Dragonflight Alchemy has LOTS of Potential! | Full Breakdown | Dragonflight | WoW Gold Making Guide

Hello everyone, it's penguin here. In today's video, we will discuss everything you need to know about the profession of alchemy.

First, we will go over some of the pros and cons of this profession. Alchemy can be a bit more complex than others, but that is to be expected.

Next, we will delve into the structure of alchemy and how it works. Finally, we will cover how to level up in this profession and recommend some specialization builds.

I'm really excited to talk about alchemy and think it will be a popular choice for many people. As always, this video is part of my larger series on preparing for the Dragonflight, where I discuss the new systems in place and each profession.

Let's talk about some pros of alchemy.

Alchemy is pretty simple in terms of what it does, so these pros are also pretty simple.

There are a few reasons why alchemy is a great profession to pursue. First, everyone needs potions. Whether you're a player trying to level up and need some mana or healing potions, or you're a high-end raider, casual PvP player, or someone who enjoys running Mythic Plus dungeons, you'll likely want to have consumables on hand. This means that as an alchemist, you will always have a demand for your products.

Another reason to consider alchemy is the wide range of new and interesting items that have been introduced. These include new potions that appeal to a wider audience, the updated version of flasks known as phials, and incense that many crafters and other players will want to get their hands on.

If you're someone who struggles to make decisions, alchemy may be the perfect profession for you. It's relatively simple, with only a few packs to choose from, and it's also "alt army" friendly, meaning it pairs well with tailoring if you're looking to combine professions.

With that being said, let's move on to the cons of the profession. I only have one to mention, but you can decide if it's a con or not. One downside is that there is a lot of randomness (RNG) involved in this profession. The new Alchemy system in Shadowlands relies on Discovery, which has been in the game for a while but wasn't really utilized before Shadowlands. To give an example, if a lot of players have crafted MOP Gladiator gear, you can craft a daily cooldown every day and gain a random armor piece when you do so. This system works similarly: you have a recipe that you need to craft, and if you're lucky, you'll discover a new potion. This means that someone who is very lucky may progress faster than someone who has bad luck with RNG.

One last thing to mention, although I'm not sure if it's a pro or con, is that Alchemy involves a lot of consumables that are stackable and most of them are bind on equip (BOE). This means you'll be dealing with the region-wide auction house when it comes to selling them. Some people may not be a fan of the region-wide auction house, so depending on how you feel about it, this could be a downside.

With that out of the way, let's move on to step two.

In part two, we're going to talk about what Alchemy requires to get started. Anyone considering picking up this profession will be happy to know that it doesn't require much. In terms of reputation, there are a few items that can be obtained from the Centaur and Val'draken Accord factions, which are two of the four main factions of dragonflight.

While there are some recipes that are locked behind these factions, they are not major deal breakers. The exception is that Alchemy does rely heavily on Artisan Consortium reputation. Artisan Consortium is a side faction and can be thought of as the profession faction for the Crafters of the Dragon Isles. While rep grinding is required, it's not that bad. In fact, rep grinding with this faction is necessary in order to earn knowledge points. There is also a recipe tied to the Cobalt Assembly.

Now, let's talk about the best in slot profession-crafted gear for Alchemy. As a primary profession, Alchemy allows you to equip two accessories and one tool. One major difference between Alchemy and other primary professions is that Alchemy cannot craft any equipment itself. Other professions, like tailoring, produce items for six different professions in addition to their own. However, there is still Alchemy equipment out there that you will either have to craft with an alt character or order through the crafting order system. The Masters Wilder cloth Alchemist robe can be obtained from tailoring, the expert Alchemist hat from leatherworking, and the Alchemist brilliant mixing rod from inscription. These items can be ordered through the crafting order system or crafted by an alt character with the corresponding profession.

Let's talk about recipes and how Alchemy works in Dragonflight. Up first, let's discuss the type of reagents you will be using in this profession. As always, we will keep it simple. You will be using new Dragonflight herbs that you can get from herbalism and gathering within various zones. You can also buy them on the auction house. There are four different herbs: Wraithbark, Saxophrage, Hawkenbloom, and Bubble Poppy. Each of these herbs is tied to different zones and will be used in almost all of your recipes.

In addition to these herbs, we also have a list of new Elemental reagents. If you've looked through the professions or seen my previous videos, you'll know that these reagents are used in almost all professions. However, they are especially important in Alchemy, which is why I'm mentioning them here. There is a range of new awakened Elemental reagents, as well as rousing, which is a less powerful version of the awakened reagents. These are primarily used in frost and air recipes.

There is a twist, however: the draconic vial. If you've done Alchemy in the past, you know that you normally have to buy a vial from a vendor. This vial is generally cheap and is used to make potions. The draconic vial works the same way, but you can also buy a higher quality version from a vendor or craft one yourself through Jewelcrafting. The quality of the vial ranges from one to three, with three being the highest tier. If you want to make the best potions possible, you will need a quality three vial. I recommend having a character with Jewelcrafting to produce this item for you, although you can buy the lowest quality from a vendor if necessary.

Lastly, Alchemy can craft two special reagents that are used in a lot of different items. The first is the Omnium Draconis, which is a combination of all four herbs, with a bit more Hawkenbloom. This is one of the main reagents you will use in some crafts. The second is the Primal Convergent, which is a combination of different awakened reagents and is used in many high-end crafts. With that being said, let's talk about the process of Alchemy and get in-game.

So right here automatically you will see that Alchemy looks a little bit different this time around especially with these sort of experimentations right here and this is how the RNG Factor comes into Alchemy so at the start what you're going to unlock is the ability to produce these basic experimentations and so this is the whole system in place for Alchemy to discover new recipes and you will notice that there are two different versions up, first we just have our basic potions so you know you have your healing potions your Mana potions anything traditional potion like is under this category up, next you have a brand new item called a file which is kind of the replacement for flasks from previous expansions, these are consumables that last throughout death and this time around they actually only last for 30 minutes to show you guys an example of right here as you can see this one is going to increase my versatility by 631 and it lasts 30 minutes and it lasts through death so if I use this item, there we go.

Now the cool thing about these files is it allows you to use two at a time so if I use another as you can see my cooldown is now 60 minutes so this is kind of like a traditional flask lasting for 60 minutes what this new system allows you to do is change your potions often without having to lose a ton of time you know for example if you know you only need a potion for about 30 minutes or so you know you can utilize one right there we change it to this new file and then it ends in about 30 minutes after a boss fight or whatever and then you can change without feeling bad or let's say you know during your whole dungeon you never want to change you can quickly consume two of them two up that cooldown and treat it like a normal item it just adds for a little bit more diversity and so that is the two types of items that you will mainly be crafting with Alchemy.

So how this process works, is what you will have to do is craft basic items so as you level up you will see this soon you know at the start you just have healing potions you have basic Mana potions and you can craft these using your basic items then what a Alchemist will have to do you can either sell those items off or let's say you just crafted some random items that aren’t very profitable and you just kind of want to vendor them away you can use them and reclaim concoctions, this is a huge part of alchemy to utilize your unwanted potions so you know we crafted up some refreshing healing potions that we don't really need and we can reclaim them, what this will do is turn this into this alchemical solution which will be utilized in our experimentation process so right there we pact a little bit but we have seven right here which allows us to do our experimentation.

Now we will talk about this in our specialization section but you may choose to prioritize potions or you may choose to you know focus on files let's say we do potions and so we can experiment using our alchemical Solutions and other materials and hey look we crafted a potion, now sadly because we did not get a recipe learned notification this is not a new potion however it is the first time that we’ve crafted this one so we still got our first craft bonuses but this is technically not a discovery of a new potion so it of course isn't the best scenario but let's try it again and see what we'll get and boom that's exactly what we want right there we just discovered a potion and you can kind of see how this progress works, we can give it one more shot for good measure and if we were lucky again and we discovered the potion of gust however now we're out of artisan Metals we’re out of alchemical solutions so we’ll have to go get those to continue and so that is how the new system of alchemy works there is a lot of Discovery involved and you will be having to use this system a lot to make sure you unlock all crafts.

Moving on we have the two basic reagents that we were talking about at the start of here and you guys probably recognized that we were using those draconis during our experimentations then you have our main types of potions which is your air potions which have a various different abilities you know you can pause and read some of these if you want but there's just a lot of variety here and then of course you have your traditional Mana potion, same thing goes with the frost potions once again you can see that air and frost is used a lot here and same thing goes these do a variety of things and lastly you have your basic healing potion.

Moving on we have our similar kind of potion cauldrons which were also in shadowlands So for anybody who is into raiding very into cauldrons these will be for you there is kind of one basic version and a better one also some other similar ones that you can choose to use.

Moving on we just have some more special files and potions and this is our files category so same thing applies just like potions but we have the air versions as well as the frost versions which all do very different things, moving on we havetransmutations which to the alt armies out there this will be for you and you have your daily cooldown for different transmutes now of course depending on pricing of items you know you will likely find that one is more profitable than other but a lot of these are just turning different types of awakens into other versions so you know if you find out that fire is one of the most expensive ones you know you can trade the Lesser Earth as well as air to make the awakened fire so you know this can be very very helpful especially if we see a shortage of a specific awakened.

Lastly we just have some optional reagents as well as finishing reagents and then we have this brand new item called incense I think these are supercool to be added to the game and basically you place them down and they affect everybody in the given area this one is the coolest for all the Crafters out there because if you place it down everybody in the vicinity will gain a bonus of inspiration so you know put it down at a bench or something and then you can Inspire everybody around you as well as yourself to hopefully make some better crafts of course you have other versions as well, and lastly you have your trinkets which are your Alchemist Stone so whether you are an alchemist and want one it yourself or you want to craft these for others you have those as well.

Now moving on after that long list of recipes let's move on to leveling, now unlike other professions leveling is not as drastic and is a little bit unique due to the RNG factor with Alchemy with trainer learned recipes you will only ax out at about 50 which is okay you will still unlock two of your profession trees but you are only about halfway there so you will have to craft a lot more items that are either unlocked through reputation or your specializations in order to rank up to100.

Now with that being said you will notice the leveling path on screen requires a lot of RNG and just kind of depends on what potions you unlock during your experimentation at the end of the day you know it's going to work out but I can't guarantee how expensive it will be based on your RNG if you learn potions if you don't and of course the ones you discover the amount of knowledge points you’re going to get is not exact but I can say you’ll get about 12-ish 14 10 somewhere in the 10 to 15 range depending on you know exactly what you do either way not a ton but it's a nice bonus to have.

So finally let's discuss the different builds for Alchemy, now I am going to keep this very simple and recommend three different types of builds please keep in mind that you can ultimately choose whatever path or whatever you know own creation that you decide to do there is so many things you can do with these trees but I will be highlighting the three main options just to keep things simple so please don’t take this as this is what you have to do, it's just suggestion.

So build number one is our potion Master you are going to want to unlock this potion Mastery tree remember all of these unlocks all of these knowledge points are permanent you cannot change it but once you learn this tree you are automatically going to gain some rewards so right there non-combat potions are going to last longer and as you fill out this tree you'll be able to gain some different bonuses, what you will want to do is put 10 points into the system in order for you to unlock the next suspect, I recommend going the potion lore route because this will point to the main spec that you want to unlock but you can go the air route if you want to specialize in air potions and you can also go the frost route for the same reason, this will allow you to you know consume these a lot better craft them a lot better and also just you know be able to produce these at a way better crafting skill and speed but once you unlock lore this is just kind of your general stat bonuses, nothing crazy and you're going to want to put 10 points into this tree I put 11 but you guys know what I mean and this is where you have two options if you are somebody who wants to produce a ton of the basic potions you find that the basic potions are very good you know they’re granting a lot of profit you will want to go into batch production what this will allow you to do is increase your multicraft by a ton meaning you will craft more at a time ultimately lowering your crafting cost, see right here you're going to gain crafting speed multicraft you also will unlock you know your basic cauldron multicraft and just a ton of extra potions.

Then your second option is kind of getting onto that expert side of potions so you know you will gain better breakthrough chances which is the actual ability of unlocking a new potion when you complete a experimentation you will gain just more additional chances and lastly you will gain the advanced potion experimentation which basically just means that you are going to be discovering the higher quality and the higher ranked recipes so as you can kind of see here your options is okay do I want to prioritize unlocking those higher end potions or do I just want to prioritize you know crafting cost of these basic potions and then you know go into this tree later it really just depends on you it kind of depends on what potions are in demand which we don’t know right now but that is kind of how this tree works up.

Next the second build we have is basically the same thing but with files so you want to unlock that files tree you’re going to gain different advantages for using files increase you know your different crafting chances basically the same thing as potions following that same sort of idea you’re going to put in 10 points learn file lore put in another 10 points and then you're faced with the same dilemma do you want to increase your multicraft work on a ton of crafting speed and ultimately just you know produce more so your crafting cost is cheaper or do you want to focus on those higher end materials gain more breakthrough chances so you gain more recipes and ultimately discover the advanced experimentation once again that’s ultimately up to you I can’t fully decide that as of right now just because we don't know what types of potions are going to be in demand but it’s the same sort of thing ultimately keep in mind if you do want to unlock both of these.

Right here that is 20 points then you would have to put in 10 more points here so we would have to apply 10 more knowledge and then we can unlock both sowed have 10 this makes 30 maxing this out would be another 20 so we have 50 points, and this is another so that brings our points to 70. so in order to max out both of these you need to invest 70 knowledge points which to be honest is not that much you will probably get that within the first few weeks depending on how active you are so that is really not that big of a deal but of course you know at the end of the day you just got to decide what to prioritize first.

Then lastly the final build is for the alts out there and this is the transmutation build so like before you’re going to unlock the Alchemy Theory tree and you will have to put in Five Points to this overall category now just in general this tree is kind of for all of your just normal Alchemy stuff you know this side of your tree focuses on inspiration this side of the tree focuses on resourcefulness this side focuses on something that we'll talk about in just one second and right here is just general multicraft you know reagents incenses and just general abilities of your Alchemy so if you’re somebody who just doesn't really know what to put points into you have extra this is going to be the tree you want to throw it into.

In terms of transmutations we are going to want this transmutation spec what this will do is help you unlock different transmute you will improve your skill when crafting transmutes as well as lowering your cooldown times right here you know putting in zero points you've automatically gained plus five resourcefulness continuing on you can gain another plus five you will unlock the ability to transmute awakened order you will gain more resourcefulness and you will ultimately unlock the ability to do transmutes a lot more frequently and at a higher rate so I highly recommend investing your first you know 25 points into this tree 20 will Max this out and you had to put five here to begin with so once again backtracking if you’re on an ALT you know you're going to have to gain some knowledge points which you can get from either leveling up the profession doing some Quest you know whatever you have to do but you’re ultimately going to want to guarantee 25 points.

Now the next step of transmutes is to put in 10 more points here so you can unlock another sub spec and this is where you want to go to decay now this is for special transmutations but right here you know you can discover recipes that use Decay from experimentation so a lot of Decay potions and files comes from this branch and you're going to gain the ability of using these at a better Pace stuff like that but right here after 20 points in you’ll be able to actually unlock the recipe for transmuting awakened Decay then of course you can gain some more skill if you want but this 20 points right here is what's super important to just have all of the transmits unlocked it’s never required I would say but you know I highly recommend putting all points into this original transmutation and of course you can go into this treeify you have some extra as well.

But guys that is really it that is kind of the three main trees that I recommends always if you're somebody who wants to focus on specific files or potions you know choose the own route that’s best for you of course you may not know all of that yet but as you get in games you get more comfortable with these systems you can ultimately pave your own path and just remember that the most popular way is not always the best way the popular way can get oversaturated it can be you know less desirable than actually everybody thinks so take risks you know decide what you ultimately want to do and of course have fun everybody.

I appreciate you watching this Alchemy breakdown I hope it helps you figure out if this is the profession for you or it has just gotten you way more excited about this profession going in, as always thank you so much for watching and have good day!