Complete Brighter Shores Alchemist Profession guide: How to make potions, leveling route, and more
The Alchemist Profession is arguably the most important one in Brighter Shores' first Episode. You can only brew potions in Hopeport, meaning you'll have to make a return trip here when you need specific potions to get an edge on content in future regions. Naturally, regardless of when you choose to skip town and head to Hopeforest, you should continue leveling Alchemist once in a while.
In this beginner-friendly Brighter Shores guide, we'll give you a full breakdown of the Alchemist Profession, and all you need to get its levels rolling.
How to start brewing potions in Brighter Shores
The opening main quest of Brighter Shores tutorializes you with the basic Alchemist gameplay loop quite well. Most of the actual lab work needed to concoct the potion is done in the Apothecary Shop at Stone Street (right next to Training Grounds, the starting area of the Hopeport map).
Other than the starter Healing Potions, all alchemic concoctions in Brighter Shores require two ingredients. In the Apothecary Shop, you'll find the Alchemist Recipe Book which details what ingredients you need for which potion. Once you get the ingredients, you need to grind them down at the Reagent Preparation Station, and then brew the potion in Potion Station (the more advanced Potent variant unlocks at Alchemist lvl 35).
You also need a Bottle to craft each potion. One spawns at the corner of the Apothecary shop. However, these can be bought quite cheaply from Ebsworth, the vendor in the shop.
Theoretically, it's possible to also buy all of the ingredients from the Potions Reagent Vendor in Town Square. However, this is a rapid way to go bankrupt if you do it early on — all of the actively crafted potions sell for less than the cost of their ingredients.
If you want to make money selling potions, you'll have to go out and explore Hopeport and collect ingredients through the Forager Profession. The intended gameplay loop here encourages you to level Forager and Alchemist side-by-side.
Later on, you'll also have to make use of things collected through future Episode-specific crafting Professions, such as Gathering in Episode 2.
Early-game Alchemist leveling guide for Brighter Shores
Unlike other crafting Professions in Brighter Shores, each Potion provides XP twice for leveling Alchemist: once after reagent preparation, and again when you craft the potion. Nevertheless, due to long foraging journeys, Alchemist is not much faster than other Professions.
In the early game, it's all about knowing where you can gather the ingredients and making an efficient farming route for it. All ingredients in the early game can be foraged, and they respawn in 45 seconds after you collect them — so plan your route around that timing.
Lvl 0 - 2
The deceptively easy beginning of Alchemist is in the 10% Healing Potion, which requires only Brown Kelp. This ingredient can be picked up in the East Beach, as you may remember from the tutorial. The other location it can be picked up is Jellyfish Landing, which is found further to the west. Go between the two places till you have about 20 Kelps, which is enough to get you to lvl 2.
What to do with 10% Healing Potion?
Healing Potions can be equipped for use in combat. However, the lvl 0 variant is so weak that it's borderline detrimental to stop attacking to use it. In the fights where it really matters, this downtime will be too much for how little you heal up (at this point, that's less than 15 HP). Instead, the best use of the 10% Healing Potion is to sell them to Ebsworth by the lot and empty your inventory.
Lvl 2 - 4
Once you hit lvl 2 Alchemist, immediately work towards also reaching lvl 2 in Forager. Afterward, purchase a Secateur at the Forager Warehouse (Old Street East) to pick up Creamy Wallplants from Old Street West and East. These can be used to concoct 20% Healing Potions.
At this point, a good farming route would be:
- Pick up 3 Kelps from East Beach
- Pick up 3 Kelps from Jellyfish Landing
- Backtrack to Old Street West, pick up 3 Creamy Wallplants
- Pick up 3 more Wallplants from Old Street East
- Wait 45 seconds
- Pick up 3 Wallplants that respawned
- Head back to Old Street West and collect 3 Wallplants
- Go back to the coast side to collect 6 Kelps
- Teleport to Hopeport Portal Stone, and walk back to Apothecary
This gives you ingredients for 12x 20% Healing Potions, which you can sell for a few Silvers.
Lvl 6 - 10
Lvl 6 unlocks the 5% XP Potions, for which you need Periwinkles and Horn Shells. 6 Periwinkles can be picked up at the Brannof Boulevard, but you have to take a long trip to the shore to pick up Horn Shells. It's recommended you wait there to pick up 12 Horn Shells and pick up 6 more Periwinkles on your way back.
The leveling can self-accelerate at this point, as you can make use of these potions to increase your XP rate. You should also spam this route till you hit Forager lvl 10.
Lvl 10 - 20
At Alchemist lvl 10, you unlock the +40 Strength Arborae potion, which is the best one to grind for a while. While the potion itself can be useful for some good damage on weapons that proc Arborae (green element) damage, the reason you want to farm this has to do with its ingredients.
This potion needs Pond Weed and Bellplants, which can be easily farmed from three adjacent areas. Between Forager lvl 10 and 12, you want to pick up the Tangled Pond Weed from Overgrown Pond and buy off the Mauve Bellplants from the Potion Reagents Vendor. The potion still gets you a net profit if you pick up one of the two ingredients manually.
After Forager lvl 12, your leveling route is:
- Pick up 6 Tangled Pond Weeds from Overgrown Pond
- Pick up 6 Bellplants from Rubble Road
- Pick up 6 Bellplants from Overgrown Field
- Head back to Overgrown Pond and repeat the rotation again
- Teleport back to the Portal and go back to the Apothecary
After this point, a lot of the potions that unlock later have ingredients that are much harder to acquire. You should purchase their reagents from the vendor, make the potion once to get the Album XP bonus, and then focus on +40 Strength Arborae.
That said, if you don't mind losing some money, spam-buying 12 of each ingredient for the last unlocked potion and batch-cooking is way faster if you want rapid progression.
AFK farming past lvl 20
Your aim is to get to lvl 20, which unlocks the Grind Slugs activity. After you spend a Knowledge Point in it, this activity nets you over 2000 passive XP and more than 1 Silver per hour. This requires no reagents from your side, so you can simply start this activity and log out.
Note that you can also passively craft other potions, starting with 250% Wealth Potion at Alchemist level 26. These can be crafted from the Passive Potion Station, and use ingredients that can also be AFK-farmed with lvl 20+ Foraging. However, grinding Slugs simply gives you a better rate of XP and money per hour compared to Wealth Potion, so it's not worthwhile till later.
Other Ebsworth activities similar to Grind Slugs unlock at future levels, giving you a free way to generate coin and Alchemist levels throughout your journey:
Also read: Per-Episode combat score releveling is intentional, says Brighter Shores creator
Brighter Shores potions list and crafting recipe (lvl 1 - 100)
Here are all the Brighter Shores potions you can brew in Alchemist levels 1 to 100, as well as what you need for them:
Note that the game is still in early access, so some of these elements are subject to change in the future. As we continue leveling Alchemist, we'll update the guide with our future learning as well.
Check out our other guides on the game:
- Should you buy Brighter Shores Premium Pass?
- All classes in Brighter Shores, explained
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