How it works
Alchemy on Lu4 is a separate progression track that runs alongside your level: from 20 to 75.
The chain is simple:
monster → cache → reagent → compound → buff, elixir, experience scroll.
Your own character does all of it — any class, no crafter and no dwarf required.
Below: how the whole system fits together, what costs adena and where the reagents go. The composition of every item and its full craft tree live on that item’s page in the catalog above; here they are folded under the paragraphs so they don’t get in the way of reading.
In short
-
Alchemy replaces a buffer, it doesn’t stack with one.
Its buffs take the same slots as a buffer’s: they don’t add up, they overwrite each other, and the buffer’s are slightly stronger. In a party with a buffer alchemy is unnecessary; solo, you put all ten buffs on yourself. -
Reagents drop only from monsters — as sealed caches.
NPCs don’t sell them, but you can buy them from players, like everything brewed out of them. -
The right monster is marked by a skill.
Cache carriers have Reagent Carrier as the last skill in their list. No skill — no cache will ever drop, however long you farm it. -
Five tiers, each with its own pass — a sigil.
The alchemist sells the first one for adena; the other four come only through crafting a Proof; the fifth unlocks at level 70.
How it is set up
The scheme is the same on all five tiers; only item names and quantities change from tier to tier.
1. Sigil
Everything starts at the alchemist Sa Izzuruk, the Unquenched — her house stands in the Swampland marsh. She sells the first sigil, 
Ashen Sigil D, from level 20 for 100,000 adena.
Without a sigil caches don’t drop and the recipe shop is closed. The sigil stays on the character forever: it can’t be sold, dropped or put in the warehouse.
2. Caches
A monster with Reagent Carrier has a chance to drop a sealed cache; inside is one reagent of the same tier.
- The monster’s level must be close to yours: too strong or too weak and the cache won’t drop — the same restriction as quest items.
- In a party the cache goes to a random member who has a sigil, not to whoever landed the last hit. A group doesn’t give more caches — it just kills faster.
3. Recipes
The alchemist’s shop is split by tier. A recipe is bought once: after learning it stays with the character forever and can’t be transferred.
Access to tiers is gated by the passive skill Alchemical Expertise:
| Rank | Level |
|---|---|
| 1 | 20 (dwarves — from 5) |
| 2 | 40 |
| 3 | 56 |
| 4 | 65 |
| 5 | 70 |
4. Craft anywhere
Brewing runs through the Alchemist’s Cauldron skill, which every character has from level 1. No NPC needed — you can brew right on the spot between packs.
Regular recipe crafting never fails: whatever materials you put in, you get the result.
5. Exchange at the alchemist
Besides recipes she has a consumables tab and an exchange tab: reagents plus adena — and you get a finished hunting potion. No recipe needed for that.
6. The Cauldron
Stands next to the alchemist; it is the only place where alchemy can let you down. Cores of tiers B, A and M and 
Gilded Augment Stone A go through it — at 70 % (65 % for the stone), 10 points higher with a stabilizer.
A failure takes everything you put in the Cauldron and leaves slag of that tier instead. Details in “Cauldron, slag and stabilizer”.
7. Proof of Mastery
Moving to the next tier takes the level, the current sigil and a Proof that you brew yourself — it can’t be bought anywhere. Hand the Proof to the alchemist and you get the next tier’s sigil.
Tiers and sigils
Sigils aren’t consumed, sold or transferred; the only way to remove them from the inventory is all at once, via the urn by the Cauldron (see the end).
Lower-tier caches don’t go away as you level: with only the first sigil, tier D caches keep dropping even from level 75 monsters.
| Tier | Sigil | Levels | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| D | Ashen Sigil D |
20–39 | seven of the ten buffs, the whole reagent chain, the first core |
| C |  Argent Sigil C |
40–55 | Noblesse, the remaining three buffs, buff cocktails, the first experience scroll |
| B |  Lunar Sigil B |
56–64 | oils and tonics against monster types, simple elixirs, the first Cauldron craft |
| A |  Gilded Sigil A |
65–69 | greater elixirs, alternative A-grade unsealing, an armor augment stone |
| M |  Aetheric Sigil M |
70–75 | supreme elixirs, the last experience scroll |
You buy the first sigil; the rest are given for the previous tier’s Proof. The Proof itself brews without risk, but it contains a core, and cores of tiers B and A go through the Cauldron.
What each sigil costs is visible in its Proof’s breakdown:
What one craft really takes:
Proof of Ashen Mastery DWhat one craft really takes:
Proof of Argent Mastery CWhat one craft really takes:
Proof of Lunar Mastery BWhat one craft really takes:
Proof of Gilded Mastery A
Which tier drops
A cache’s tier is decided by two limits at once:
- the monster’s level — which tiers are possible at this spot at all;
- your sigils — which of those you can actually get.
With the second sigil on level 30 monsters you only get D. On level 50 monsters without the second sigil — also only D.
If caches keep dropping lower than you want, changing the spot won’t help — you need the next sigil.
The shares below are for a character with all sigils. If you lack the higher sigils, their share goes to the tiers available to you.
| Monster level | D | C | B | A | M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20–39 | 100 % | — | — | — | — |
| 40–55 | 35 % | 65 % | — | — | — |
| 56–64 | 15 % | 30 % | 55 % | — | — |
| 65–69 | 5 % | 15 % | 25 % | 55 % | — |
| 70+ | 5 % | 10 % | 20 % | 25 % | 40 % |
Zone lists with cache carriers are on the cache pages themselves: Ashen Reagent Cache D, Argent Reagent Cache C, Lunar Reagent Cache B, Gilded Reagent Cache A, Aetheric Reagent Cache M.
There is no hard “location — tier” binding: if a zone’s monsters sit on the border of level ranges, it yields caches of two tiers.
Reagents and the craft chain
Every cache holds five possible reagents:
| Kind | How many kinds | Chance each |
|---|---|---|
| base | 3 | 24 % |
| reactive | 2 | 14 % |
Volume comes from the base ones; the bottleneck is the reactive: a recipe needs few of them, but they drop almost half as often. The chances are listed in the cache description; server rates and premium don’t affect them.
From there it’s regular recipe crafting, every step guaranteed:
reagent → simple compound → complex compound → core.
On tier D that is 
Cinder Dust D → 
Cinder Tincture D → 
Ashen Distillate D → 
Ashen Quintessence D.
From tier C the core has one more derivative — Trace: a splinter of the core that goes into Noblesse and top recipes. Don’t confuse it with the core itself; it’s the next step.
Scale. One tier D potion is 11 base reagents, 2 reactive ones and a cheap base from the alchemist’s shop. Compounds and cores follow the same logic one step up; on higher tiers it’s dozens of reagents per item.
Reagents are heavy. It pays to convert them into compounds as they accumulate rather than haul them by the hundreds.
What one craft really takes:
Potion of Combat DWhat one craft really takes:
Ashen Quintessence D
Transmutation: old reagents into new
Moved to a new tier with old reagents left over? The Cauldron has Transmute Reagents.
| You put in | You get | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| a full set of the previous tier: 2 of each base and 1 of each reactive — 8 pieces | one reagent of the tier above, random in the same proportions as the cache | 60 % |
A failure burns the set. You can’t skip a tier, and the sigil needed is already the new tier’s.
Arithmetic. 8 reagents per attempt at 60 % — on average 13 old for one new. As a farming method it doesn’t work: higher-tier caches start dropping anyway as soon as you take the sigil.
Transmutation is a way to use up leftovers. The other option is to sell lower reagents to lower-level players: the demand never ends.
What gets brewed
Single buffs: ten effects for 20 minutes
Tier D gives seven buffs, tier C adds three more — and the set is complete. Higher tiers unlock nothing new; they strengthen the same ten effects.
| Buff | What it gives | D | C | B | A | M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Combat | P. Atk. and P. Def. | +7 % | +11 % | +12 % | +13 % | +14 % |
| Magic | M. Atk. and M. Def. | +30 % | +50 % | +60 % | +68 % | +71 % |
| Critical | physical crit rate and damage | +13 % | +20 % | +25 % | +27 % | +28 % |
| Rampage | attack speed and lifesteal | +15 % | +24 % | +27 % | +30 % | +33 % |
| Acumen | casting speed | +20 % | +25 % | +30 % | +30 % | +30 % |
| Clarity | skill MP cost | — | −20 % | −27 % | −32 % | −35 % |
| Condition | max HP and MP | — | +15 % | +25 % | +30 % | +32 % |
| Movement | speed and evasion | +25 | +28 | +30 | +32 | +33 |
| Mental Shield | resistance to hold, sleep, mental attacks | — | +20 % | +30 % | +40 % | +50 % |
| Berserker Spirit | attack and all speeds up, defense and evasion down | +4 % | +5 % | +6 % | +7 % | +8 % |
Movement is in speed points, the rest in percent. Potion of Combat D of tier D and 
Potion of Combat M of tier M are the same potion with different numbers; the full figures are on each potion’s page.
Cocktails: seven buffs in one click
Tier C brings two combined potions:
| Cocktail | What’s inside |
|---|---|
 Physical Draught C |
Combat, Rampage, Critical, Condition, Movement, Mental Shield, Clarity |
 Magical Draught C |
Combat, Magic, Condition, Movement, Acumen, Mental Shield, Clarity |
The buffs are as strong as the single ones. The gain is convenience: one click and one stack in the bag instead of seven.
What one craft really takes: Physical Draught C
Elixirs: a short boost for a fight
Elixirs unlock from tier B — short, powerful effects for a specific fight.
| Rank | Tier | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Simple | B | 2 min |
| Greater | A | 2.5 min |
| Supreme | M | 3 min |
The cooldown is shared by the whole elixir group — 15 minutes — and only one can be active: you can’t drink a second one while the first is running or on cooldown, and a lower elixir can’t override a higher one. With regular buffs elixirs coexist without conflict.
| Elixir | What it does | Tiers |
|---|---|---|
| Predation | more damage and attack/cast speed at the cost of defense | B A M |
| Bulwark | cuts all incoming damage | B A M |
| Resolve | resistance to debuffs | B A M |
| Clarity | MP savings and faster MP regen | B A M |
| Vitality | HP pool, regen and heals received | A M |
| Celerity | faster running and slow resistance, but weaker defense | A M |
| Siphoning | lifesteal from all damage, heals received are weaker | A M |
| Reprisal | tougher defense and reflection of part of the damage taken | M |
| Bane | control and debuffs (stun, sleep, poison, bleed, paralysis, hold) land more often | M |
| Execution: Steel | stronger and more frequent physical crits, less max HP | M |
| Execution: Arcana | stronger and more frequent magic crits, less max HP | M |
A simple elixir example — 
Simple Predation Elixir B; a greater one — 
Greater Predation Elixir A.
Experience scrolls
A scroll has one recipe, but the result is random:
| Rarity | Chance | Exp bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Common | 70 % | +10 % |
| Uncommon | 25 % | +12 % |
| Rare | 5 % | +15 % |
Duration — 30 minutes, cooldown — 30 minutes. Character level doesn’t affect the bonus.
Scrolls differ only in their allowed level range, which is in the name: 1–40, 41–52, 53–65, 66–70, 71–75. The first is available on tier C (
Scroll of Experience (1-40) (Common) C), the last on M.
Outside the range the scroll simply won’t activate. This is the most common reason for “it doesn’t work”.
What one craft really takes: Scroll of Experience (1-40) (Common) C
Oils and tonics against monster types
From tier B — for a specific spot. Each of the 18 monster types has its own pair:
| Item | What it does | B | A | M |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slayer’s Oil | applied to the weapon, boosts your damage against the chosen type | the type’s racial weakness | + another 3 % | + another 5 % |
| Warding Tonic | the mirror effect — reduces the damage you take from that type | −3 % | −6 % | −10 % |
Both effects last 30 minutes. Neither is brewed by recipe — the alchemist hands them out in exchange for reagents. For example, 
Dragon Slayer's Oil B and 
Dragon Warding Tonic B.
Noblesse
The only way on the server to keep your buffs through death.
| Scroll | Tier | Duration |
|---|---|---|
 Noblesse Scroll C |
C | 20 min |
 Greater Noblesse Scroll B |
B | 40 min |
 Grand Noblesse Scroll A |
A | 60 min |
The recipe takes a Trace of its tier and two consumables from the alchemist’s shop: 
Blank Noblesse Scroll C and 
Noblesse Ink C. The scroll itself brews without risk, but for Greater and Grand you first need a core from the Cauldron.
What one craft really takes: Noblesse Scroll C
Ash of Reckoning: writing off PK
Ash is brewed by its tier’s recipe from reagents and a seal from the alchemist’s shop, and the Black Judge “burns” it, removing PK.
How much comes off per burn is a random number from a range; the bounds are set by the ash tier and the character’s current level: within its tier’s levels the ash works at full strength, on outgrown levels it weakens.
| Ash | 20–39 | 40–55 | 56–64 | 65–69 | 70–75 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Ash of Reckoning D |
1–3 | 1–2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
 Ash of Reckoning C |
2–4 | 2–4 | 1–3 | 1–2 | 1 |
 Ash of Reckoning B |
3–5 | 3–5 | 3–5 | 2–4 | 1–3 |
 Ash of Reckoning A |
3–6 | 3–6 | 3–6 | 3–6 | 2–5 |
 Ash of Reckoning M |
3–7 | 3–7 | 3–7 | 3–7 | 3–7 |
Along with the removed PK comes a 20-minute effect:
- usually — Reckoning: P. Def. and M. Def. −5 %;
- occasionally — Absolution: +2 % exp and +2 MP regen.
Which one you get is unpredictable; burning again refreshes the effect. The regular PK write-off mechanic keeps working as before — ash is just a second route to the same thing.
What one craft really takes: Ash of Reckoning D
The rest
Gilded Unsealing Catalyst A — a second way to unseal A-grade armor, bypassing the usual NPC unsealing. Useful when brewing the catalyst from your own reagents is cheaper than paying for the unsealing.- Gilded Augment Stone A — the blank for an A-grade armor essence. Apart from cores it’s the only item that goes through the Cauldron with a chance: 65 %, 75 % with a stabilizer.
Lunar Alchemical Trove B, 
Gilded Alchemical Trove A, 
Aetheric Alchemical Trove M — craftable troves of the higher tiers.
Cauldron, slag and stabilizer
Everything in alchemy that can fail happens in the Cauldron.
| Craft | Chance | With stabilizer |
|---|---|---|
| Core | 70 % | 80 % |
| Gilded Augment Stone A |
65 % | 75 % |
A failure takes the whole batch — compounds, the seal and the stabilizer if you added one — and leaves slag of that tier: 
Lunar Slag B, 
Gilded Slag A, 
Aetheric Slag M.
Outside the Cauldron there is nowhere to lose materials: regular recipe crafting doesn’t fail.
Slag is worth hoarding. Three pieces of one tier plus an inexpensive consumable from the alchemist make a stabilizer (
Lunar Fixative B, 
Gilded Fixative A, 
Aetheric Fixative M), and it adds 10 points to the chance. In effect, every failure partly pays for the next attempt.
Slag and stabilizers trade freely — if you like, it’s easier to buy them than to save up.
There is no “guarantee after N failures” in the system. All probabilities are open in advance — in the cache descriptions and in the Cauldron window itself.
What one craft really takes: 
Lunar Quintessence B
What it costs in adena
You don’t pay for reagents — you farm them. Adena goes to three things:
- the starting sigil;
- recipes;
- the alchemist’s consumables, spent with every craft.
Reagents at market prices
If you buy caches from players instead of farming, the reference for 16.09.2026 is this.
| Gamma | Black | White | Carmine | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ashen Reagent Cache (D) | 175 | 77 | 127 | 85 |
| Argent Reagent Cache (C) | 1 294 | 808 | 599 (09.09) | 600 (07.09) |
| Lunar Reagent Cache (B) | 1 999 (14.09) | 2 037 | 1 977 | — |
| Gilded Reagent Cache (A) | 7 102 | — | — | — |
| Aetheric Reagent Cache (M) | 15 000 (12.09) | — | — | — |
| one tier D buff (Potion of Combat) | ≈ 8 500 | ≈ 4 000 | ≈ 2 800 | ≈ 4 400 |
| tier D Proof → second sigil | ≈ 90 000 | ≈ 89 000 | ≈ 124 000 | ≈ 69 000 |
| tier C Proof → third sigil | ≈ 950 000 | ≈ 800 000 | ≈ 3.9kk | — |
| tier B Proof → fourth sigil | ≈ 2.1kk | ≈ 2.0kk | ≈ 1.9kk | — |
| tier A Proof → fifth sigil | ≈ 16kk | — | — | — |
How to read the table:
- price — the midpoint between the best sell and the best buy offer;
- date in brackets — no listings that day, the last sale within two weeks is taken;
- "—" — the cache isn’t traded on that server yet;
- ≈ — cost computed from the caches and compounds that were on sale; where the cache itself isn’t on the market, the price is assembled from intermediate compounds and is rougher.
Gamma is the old server with its own economy; the other three launched recently, and the higher tiers barely trade there.
How prices behave
Don’t trust a single day’s figure — the cache market jumps around. Here’s how, from the history since early September.
Tier D caches — thousands in circulation, one lot knocks the minimum down.
| Server | Minimum spread | Median |
|---|---|---|
| Gamma | 222 → 777 → 4 444 within a week | 300–450 |
| Black, Carmine | 80–200 | ~100–190 |
| White | 100–350 | ~300–1 000 |
Go by the median, not by the bottom line of the list.
Tier C caches — steadier, with isolated spikes.
| Server | Usual corridor | Spike |
|---|---|---|
| Gamma | 1 500–2 000 | — |
| Black | 600–1 100 | 15.09 — median 2 111 with 11 000 pcs. on offer |
| White | 600–800 | 13.09 — a single lot at 4 555 with 216 pcs. |
| Carmine | 600–990 | — |
Such spikes live a day or two: someone listed a batch high or was left the only seller.
Tier B caches — a regular item on Gamma, still a rarity on the fresh servers.
| Server | Price | Volume |
|---|---|---|
| Gamma | 2 000–3 000 | hundreds to thousands |
| Black | 7 999 (12.09) → 4 799 → 2 775 (17.09) | 200–1 300 |
| White | 2 750–3 000 | 130–210 |
| Carmine | no listings | — |
This is the usual trajectory of a new tier: while only a handful of players farm the cache, the price sits three times above where it will settle in a couple of weeks.
Tier A and M caches — Gamma only.
| Cache | Sell | Volume per listing |
|---|---|---|
| Gilded (A) | 8 200–10 000 | up to 2 800 |
| Aetheric (M) | 15 000–17 500 | 140–1 000 |
Buy offers are 2–3 times below sell everywhere, and several times below on the higher tiers.
| Cache, server | Sell | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Aetheric (M), Gamma | 15 000 | 2 000–4 500 |
| Gilded (A), Gamma | 8 400 | 5 700 |
| Lunar (B), Gamma | 2 000 | 1 250 |
| Ashen (D), White | 100–200 | 10–25 |
The higher the tier, the fewer the deals and the wider the gap. For A and M the “fair price” in the table above is a convention: a quick sale only happens at the buy price.
Live figures for any item are in the alchemy calculator.
Recipes
There are 128 in total, and buying them all comes to about 18.3kk:
| Tier | Recipes | Price |
|---|---|---|
| D | 15 | 307 000 |
| C | 23 | 909 000 |
| B | 27 | 2.37kk |
| A | 32 | 7.78kk |
| M | 31 | 6.9kk |
There is no point buying everything: a recipe is bought once and only for yourself. Buy for what you actually intend to brew — especially since each tier’s shop opens only with its sigil.
Sigils
The first — 100,000. The other four aren’t sold, but the core and the Proof need service materials from the alchemist:
| Sigil | Consumables at the alchemist |
|---|---|
| second (C) | about 50 000 |
| third (B) | 135 000 |
| fourth (A) | 210 000 |
| fifth (M) | 285 000 |
| the whole ladder | 680 000 with successful crafts, around 770 000 adjusted for Cauldron failures |
Total
Leveling alchemy from scratch and buying all 128 recipes — about 19kk adena, and almost all of it is recipes.
After that the recurring spend is consumables only: every potion, elixir and core comes with its own cheap base, and Noblesse takes Blank Noblesse Scroll C at 7 500 and Noblesse Ink C at 2 500. This money goes with every unit brewed, not once.
Current reagent market prices and estimates that account for caches are in the alchemy calculator and on the “Alchemy” tab of the Money section.
What is personal and what trades
| Not transferable | Trades freely |
|---|---|
| sigils | caches |
| Proof of Mastery | reagents, compounds, cores |
| learned recipes | slag and stabilizers |
| finished potions, elixirs, scrolls |
A newcomer without a sigil can perfectly well buy finished buffs from someone who brews them.
How to quit alchemy
Next to the Cauldron there is a Destroy all Sigils command — the red button. After two confirmations the character loses all sigils at once: you can’t remove just one, and you can’t get them back.
What happens next:
- caches stop dropping;
- skills, learned recipes, stocks of reagents and compounds, cores and everything already brewed stay with you.
Change your mind — and you start from the very beginning: Ashen Sigil D for 100,000 again and the whole sigil ladder anew.