I don't here much talk about this class. I have one and she's really
good. She has lots of good spells and spell points and the occassional
extra potion is handy too! Plus being able to make strong potions from
weaker ones is a big plus.

yes, plus money is not a problem because you can make potions and then sell them for lots of money.

I have written many good things about this class when I activelly played wiz8. In my opinion, the alchemist combined with a little divinity skill, is better than the gadgeteer (if not much better.) It's nice to see someone also likes this class, finally.

What are the potions that the alchemist can mix together?

Given the length of the game (unless one uses less than a full size party or intentionally delays Ascension), the specialist, single school casters (plus the Bard) are, IMHO, the most powerful characters in the game (Based on damage or other impact per round of combat). The Alchemist is the most powerful of that lot.

What other class can consistently generate 600-1300 damage (more in rare cases, less in some) per round of combat against the toughest enemy groups later in the game?

Gab, there are several good sites with this (warning, spoiler) information, one is:

http://www.geocities.com/shau185/index.html

Yup, I'd say give one a try...soon.

How do you achieve that? Not doubting just would like to know!

Sounds like some kind if ideal-conditions situation: having level 7 Acid Bomb, Toxic Cloud, Draining Cloud, and Ring of Fire active, then hitting with Tsunami or Earthquake, all against a group with low elemental resistances. Throw in a level 7 Death Cloud and summon an Elemental <something> Lord for good measure.

Which doesn't invalidate EEWorzelle's point. The party that I most recently took all the way to the end was a Fighter, Samurai, Bard, Alchemist, Psionic, and Priest. The Alchemist led handily in kills through most of the game, with the Psionic close behind and the Fighter a bit farther back. Even when the Fighter eventually caught up, it was largely by getting kill credit for delivering the last 40-80 HP of damage to opponents that the casters had brought down from 300-400 HP.

Basically, Alchemists kick mucho butt, and do it in fun and interesting ways. Plus, (along with Ninjas and Rangers) they're a source of essentially unlimited funds.

Thank you for the kind words, ChaosTheorist, but actually getting damage in that range is meant quite literally and is not that uncommon at all. Even among Magic-Heavy parties, spells and styles used vary quite a bit between players. Yeah, the high end of the range and higher than that are rare.

Let me describe one battle (of several similar) that I made note of. It was two groups of Hellspawn, about 500 HP each, attacking from the same direction.

In the first attacking round, my Alchemist cast Tsunami, Mage cast Blizzard and Gadgeteer used a Water Cannon. All three hit all 12. For the Alchemist, the average damage was 107, for the Mage 96 and for the Gadgeteer 72. That gives damage of 1284, 1152, and 864, for a total of about 3300 damage from those three characters alone. After two attack rounds only a couple with a few HP each were still alive. In my post I rounded up to 1300, for the Alchemist.

I rarely go for thinning type spells in my style (those that kill some but leave the rest unharmed. I always go for maximum damage. Six opponents hit at once was more typical, but about 10 at a time is pretty common, too. All 12 in range of my cone spells was sweet. I think, in one large battle, the Alchemists use of Earthquake gives more damage even than that. Even among those running Magic-Heavy parties, attack strategies vary a lot. The use of clouds and such is great strategy in support of a Melee or Ranged orientated group, because the battles last long enough for that bit of damage, every round, to pay off. When the enemies are all dead in a couple rounds, why cripple them? That just scatters them about and makes it tougher. For a damage-based magic attack style the idea is to have as many enemies as possible, as close together as possible, subject to damage spells that hit all of them. It is tougher to do that with cone spells than "hits all enemies" type spells, but the extra damage is generally worth the effort. The typical rhythm is:

Round 1) not an attack round. Enemies engaged but out of range or at extreme range. Get Soul and Element Shields up, cast Bless and Haste, then with any remaining firepower take potions of Superman, Eye for Eye and or cast area effect spells (including, perhaps, Acid Bomb) that can reach at that extreme range and begin the damage.

Round 2) First attack round. Enemies still out of range but coming. Hit walk or run (you won't actually walk or run). This gives those enemies time to obligingly run into range of your spells. Cast and damage them.

Round 3) Do not hit walk or run. Use the superior speed of the party (after Haste) to hit enemies again before they get a chance to move. They die.

Round 4) Actually they may not all be dead, clean up any leftovers with Ranged, Melee or whatever you want to practice.

Not all enemies cooperate in a way that makes this work perfectly, but pretty close to the above is common.

Note that these are not low resistance monsters. It's just that Powercast in the 95-110 range blows through all but the very highest resistances. Resistances of 90-110 are not too bad at all.

Gadgeteer attack spells do not lose all power (since Bards and Gadgeteers do not benefit from Powercast) aganst high resistances the way the Bard attack spells do. For some reason the Engineering skill acts a little like Powercast, or something like that.

[ 05-28-2003, 05:59 PM: Message edited by: EEWorzelle ]

Ouch. Didn't mean to sound patronizing; sorry if it came across that way.

"not that uncommon at all....the high end of the range and higher than that are rare."

So it's rare but not uncommon; got it ;)

Impressive. What level are these characters? I rarely see damage like that from my casters.

Tsunami is definitely a kick-ass damage spell. Bang-for-the-buck, it's the most damaging spell in the game. Well, technically I guess it's second best, but the "real" most damaging spell--Banish--is so special-purpose that I don't count it.

And is kind of what I meant by "ideal conditions": being able to hit twice the "typical" number of opponents with high-damage spells.

It will if you can't get them all nicely grouped into a Tsunami kill cone. Earthquake is like the equivalent level 7 spells (Mind Flay and Nuclear Blast): costs 18SP/power level, does 12HP/power level to all accessible enemies. But, if you can get them into the cone, Tsunami does more damage (15HP/power level) and costs less (15SP/power level).

And this is where I'd use a high-level Death Cloud if available. As mentioned, I rarely see the damage numbers you're quoting, so a group of 500HP monsters is going to take more than a couple of rounds to finish off. That being the case, it's really nice to have a Death Cloud hanging over them the entire battle--every round, every one of them runs the risk of disappearing from the scene.

However, I agree that the one-shot instant-kill spells (Quicksand, Instant Death/Death Wish, Asphyxiation) don't really seem to earn their keep, at least not at the character levels I usually see. Maybe a level 35-40 Priest would get good results from Death Wish, but my kids usually get little more from it than Divine-realm skill practice.

As an aside, the Death Lords in the SE Wilderness shrine seem to consistently get *great* results from Death Cloud, at least on Expert difficulty. I tried to take my "no magic" party through there on Expert, and lost *three* of them in one round!

Power Cast at 95+? Holy crap! Again, what level are these guys?

One of my (relatively) few complaints with the way Wiz8's magic/skill system is set up. Bards and Gadgeteers are already penalized during combat by being Stamina-based; not getting an effectiveness bonus for maxing INT just adds to the insult. I guess that's supposed to offset the "free" spell-casting ability out of combat, but I'm not sure that it quite evens out.

Steve