An Alchemy Factory Playthrough: Closing the Shop and Aiming for Alchemy Master with Just a Workshop

The goal of the game is to reach the origins of alchemy, which means working through the entire skill tree. The skill tree contains nine promotion exams, and each one requires delivering specific items to the Alchemists' Guild.

The game starts you off with a small shop. The player decided that "if I'm going to master alchemy, I don't have time to be playing shopkeeper," and closed it that same day. They then spent 40% of their total funds on the neighboring lot and began building a proper workshop.

The first exam required "Large Wooden Gears." The player unlocked the relevant recipes and set up a sawmill to turn logs into lumber and a grinder to turn lumber into gears. They merged the output paths with conveyors so the finished gears would land in a box, completing their first factory. They bought the raw logs from the old man's shop nearby for 200 copper coins each, then waited a while to stockpile gears. After selecting the main quest from the mailbox, they delivered 20 gears to the Guild and reached Lv2.

Each level-up grants two points that can be spent on beneficial perks. At this point, the player chose a perk that adds a bonus to quest rewards. Lv2 unlocks recipes that use stone in addition to wood, and it also makes loans available. The player borrowed 6,000 copper coins to cover the cost of materials.

With this money, they built a setup for turning limestone into crushed stone. They also placed the newly learned "Processor" and added a line that converts large gears into small gears. Once enough crushed stone had piled up, they used it as material to set up "Planting Plots." You sow seeds, wait, and get plants. The player ran to the seed shop to buy flax seeds. By the time they finished planting, the sun had gone down.

On the morning of day two, the flax had fully grown overnight as planned. The player harvested it and fed it into the hemp rope factory they had built the night before. They sent 50 hemp ropes to the Guild and passed the exam for Lv3. Along the way, they also completed side quests to earn money, repaid the cheap Lv2 loan, and then took out the larger loan available at Lv3. With those funds they bought more seeds and other supplies, and used the smelting furnace learned at Lv3 to start producing iron goods such as ingots and nails.

The next exam called for potions. The process involves grinding two types of herbs separately in grinders and then mixing them in an assembler. The player remarked, "Finally, this is starting to feel like alchemy." To boost production speed, they copy-pasted the factory several times. The seeds planted in the morning were fully grown by evening, and once those were fed in, the factory started running.

By day three the player was out of money, but potion production was going well. They delivered 100 potions to reach Lv4, then used the quest reward money plus a loan to buy the neighboring lot, which was on sale for 6,000 copper coins. They added more Planting Plots there to increase herb output and built factories for new products such as cloth and clay. As a result, what should have been a decent sum of money was gone within a single day.

Up to this point, the player's only income had been quest rewards, but on day four "Wholesale" was unlocked. Every 50 bandages delivered paid 12 silver coins, making it possible to earn money without relying on quests. The player decided to expand the farmland for a while and keep making bandages to build up savings.

By day six, bandage income had stabilized. However, harvesting and hauling took a lot of effort, and the player concluded that further expansion would be difficult. So they scrapped the manually tended farmland and switched to building a system that automates the cultivation itself.

To pursue automation, the player bought yet another neighboring lot and built a large factory. Since expanding without a plan would leave equipment scattered everywhere, they decided to modularize groups of machines, using a 16×16-tile floor as the basic unit.

Automated herb farming requires fertilizer. So they placed a machine that outputs fertilizer when you put money into it. On the left side, fertilizer is turned into cloth; on the right, fertilizer is turned into potions; and the two are combined to make bandages. The money earned from selling bandages is converted back into fertilizer. It's a loop where money, fertilizer, and products circulate. Once the bandage factory in the back section was complete, the player said they had reached a state where "money comes in without me having to work." They also tidied up the factory in front and automated material production.

The factory for the next exam item, the "Vitality Potion," had already been set up during this reorganization. It uses fertilizer to grow red plants, makes lime powder from stone, and mixes the two into a potion. On day 11 the required amount was ready, and after a long absence the player headed to the mailbox and reached Lv5.

At Lv5, one more item became available for wholesale. The new product, "Gloom Spores," is made by mixing herbs and mushrooms, and a single one of the player's factories can produce 360 per day. Since the wholesaler buys up to 1,600 per day, the player decided to run five of these factories.

The "Transformation Potion" needed for the next exam can be made simply by mixing Gloom Spores with charcoal. The player "pilfered" a few spores from the running factories and made just enough potions. They delivered 100 of them and reached Lv6.

Lv6 unlocks copper goods. The player built a factory that outputs copper when you put money into it. Making copper requires plant-derived soap and iron sand derived from iron ore, so they built a system to produce these and combine them. The player's modules are designed so that "money coming in from the right flows out to the left." That way, simply laying the floors side by side naturally connects the money input paths. Hooking the money coming out of the wholesale factories up to this copper factory gets it running.

The next exam item was the "Growth Potion," made from three ingredients: chamomile, rock salt, and limestone. A factory six floor tiles in size processes and mixes them.

At this point, the workshop was laid out with the left half producing wholesale goods to generate money and the right side using that money to produce materials. As space was getting tight, they added pillars and a ceiling to build a second floor. The player commented that it was starting to have a "rugged look," like a gas station. The Growth Potions were ready during construction, and the player reached Lv7. Three levels remained until Alchemy Master.

From Lv7, a new machine called the "Alchemy Cauldron" comes into play. As the player explains it, the Alchemy Cauldron takes three items and produces something close to their combined value.

The player built a factory that puts herbs grown with fertilizer into an Alchemy Cauldron to produce new fertilizer. Normally, this would just turn fertilizer into roughly the same amount of fertilizer. However, the player had reallocated all the points earned from leveling up into fertilizer efficiency. As a result, producing the same amount of fertilizer reportedly consumed less than half as much fertilizer. The player called this "a mechanism that keeps generating fertilizer from nothing," and kept building more of them to multiply fertilizer for free.

Once enough Growth Potions (which are used as fertilizer) had piled up, they moved on to the next exam item, the "Explosive Potion." It has three ingredients, but all of them can be made in the Alchemy Cauldron. So the player reused the same design as the fertilizer factory, feeding herbs into the Alchemy Cauldron. From here on, the player shifted to Alchemy Cauldron–centered factories, with the policy of making every product from the fertilizer that multiplied for free. They delivered the Explosive Potions and reached Lv8.

On day 33, more than a month after starting the workshop, the player added a third floor. Fertilizer kept increasing, but nowhere near enough for the next exam. Since building new factories also costs money, the player wanted to speed up how much fertilizer increased per unit of factory area. So they began building factories for a higher-tier fertilizer, the "Catalyst of Abundance."

The factories look almost the same as before; the only real difference is that the herbs planted in them are slightly higher grade. The Catalyst of Abundance can be made from three materials, all of which can be sourced from fertilizer. The player described this as another "recipe that seems infinitely scalable" and built about ten of them for the time being.

Using this fertilizer, they first made the relic "Venus." Relics can be converted into experience, and accumulating experience grants upgrade points. As the player sums it up, the more you make, the more you can raise fertilizer efficiency. Venus is made just by mixing the various potions made so far, so connecting alchemy factories for each potion to the fertilizer factory completes a system that brings in experience for free. The player reflected that up to the midgame the work had been like that of a "construction contractor," but that once the Alchemy Cauldron era began, it finally started to feel like being an alchemist.

Next, the player began producing the highest-tier fertilizer in this world, the "Panacea." The design follows the established approach of looping fertilizer through Alchemy Cauldrons. Factories that make higher-tier fertilizer from lower-tier fertilizer need a large amount of fertilizer the first time they're started up. That, the player explains, is why they had been progressing in stages up to this point: stockpile fertilizer, move to the next tier, stockpile again, move on again.

The Panacea requires a certain rare material, which is produced by a large seedbed. It starts as a small sapling, but if you keep feeding it fertilizer, it gradually absorbs it and eventually grows into a great World Tree. Feeding in its "World Tree Leaves" completes the Panacea. The player delivered Panaceas and reached Lv9, just one step away from Alchemy Master.

The Alchemists' Guild's final assignment was a giant relic called "Solar," made from nine materials. In addition to six kinds of relics, the list includes high-end materials such as diamonds, catalysts, and a World Tree Core. Since it was the last assignment, the player went in intending to use up all their resources.

The relatively easy ones, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, can be made from simple materials such as lumber and gears. All it took was bringing over what had been stockpiled in the material factories; no large factories were needed.

Mercury requires 100 each of five kinds of minerals, which the player decided to generate in Alchemy Cauldrons from items on hand. The combinations were as follows:

• Fertilizer, lumber, rivets → Turquoise
• Glass, copper ingots, copper bearings → Malachite
• Bronze ingots, silver coins, copper bearings → Topaz
• Catalyst of Abundance, silver coins, rivets → Obsidian
• Panacea, Catalyst of Abundance, lumber → Lapis Lazuli

They also made the Resonance Catalyst, which Solar requires separately, at this time, adding fuel to a furnace to start production.

The sixth relic, "Lunar," requires five kinds of ingots. There were surplus steel, bronze, and copper in the material factories, but no silver or gold at all. So the player melted down their silver and gold coins in a clay kiln to make ingots. Melting down money borrowed through loans felt "pretty good," the player said. With factories set up for Lunar and Mercury, preparations for making all six relics were complete.

25 "Perfect Diamonds" are needed. According to the player, they're a laborious material to make the normal way, but with an Alchemy Cauldron they can be easily generated from seeds, Panacea, and gold coins. Since the player had barely spent any money after introducing the Alchemy Cauldron, they spent the money saved up from wholesale all at once here.

The remaining materials were the "World Tree Core" and the "Eternal Catalyst." The World Tree Core can be obtained from a fully grown World Tree. The Eternal Catalyst is made from the "Philosopher's Stone," which itself is made in an Alchemy Cauldron. The Philosopher's Stone is costly to make, but since the player had a few spare World Tree Cores, they used the high-value cores to cover the materials. The steps were as follows. First, mix gold coins and a core in an Alchemy Cauldron to make a "Sapphire." Next, mix a core and stone to make a "Ruby." Finally, put these two gems back into an Alchemy Cauldron, add another core, and complete the Philosopher's Stone. Putting this into an "Arcane Processor" readied production of the Eternal Catalyst.

On day 47, all the relics were complete. The player collected Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, and Lunar, and fed the nine materials into the "Arcane Sculptor." Over about five minutes, Solar gradually assembled itself from the bottom up and was completed. The player delivered it to the Guild, cleared the entire main story, and reached Alchemy Master.

The player praised the game for being full of moments where it suddenly becomes much more fun, such as the shift from early manual work to full automation and the introduction of the Alchemy Cauldron. Despite its simple appearance, they called it "a thoroughly satisfying game." They also said the cute visuals built around medieval alchemy and the distinctive night scenery, which doesn't feel overly mechanical, left a strong impression. They added that the moments spent casually taking a break to gaze at their own workshop were something special, and with that, wrapped up the playthrough.