Left clicking on a highlighted item (as shown above)  will expand the menu and you will see a number of recipes as shown above. If the item is grayed out, you will not be able to expand it until you reach the appropriate skill level to make those recipes. The recipes are colored according to their difficulty at your current Alchemy skill. The range of colors are detailed below from the easiest to the hardest:

Below is a chart to show you the skill increase, failure, and crafting timer percentages that were introduced in version 1.87. These are standardized according to the recipe's con level. Any critical failures (meaning loss of materials when you fail) have been removed from the game. Crafting items that con yellow and orange to you are optimal for skilling up.

Con to your skill level	Skill Increase	Failures	Crafting Timer
red	45%	32%	normal craft time
orange	55%	16%	normal craft time
yellow	45%	8%	normal craft time
blue	30%	0%	80%
green	15%	0%	60%
gray	0%	0%	40%

The Basics - Recipes and Materials

To get started, we will be working on a Minor Lethal Poison recipe as an example to follow.  Left click the icon in the recipe window to pick up a copy of the icon, move it over to your hotbar and then left click it into an open slot as you did with the Alchemy icon.

Next, you'll  need to see what materials the Minor Lethal Poison requires. To do this, right click on the recipe icon and it will bring up a new window showing a  list of ingredients required to make the recipe.

Now that you know what's needed to make the Minor Lethal Poison,  go buy the materials. A complete listing of alchemy NPC merchants and what they sell for all of the realms can be found in the Merchants section of this website.

Right clicking on the NPC merchant opens up a window where you can buy your materials. Merchant windows have been improved so that they can now have multiple pages on a single merchant. To swap between the pages, you use the Arrow buttons to the left of the Page number at the bottom right of the window. Each Page can still be scrolled up and down, so if you can't find an ingredient by clicking through the Pages remember to scroll each up and down also to make sure you are checking all the merchant's wares.

To buy the materials, left click on the name of the material to highlight it in yellow (start with the Distilled Honey Bee Venom). Then click the Buy button once. This will place one Distilled Honey Bee Venom in your inventory and you will receive a message in your chat box that you just purchased a Distilled Honey Bee item for 40 copper. 

If you need more than one,  left click on the name of the material to highlight it. Next,  type /mbuy # in your chat box and click your Enter key on your keyboard.  (e.g. if we want to purchase 20 Distilled Honey Bee Venom, we would highlight it on the menu then type /mbuy 20).  The material will automatically stack in your inventory. Repeat the process above for the Thin Glass Vial and Rotted Flaxweed Extract so you will have 20 of each in your inventory as so:

To craft Alchemy, you won't need any tools except an alchemy table.  The Alchemy table is pictured below:

There are several places that you can access an alchemy table. The two easiest places to use one are (1) by purchasing a merchant and table for your house if you own one (it will cost under 2 plat) or locating an open house that has these -or- (2) using the table in a city or town. (Please see  the Merchants section of this site for a complete list of NPC, table locations, and supplies sold).

There are also optional tools that can be obtained through a task quest given by the capitol city alchemy master to aid you in your crafting. Upon completion of the 500, 600, 700, and 800 skill level quests, you can choose a tool from the NPC  that you equip while crafting that can either increase the chance of a better quality of item mad , increase the time it takes to make it, or increases the chance that you will earn a skill point from making the item. (The percentages of success of the item are dependent on the skill level assigned to the task.)  You can also obtain task quests from the skilltrade trainer that offers coin as reward.For more information about these quests and the tool rewards, there are several sites that give step-by-step help for quest information such as DAoC Warcry or Ethinarg's Workshop.

Once you have all the materials needed to make your recipe and have found a cozy spot at an alchemy table, left click the recipe icon on your hotbar. This will attempt to make the recipe. A window will pop up as shown below to show your progress as you make the recipe. Note that if you move your character, your crafting action will be canceled.

You will get a message in your chat box indicating if you were successful or if you failed.  If you succeed in making the item and you gain a skill point,  you will receive a message in your chat box indicating what skill you earned a point in.  Occasionally if your Herbcraft is falling too far behind your Alchemy you will get multiple Herbcraft skill ups for a single success. If you ever try your hand at Spellcrafting as well,  you will find you get multiple Gemcutting skill ups as Gemcutting tries to catch up with your Alchemy skill.

Congratulations on making your first Alchemy item! As your Alchemy skill increases,  you will need to change to higher recipes and more will become available on your menu as you skill up. Every hundredth level, you will earn a new tradeskill title and new recipes will open up to you.