Lab - priority

[ShadowOfTheTree]

Right now, I am at AW1, I have 1040 Mysterious Water Level, I don't have the "save catalists level after AW", and I wonder what is the most important, or what is the strategy.

For instance, what is the best way to gain points in Alchemy. It seems mass producing Essence of Slime and craft Minor Healing Potion is the best option. Any opinion?

Then, to what spend those points. At first I was spending them to increase my level pots (for the Global Quest "The Road of Alchemy" (completed up to 6)), but then I realized that the "update" of lab had a lot of really interesting things.
So I maxed Purification (lvl200), Deeper Capacity (QoL).
But now I wonder which one to push. Material Thirst or Essence Hoarder?
Any other thing to know/do?

[Rafein]

Yeah, mass producing slime and minor healing potion is best for alchemy points.

if you have Mystic Arena, make sure you get the Alchemy point research.

For pure points, I'd say Essence Hoarder and Water Preservation are most important. Water preservation gives you more water gain, and it's increased by your max water, so the more your max water, the better. Essence conversion just flat boosts every "tick" you point into an essence, Essence also caps out at level 10, so maxing it out is not that difficult

Material Thrift is nice, but the points kinda scale up fast, and the returns stay pretty small.

And of course, don;t neglect your taming. Not sure how far along you are, but mostly magislime and Devil Fish have good taming bonuses for Alchemy. Red Magislime increases water generation, Blue devilfish increases max water cap.

[Darnavir]

Road of alchemy 7 is good later on for potion level cap when you can reach it (level 100 potions aren't consumed) but it can wait.

Nitrous extraction is extremely important later on (unlimited nitro), it isn't that good if your essence production is low. Charmed life can be useful for limited production utility items like traps (especially before rank 5 trapper). Material thrift does little, essence hoarded has a higher priority. Potent potables is additive with pet potion effect, still good because some potions really benefit from it (resource multiplier, skill multiplier). Aurumology is good if you can reach you gold cap.

Mysterious water has certain limitations - essence generation scales logarithmically with it (and catalyst level) so there are hard diminishing returns with more allocated mysterious water (essence gain boosts are additive on top of that). The "cheap" mysterious water upgrades are worth it, but further ones are just too expensive to be worth getting anytime soon (preservation 6, purification > 200) and the catalystic upgrade is good because more essences produced at once mean lower effect of diminishing returns. Most mysterious water will be on slime and life (health potion and resource poultice for alchemy points) anyways.

A sound strategy is buying whatever is cheap and not useless. You either get an upgrade doing something or get closer to next road of alchemy. Early focus should be on essence hoarder and some mysterious water (more essences = more potions = more alchemy points).

[ShadowOfTheTree]

Thanks for your answers guys.

Regarding my upgrades, my Water Preservation is 4 out of 5, lvl 5 costs a lot. My essence hoarder is almost maxed (9/10).
For Nitro, yes, I know it will be really useful later, I have it lvl2 and it's better than nothing. I'll level it after a couple of skills needed for alchemy points.
Road to Alchemy 7 might be too far for the moment. I might do it in the next WA. Or once I have the Preservation of Catalist after a WA.

Btw, since 100 levels of "purification level" comes from Alchemist hut (yes, more later, but i'm only at alch hut lvl60), when i'll ascend, once i'll reach hut lvl60 again, will my purification level be 200 or 300?

[Darnavir]

Alchemist only increases caps of upgrades from base so the additional level caps will be lost on ascension, already bought levels stay. Don't worry too much about it, preservation lv5 and purification lv200 is about as high as is reasonable, the returns are too low to be worth more now. The main source of "additive" mysterious water are research and red magicslime, each of these 2 will exceed the rest combined.

Nitro is based on both nitrous extraction and essence production. If your sum of slime and life essences per second is high enough (>10, definitely can hit about 25), you will get more nitro than you can burn through (even x3 nitro can be permanently supplied with lv4 nitrous extraction). It shouldn't be focused on until you can generate enough essences.