game could have done a better job at explaining alchemy mechanics
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Press i, open alchemy tab (direct hotkey might be h or something) At the bottom of the window is a button to make all available extracts at once
I saw that button, but making a mountain of extracts was not what I wanted to do, so I never used it.
I don't think there's any reason not to make all the extracts. AFAIK the unextracted ingredients aren't usable for anything
Careful with extracting all ingredients.
Act 1 underdark spoiler:
spoiler
I extracted all ingredients in between picking up required ingredients from Arcane Tower and then giving them to Omeluum in the Myconid Colony. From what I remember, it locked me out and I had to reload.
There are about 5 ingredients like Corpse Roses where the extract can only be used for a secondary ingredient while the unextracted ingredient is used to create the Potion/Elixir/Coating.
Pretty sure this is outright incorrect. From the wiki:
Each Ingredient converts into only one type of Extract, so there is no danger in using the "Extract All Ingredients" button.
And yea looking at the recipe list you're definitely wrong
In the underworld a quest needs a raw material.
It's possible they left 4 laying around so you'd have at least 1 left, but I didn't have 4 at the time and restored a save to undo it.
You cannot use them until extracted. Not reason to not.
There was no apparent reason to extract them, because I had no potion recipe that could use them. That's the point of this post.
As far as I could tell, extraction would just create clutter, and given how much clutter this game already has, that was reason enough not to do it.
I might be mistaken, but I think the recipes become available once you have the extract necessary. So if you extract all you should simultaneously unlock a bunch of new recipes. The extracts also go into the alchemy ingredient pouch, so it's not that much clutter either.
It can be a bit dodgy. Warg Fangs in particular are bad about unlocking their extract. I've had two playthroughs that necessitated manual extraction to unlock the recipe as even extract all wasn't picking them up.
but I think the recipes become available once you have the extract necessary.
Yes, you've restated the title of my post.
As far I know, the only way to discover that was to make extracts for recipes I didn't already have, but there was no obvious reason to do that, since I had no recipes that could use them.
(Some people might argue here that making the extracts saves weight. True, but not everyone hoards enough junk to need that small weight reduction.)
Meanwhile, the game offers recipes written down in the world, so it was easy to assume that we're supposed to discover them through exploration.
The system is definitely not intuitive. I stumbled onto it since I didn't find any reason not to extract, but a tutorial tooltip when you loot your first ingredient telling you to extract it to discover what recipes it can be used for would not go amiss.
Ingredient management is one thing in this game that you do not have to manage much.
Once you extract them you got the recipe.
Put all of the ingredient in one alchemy bag and you are done.
Extraction reduces weight. You go from three items to one when you extract ingredients.
That's amazingly dumb. It's got it's own bag and everything
I'm nearing the end of Act 3.... There are Alchemy recipes?!
Yep, and with a camp Transmutation Wizard you can have a near endless supply of Potions of Speed, Elixir of Bloodlust, and Elixir of Battlemage's Prowess.