Overview

The Alchemy mod is a server mod running on Draeda and Newshore, created by Arathok. It is not part of the base game: none of the potions, oils, pastes or sludges below exist in vanilla Wurm, and it is separate from the vanilla Alchemy skill group you already know. It gives the town alchemist something better to do than mix lye and concrete all day. Everything in this mod is made by hand: you gather the herbs, butcher the beasts, blow the glass and bottle the results yourself. In exchange you get two product lines:

Potions: drinkable buffs and heals that work like priest spells cast at a power equal to the potion’s quality. A 90 QL potion of demon blood behaves like a 90 strength Hell Strength cast, without ever kneeling at an altar.
Weapon oils: temporary weapon, arrow and quiver coatings that behave like short-lived enchantments. Think of a witcher’s blade oil: strong, cheap to replace, gone in a minute.

The whole line runs on the Natural Substances skill (with a bit of Pottery for the glassware and Alchemy for the coal dust), so a dedicated alchemist is a real trade on Draeda: you sell what priests sell, minus the religion.

The crafting window (N) shows most of the steps: search for “mixture”, “paste” or “phial” and it will walk you through them. The steps it does not show are the heating steps, and those are the heart of the mod, so they get their own section below.

Hidden Steps: The Heat Transforms

Several items in this mod have no crafting recipe at all. Instead they transform when they get hot enough. If an item’s description hints that “its magical properties could be activated by heating it”, that is not flavor text: put it inside a burning forge or oven, wait for it to reach glowing hot, and it changes into the next stage. There is no progress bar and no recipe entry; the item simply swaps over when it is hot enough.

The full list of heat transforms:

Glass mixture becomes glass
Clay phial mould becomes a fired phial mould
Plain water becomes purified water
Every potion precursor becomes its potion liquid
Every sludge becomes its oil (the weapon oil line)

That last one answers the question we get most: you made a sludge of lick of fire, searched the crafting window for the oil recipe and found nothing. There is nothing to find. Heat the sludge. Put it in a lit forge or oven (on its own or inside a container that is in the fire) and let it come up to temperature; it turns into oil of lick of fire on its own. Then combine the oil with a glass phial and you have your weapon oil.

The change happens as soon as the item is hot enough, and heating it even gives a little Natural Substances skill, so the wait is not wasted.

The Glass Line: Phials

Every finished product in this mod ends up in a glass phial, so this is where every alchemist starts:

Glass mixture: combine sand with ash, plus a good pile more ash and some salt (about 17 of each). Then heat the mixture into crystal-clear glass.
Phial mould: use a pottery flask on clay to shape a soft clay mould, then heat it to fire it into a proper mould. This step is Pottery skill.
Glass phial: work the heated glass in the fired mould. Phials are cheap, stackable and endlessly reusable stock, so make them by the crate.

Water, Compound and Powders

Potions need two more staples:

Purified water: on Draeda the simple way works, just heat water until it purifies. If you prefer craftsmanship (or need it away from a forge), you can instead pass water through a coal filter: grind charcoal with a grindstone into coal dust, then build the filter from shafts, coal dust, cloth and small nails. The filter is not used up when you purify, it simply wears out on its own after a while.
Alchemical compound: purified water plus a butchered heart from any creature. This is the catalyst that turns herbal mixtures into magic, and it is the reason alchemists keep buying hunting scraps. It is brewed, not bought, and it keeps for a little over a week.
Gem powder: ground from any cut gem (ruby, emerald, diamond, sapphire or opal) with a mortar and pestle. Only needed for potions of mana.

Brewing Potions

The Chain

Every potion follows the same five steps:

Gather ingredients and craft a mixture in the crafting window (Natural Substances).
Combine the mixture with alchemical compound to get a potion precursor.
Heat the precursor into a potion liquid.
Bottle the liquid with a glass phial.
Drink.

Mixtures keep for a few hours, precursors and liquids for days, finished potions for weeks, so you can stockpile mid-stage products and finish to order.

The Potions

Ingredients listed are what goes into the mixture; every one then follows the same chain above.

Potion of heal: brown mushroom and wheat. Heals wounds, and a high quality one can patch you from near death to full. About three helpings per phial.
Potion of stamina: carrot and potato, or mint and fennel (two recipes). Restores stamina the same way the heal potion restores health.
Potion of mana: the heal chain, then potion liquid of healing plus gem powder. Restores favor for priests, scaled with quality.
Potion of karma: the heal chain, then potion liquid of healing plus rock salt. A hefty chunk of karma, scaled with quality.
Potion of knowledge: yellow mushroom, turmeric, strawberries, thyme, cumin and a silver coin. The apex of the craft: it burns through accumulated exhaustion and converts it to sleep bonus, up to about 24 minutes’ worth from a single phial. Single serving.
Potion of eelskin: ginger, sassafras and a red mushroom. Excel: enemies hit you less.
Potion of phasing: rosemary, an ivy seedling, pumpkin and an eye. Willowspine: easier dodging.
Potion of Woodskin: acorn, a foraged rock, a blue mushroom and sage. Oakshell: you take less damage from everything; at high power it shows on you as Thornshell.
Potion of fog skin: lingonberry and wemp. Morning Fog: thorns and lava will not pierce you.
Potion of senses: lovage and nettles. Sixth Sense: superior awareness of hidden dangers.
Potion of truehit: belladonna, garlic and a green mushroom. Truehit: you land your hits more often.
Potion of frenzy: red mushroom, nutmeg, tomato and a tooth. Frantic Charge: faster attacks and movement.
Potion of demon blood: black mushroom, paprika and woad. Hell Strength: raw demonic strength for the whole duration.
Potion of goatshape: a branch and oats. Better climbing. Whatever that says about goats.

Mana, karma and knowledge phials are single-serving; the rest hold about three helpings each.

Weapon Oils

The Chain

Oils are the second product line and use the potions as ingredients:

Craft a paste from a potion mixture, tallow and one signature beast part (all in the crafting window, Natural Substances).
Combine the paste with alchemical compound to get a sludge.
Heat the sludge into an oil. This is the hidden step that stings everyone once.
Combine the oil with a glass phial to get the finished weapon oil.

Pastes spoil fast, in about four hours, so plan the tallow run before you start mixing.

The Oils

Each paste is built on the mixture that matches its theme, plus tallow and one special ingredient:

Weapon oil of the Hunter (Animal Demise, more damage to animals): goat mixture, tallow and an eye.
Weapon oil of the Monster Hunter (Monster Demise): goat mixture, tallow and a gland.
Weapon oil of the Dragon Hunter (Legendary Demise): goat mixture, tallow and blood.
Weapon oil of the Murderer (Human Demise, fights other players): goat mixture, tallow and meat.
Lick of Fire oil (Flaming Aura, burning wounds): frenzy mixture, tallow and charcoal.
Frostkiss weapon oil (Frostbrand, frostbite wounds): frenzy mixture, tallow and a snowball.
Weapon oil of the Leech (Life Transfer, drains life to you): health mixture, tallow and a snowball.
Weapon oil of the Plague (Rotting Touch, infected wounds): fog skin mixture, tallow and a lemon.
Weapon oil of the Heartseeker (Nimbleness, far worse wounds): surpass mixture, tallow and a heart.
Weapon oil of the Snake (Venom, poisons enemies): health mixture, tallow and a heart.

The intermediate names are a little inconsistent (the human line calls its oil “oil of Human Demise”, the dragon line “oil of Legendarys Demise”), so match on the theme, not the exact wording.

Using Weapon Oils

Activate the weapon oil, right-click the weapon and pick apply weapon oil. What you need to know:

Duration: on Draeda an oil lasts one minute on a clean weapon. On a weapon that already carries a priest enchant it lasts about a third of that, roughly 20 seconds, so oil your mundane weapons and let priests coat the fancy ones.
Stacking: oils stack with priest enchantments of a different type, but a weapon refuses an oil matching an enchant it already has, and it can only carry one alchemical oil at a time. Bows cannot be oiled at all.
Arrows and quivers: pouring the oil into a quiver coats every arrow inside, which is by far the most efficient use. Dripping it on a single arrow wastes most of the phial, and the game will even tell you so.
Pelts: with a pelt anywhere in your inventory (backpacks count), applying oil to a weapon only uses part of the phial, so one phial covers several weapons.
Power: the oil’s quality is the enchant power, and rarity makes it stronger still.
Travel kills oils: mailing an oiled weapon, taking it through a portal or wandering near the edge of the world wipes the coating. Whenever the oil goes, by travel or by the timer running out, the enchant evaporates and the weapon’s name goes back to normal.

Oils can be applied mid-fight on Draeda, and they keep for weeks in storage, so a hunter can carry a full set and re-coat between kills.

Drinking Potions

Right-click a potion and choose Consume Potion. On Draeda:

Duration: a buff lasts up to five minutes at 100 quality, scaling down with quality. A 50 QL potion runs about two and a half minutes.
Power: quality equals cast strength. Ingredient quality and your skill decide it, which is what makes a dedicated alchemist worth buying from.
No cooldown: Draeda all but removed the potion cooldown (a one-second formality, four seconds for potions of knowledge), and potions can be drunk mid-combat. The old toxicity danger still technically exists: force a drink while the previous one is still settling and you get a warning; shove another down immediately after and you take a grave internal wound, or drop dead outright if you were already badly hurt. With settle times this short you would practically have to try.
Chain-drinking is between you and your liver, which brings us to:

Addiction

Every potion drunk, every single swig, ticks your addiction level up by one. The level fades by one roughly every 35 seconds of play. It is the coming down that hurts, not the drinking:

Peaking at 3 or less is safe. That is your comfort zone for sustained play.
Coming down from 4 or 5 gives you Weak Legs: a crushing, undroppable weight appears in your inventory, sized against your own strength so you cannot simply muscle through it. You crawl until it passes.
Coming down from 6 and up poisons you a little every few moments while you are on the way down, and the higher you peaked the worse it gets: from 12 it is a serious poison, from 15 it comes with splitting head pain, and from 25 the withdrawal itself can kill you.

Drinking any potion instantly removes the Weak Legs and buys you another 35 seconds of grace, which is exactly as healthy as it sounds. The practical rule: stay under four recent potions, and if you must binge, keep sipping until you can stop somewhere safe.

Tips and Tricks

The examine text is the tutorial: if an item’s description mentions heat, activation or phials, it is telling you the next step.
Stockpile mid-stage goods: mixtures and pastes last hours, sludges and potion liquids last days, finished products last weeks.
Rarity is worth chasing: rare and fantastic versions of potions and oils are 25 percent stronger, supreme 10 percent.
High quality hearts make high quality compound, which lifts everything downstream. Buy butcher scraps smart.
Selling phials, purified water and compound to other alchemists is a trade in itself, since the glass and pottery side needs no herbs at all.