will get a popup when you are at this area, but be careful not to overshoot due to lag, as the popup does not close automatically so can be misleading. When you are actually in the correct area it will come up again immediately, as soon as you close it)
5 – When at the loc, type “/s in shazam tadam !”. You must have the space before the exclamation mark or it will not work. Provided you are in the precise area (see note in last step) this will turn one of the trapped lightnings in your inventory into a piece of ‘rough glass’. Repeat until all 11 trapped lightning are turned into rough glass. Again this is probably worth making a macro for. ‘/macro blah /s in shazam tadam !’
6 – Return to the SI porter and port to the OLD SI portal in the mainlands (Shannon Estuary / Avalon Marsh / Gotar). You can only port here directly from the SI porter.
7 – Find the animated earth right nearby and place the enchanted seed onto it by giving it like you would when trading with another person. The earth will turn into a bright-wood seedling. With the alchemist’s billhook equipped as your main weapon, attack the sapling unstyled like an enemy by targeting it and entering combat mode (f6 is the default key). The sapling will die and you will receive a piece of bright-wood.
8 – Return to your capital city.
9 – To turn the rough glass into an empty bottle you must give it to the Glass Blower in the capital city. You can find this NPC by walking up to any guard, targetting him and typing '/where Glass Blower'; the guard will point you, literally, in the right direction provided the NPC is within a certain range. If the guard says he does not know of that person then try a different area of the city. Once you have found the Glass Blower give him the eleven rough glass pieces one at a time until he has turned them all into empty bottles.
10 – Use the same method to find the Cooper in your capital city. Give him the bright-wood and he will turn it into an empty barrel.
11 – With the empty barrel and 11 empty bottles in your inventory, buy enough components for 121 makes of the potion you with to turn into a barrel. (NB. It is best to have nothing un-needed in your inventory. By a fortunate coincidence if all you are carrying is the 11 bottles, barrel, alchemy kit and complete components you will have exactly enough inventory space to make to barrel without having to move from the alchemy table at all)
12 – Make 11 potions at a time; once you have 11 in your inventory, hand an empty bottle to the old alchemist who will fill it.
13 – Once you have 11 full bottles, hand the alchemist the barrel and he will fill it.
Useful Links
Prissy’s Guide to Alchemy – This site contains almost everything you could want to know about all alchemy recipes. It has not been updated in a long time but I’ve never found anything there to be incorrect.
VN Boards Crafting Forum – This is the best forum for all crafting related questions. It contains a few specific player-made guides to levelling crafts, useful links, and lots of good general info if you sift through the whine.
The FAQ section contains first general questions and then those about levelling an alchemist. If you already have a high level alchemist and simply want to know how to turn potions into barrels, skip to the walkthrough section at the end.
FAQ
Q: What is a barrel?
A: A barrel is simply a stack of one type of usable potion – end regen, haste etc. The effect of /use-ing the barrel is in all respects exactly the same as if you used a potion of that type. The benefit of a barrel is that it contains 100 charges yet acts as a single item taking up one inventory slot and weighing almost nil, meaning you can carry around as many of any type as you could need for at least one heavy session of rvr, if not one weeks worth. Barrels cannot currently be made on the classic or US servers.
Q: What types of barrels can be made?
A: All except water breathing and trophy potions can be made into barrels. Those which come in multiple levels are named with a prefix to indicate the tier – weak, [nothing], improved and strong. Those with multiple values represent different tiers (the bracketed values represent tiers that are impractical to make, see below)
Barrel of endurance – instant endurance – 20%/ 40%/ 60%/80%
Barrel of power – instant power – 30/50/70/90
Barrel of health – instant health – 80/130/180/230
Barrel of invigoration – 2 minute endurance regen – 1/2/3/(4)
Barrel of replenishment – 10 minute power regen – 1/2/3/(4)
Barrel of mending – 10 minute health regen – 2/4/6/(8)
Barrel of speed – 10 minute melee haste – 8%/11%/14%/(17%)
Barrel of shard skin – 10 minute damage shield – 1dps/2dps/3dps/(4dps)
Barrel of strength – 10 min 20 value str buff
Barrel of fortitude – 10 min 20 value con buff
Barrel of dexterity – 10 min 20 value dex buff
Barrel of enlightenment – 10 min 20 value acuity buff
Barrel of might – 10 min 30 value str/con buff
Barrel of deftness – 10 min 30 value dex/qui buff
Q: How do I make barrels?
A: You need an alchemist of typically around 700 skill, to make the potions with. A very quick mini-quest with cheap purchased components will get you empty bottles and empty barrels which you fill with the potions by giving them to the old alchemist in the capital city. See walkthrough section at the end for specifics.
Q: How much does a barrel cost to make?
A: There are several tiers of barrels with increasing effectiveness, however with all potions there is only one level that is commonly used so I will base the prices on these. Barrels made from ‘healing potions’ – those which act to instantly give you a flat amount of endurance, power or health back, cost 304.1 gold for the usual 4th (strong barrel of ---- ) tier. Barrels made from ‘special potions’ – those which give end regen, health regen, power regen, melee-haste or damage shield all for a certain duration, cost 213.35 gold for the usual 3rd (‘improved barrel of ---- ) tier. Single stat buff barrels cost 74.2g and double stat buff cost 171g, though I have never known of these being used since they are far short of BB buffs. All these prices include the small amount for bottle and barrel components.
Q: What about the other tiers?
A: The lower tiers are simply less effective, for example the second tier power pot gives 50 power while the fourth tier gives 90. You could certainly use these if you wanted but almost nobody considers 3g per charge to be so expensive that they’d rather use a lower less effective version. On the other hand the higher, top tiers (5th in the case of healing pots, 4th for special pots) require unique drops to craft them, drops such as ancient pure mercury which only come from certain highish level mobs and drop at a low rate. It would simply take so much time to farm a barrels worth of these that nobody considers it worth the effort for the small gain in effectiveness – you wouldn’t want to spend 4 hours in pve for a barrel that could last under 10 hours in rvr if used heavily.
Q: How long does a barrel take to make?
A: The ‘miniquest’ to get bottle and barrel components can be done entirely in about 5 minutes once you know it. The bulk of your time is spent crafting the actual potions to put in the barrel. The crafting times are halved when an item is greycon for which you need 50+ alchemy skill above the item level, thus the times I give are based on the assumption the pots are grey to you, if they are not then double these values. The crafting time for 4th tier healing potions is about 13 sec per potion, so 26 minutes for all 121. Special potions require a specific equal tier healing potion as an ingredient (end pot for end regen pot for example) so you actually have to craft 242 potions total. The 3rd tier healing pots take about 11 secs and the special pots take about 9, so 20 sec total working out at 40 minutes. Thus a rough figure for total time to make a barrel is 30 minutes for a healing type and 45 min for a special type.
Q: How much will it cost to level an alchemist?
A: If you intend to simply use the alchemist for barrels then you will eventually want to have the minimum skill so that the potions you are crafting are greycon (and thus take half the time to craft). For 4th tier barrels (strong barrel of endurance etc) which are the norm, you will need 734 skill to achieve this. How much it costs to level here depends on your levelling method and to a certain extent, luck. Costs can vary enormously between people however a ballpark figure is 300g-900g, it shouldn’t be more unless you somehow manage to use an extremely inefficient method.
Q: How long will it take to level an alchemist?
A: Again the time taken will vary greatly depending on your method of levelling, but to reach 734 a very rough estimate is 10-25 hours.
Q: How do I become an alchemist?
A: Only the following classes can become alchemists:
Alb: Friar, Infiltrator, Minstrel, Paladin, Reaver, Scout
Hib: Bard, Champion, Nightshade, Ranger, Valewalker, Warden
Mid: Hunter, Shadowblade, Skald, Thane
It is probably worth making or using an alt for your alchemist even if your main chars are eligible, as you want a nearly empty inventory when crafting barrels to prevent wasting time running back and forth to your vault. With this character you become an alchemist simply by speaking to the alchemist’s master. This NPC is located in TNN at the alchemy table near the druid grove; in Camelot on the stairwell of Merlin’s tower which is near the entrance to the king’s throne room; and in Jordheim in the assembly hall outside the king’s throne room.
Q: What is the best way to level an alchemist?
A: I don’t want to make this too long, so I’ll start by saying that all crafters have different methods of levelling up, and after levelling 3 LGMs I’m convinced that the most efficient method will vary between craft and level. That said, there are a few general pointers. By the ‘best’ way you probably mean the most efficient method, but this is somewhat subjective as you are three things you could potentially want to minimise – time, cost or effort. While cost is probably the most significant factor at high levels (1000+), it’s not too serious at the levels we’re concerned with, in fact with potential total levelling times in excess of 20 hours, I’m sure everyone would not be concerned about spending a few hundred more gold if it saved time. So the aim for most of you will be to minimise some combination of time and effort - by effort I mean the number of times you have to go back and forth to the materials merchant. The perfectly optimal time-saving method would require you to change recipe every few levels on average, but most people would probably prefer to buy in bulk to an extent – so they can just sit their character at the crafting table and hit a button once every xx seconds whilst watching TV, reading, or doing something else in the background – at the expense of a small amount of total levelling time. At lower levels you can pick something 10-20 skill ahead of you, buy 40x times the ingredients and craft until it’s bluecon, however at higher levels I would recommend almost always choosing something no more than 15 above or 10 below your skill. The higher it is the lower your chances of successfully crafting it, and for those well above your skill you also have a chance of losing materials; conversely the lower it is the smaller your chances of a skillgain on a successful craft, so you need to find the best balance. Personally at the higher levels I tried to pick something between 5 and 10 above my skill, buy enough for 20-40 makes, which will often be 4-12 skill-gain, then skill on it until materials ran before choosing a new ideal level recipe. Some other people prefer to choose a recipe at their skill and craft until it’s 10-15 units below. I would suggest you try various methods so long as you’re always doing something within the +15 to -15 range, and see what you prefer.
Barrel Walkthrough
Note: Even if the following seems like a lot of steps, don’t worry because it doesn’t take long at all once you know it. I’ve just gone into a lot of detail to hopefully avoid any possible confusion. Also be aware that none of this is actually a quest, in that it will not show up in your journal.
1 – Go to the old alchemist located in your capital city. Hib: At the alchemy table near the druid grove; Alb: At the alchemy outside Merlin’s tower which it near the king’s throne room; Mid: At the alchemy table just outside the room bordering the king’s throne room.
2 – Purchase one enchanted seed and eleven trapped lightnings per barrel, plus an alchemist’s billhook if you don’t already have one. (NB. I suggest you buy multiple enchanted seeds so you can get multiple empty-barrels at the one time, then store them in your vault for future use to save time, rather than obtaining one empty-barrel every time)
3 – Port to your main SI zone (Domnann / Gothwait Harbour / Aegirhamn)
4 – Go to the specific location on a beach nearby to release the trapped lightning. Locations – Hib: 21730, 50642, Alb: 28600, 54800, Mid: 39242, 51424. (These areas are on a beach very near the main SI portal, but are quite small areas and easy to miss. I suggest you make a /faceloc macro i.e. ‘/macro location /faceloc 21730, 50642’ for hib, and keep spamming it when near to find the precise area. You will get a popup when you are at this area, but be careful not to overshoot due to lag, as the popup does not close automatically so can be misleading. When you are actually in the correct area it will come up again immediately, as soon as you close it)
5 – When at the loc, type “/s in shazam tadam !”. You must have the space before the exclamation mark or it will not work. Provided you are in the precise area (see note in last step) this will turn one of the trapped lightnings in your inventory into a piece of ‘rough glass’. Repeat until all 11 trapped lightning are turned into rough glass. Again this is probably worth making a macro for. ‘/macro blah /s in shazam tadam !’
6 – Return to the SI porter and port to the OLD SI portal in the mainlands (Shannon Estuary / Avalon Marsh / Gotar). You can only port here directly from the SI porter.
7 – Find the animated earth right nearby and place the enchanted seed onto it by giving it like you would when trading with another person. The earth will turn into a bright-wood seedling. With the alchemist’s billhook equipped as your main weapon, attack the sapling unstyled like an enemy by targeting it and entering combat mode (f6 is the default key). The sapling will die and you will receive a piece of bright-wood.
8 – Return to your capital city.
9 – To turn the rough glass into an empty bottle you must give it to the Glass Blower in the capital city. You can find this NPC by walking up to any guard, targetting him and typing '/where Glass Blower'; the guard will point you, literally, in the right direction provided the NPC is within a certain range. If the guard says he does not know of that person then try a different area of the city. Once you have found the Glass Blower give him the eleven rough glass pieces one at a time until he has turned them all into empty bottles.
10 – Use the same method to find the Cooper in your capital city. Give him the bright-wood and he will turn it into an empty barrel.
11 – With the empty barrel and 11 empty bottles in your inventory, buy enough components for 121 makes of the potion you with to turn into a barrel. (NB. It is best to have nothing un-needed in your inventory. By a fortunate coincidence if all you are carrying is the 11 bottles, barrel, alchemy kit and complete components you will have exactly enough inventory space to make to barrel without having to move from the alchemy table at all)
12 – Make 11 potions at a time; once you have 11 in your inventory, hand an empty bottle to the old alchemist who will fill it.
13 – Once you have 11 full bottles, hand the alchemist the barrel and he will fill it.
Useful Links
Prissy’s Guide to Alchemy – This site contains almost everything you could want to know about all alchemy recipes. It has not been updated in a long time but I’ve never found anything there to be incorrect.
VN Boards Crafting Forum – This is the best forum for all crafting related questions. It contains a few specific player-made guides to levelling crafts, useful links, and lots of good general info if you sift through the whine.
