A Simple Guide to Apothecary in Warhammer Online

The Apothecary skill in Warhammer Online is used to make both dyes and potions, though there is heavier emphasis on potion making. Even beginning potions can add a +10 increase to a stat and so even the newest of users can start to immediately benefit from creating and using potions using this skill. When creating a potion, the stat that improves is directly related to the potion that’s made and used.

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Certain plants and ingredients are used to increase intelligence stats while others may restore health points. Low-level potions may last for as many as ten minutes. More powerful potions will last even longer, and certain ingredients will cause potions to last even longer still. Sometimes beginningusers can even get lucky and find the right combination of ingredients that can recharge as many as 250 hit points at a time – often times it’s a matter of trial and error, experimentation and evaluation.

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In order to make a potion, three basic components will always be required. You will need a Container, a Main Ingredient and Additional Ingredients in order to make any potion. While the type of Container that you use rarely changes and has little effect on the potion itself (some of the higher level vials may offer a bit more stability, however, which is important when creating a viable potion) the Main Ingredient that you use defines the potion that you're making and the Additional Ingredients will determine how stable your potion is for use. Too little stability and you will create a Volatile Potion, described later.

The containers are the easiest part to find, and also the first part necessary for creating a Warhammer potion. As every potion needs a home; you can go no further in your potion tinkering until you have a workable container in the first slot of your Apothecary skill window. Level 1 Used Glass Vials (totally useable even up through skill level 200!) are easily bought from merchants and cost very little.

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As your skill level grows, other vials can either be bought from merchants or found through Scavenging or received as a reward from a Public Quest. Those vials are uncommon and of a higher quality and aren’t necessary for use until your player has reached a higher skill set. Most cannot be found until after reaching a skillset level of 150 but will add to the stabilization and potency of higher-level potions. The added bonus of these “special” vials often outweigh the cost benefits of using Used Glass Vials, though, as mentioned, they can be used all the way through skill level 200.

The Main Ingredient of a potion has a direct effect on the kind of “power” it will bestow upon a player. The rarity of the Main Ingredient can also effect the level of potency the potion has (bear in mind that the skill level of the player has a strong effect on this as well). On the list of main ingredients are things like leeches, hairs, teeth, herbs, scales, dirt and feathers, among other items. Also bear in mind that you will essentially get as much as you give with your Main Ingredient. The better the ingredient that you put into your potion is, the better the potion itself will be.

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The Additional Ingredients that you put into your potion can be broken down into three different categories:

1. Certain items will increase the yield that the recipe makes. In other words, you put in one set of ingredients and receive two sets worth of potions.

2. Other items will increase the duration of the potion's effectiveness. Instead of lasting 10 minutes, the potion may last much longer.

3. Other items still will increase the levels of stability in your potion. Too little of these stabilizers and your potion will become Volatile. No stabilizers and it will fail altogether.

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How dangerous is it to use a Volatile Potion? Many users have said that they've seen no real harmful effects from using them and that any they do see are easily outweighed by the relatively cheaper cost of making a Volatile Potion in comparison to a Stable Potion. However, there is risk involved. Volatile potions may fail or may even cause a negative reaction instead of the positive reaction the potion aught to give. It is easy to create a Stable Potion, though a bit pricier. Risking the use of a Volatile Potion is entirely up to the user.

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Because it is expensive to constantly be buying the materials necessary to make potions and dyes, often times the Apothecary skill is matched with the Cultivation skill in Warhammer. The Cultivations skill makes Apothecary much easier to accomplish as there is little to no need to search out Main or Additional Ingredients. Instead, Cultivation trades patience for money and as such the two skills are often tied together. It is possible, of course, to develop a character that has only one of these skills. It simply makes certain tasks easier to have a character with both.