Chemistry/Bastet/Guide

Bastet Exploratory Chemistry Guide

This is an informal guide to the kind of exploratory chemistry we're going to be doing for a while in Bastet. There are other useful chemistry guides for when we've actually got some of the numbers figured out.

Equipment and Skills

In order to participate in Essence Chemistry, you will need the Advanced Chemistry 2 skill. You'll also need a Chemistry Lab which has been upgraded with an alcohol lamp and essential macerator. Installing 5 pieces of well-calibrated glassware is a big help.

As consumables, for basic essence distillation, you'll need a large quantity of different types of Spirits, as well as 50db or more of any source material you want to test.

Essences, Essential Compounds and Extracts

There are three main types of products in Essence Chemistry:

• Essences, produced by distillation, are the basic feedstocks of the process
• Essential Compounds are formed by combining 5 different essences
• Extracts are made by using an essential compound that meets a set of random requirements

What we Need to Research

Essences may be made from Herbs, Metal Salts, Pheromones, Resins, and Marble Dust. Each Essence has different properties.

There are two things we need to learn about each essence:

• The correct temperature for distillation
• The value, from -3 to 3, of each of the eight properties of the essence (Aromatic, Astringent, etc.)

To find the temperature, we perform test distillations of the source material. Each test consumes 10 spirits and 10 db of the material, so you'll likely need about 50 db of each to successfully test for temperature.

Once we can successfully manufacture an essence, we need to combine different essences to make essential compounds. We can then test these for their combined value in each of the eight properties using [Litmus Test]] strips, and try to deduce the values of each essence from this data.

Researching Temperature

The 10 units of spirit you place in the alcohol lamp determine the temperature of the distillation. Temperatures from 0 to 90 are possible. See Spirits for an explanation.

Some spirits are much easier to produce in quantity - Wood, Worm, Grain, Vegetable, Mineral, Fish and Grey are very common. Try to use these in your tests, and save the rare ones (Rock, especially) for the situations where they're required.

This guide is written assuming you're testing with spirits of Fire, which are an easy quality to produce in good quantity. If you're using different quality, the number of drops you get may differ - pay attention to this! Also, these tests were done on a calibration 3 lab. This may affect output.

When you test a temperature with a material, one of three results can occur:

• You are told (in Main) that the solution got too hot. This means you were at least 6 high.
• You are told (in Main) that the solution congealed. This means you were at least 6 low.
• You are told that you produced 1-6 drops of Essence. 6 means you're bang on; report your findings! (Assuming fire quality). A smaller amount means you're off by (6 - number of drops yield); change your temperature either up or down and figure out which!

When you get the 1-6 drops results, you're almost done! If you get X drops, the correct temperature is off by (6-X), so you only have two options left to test. For example, if you test temperature 45 and get 2 drops, the correct temperature is either 41 or 49. Test one or the other.

If you're too hot, then the temperature must be between 1 and 40. I usually test 20 at this point. Continue eliminating as many temperatures as possible until you get a 'drops' result.

If the starting 45 test is too cold, I usually test 70. Temperatures above 80 are interesting, because the highest-temp 'normal' spirit is Fish, which is 8. So the maximum temperature you can achieve without using Grey spirits is 80. Grey spirits are unique is that they're a quality *and* a type, and the quality is low - normally produces only 3 drops, so try to avoid using them where possible. On the other hand, they're cheap, so when you do use them, use them with abandon.

This is how I do very high temperatures:

• 80-82: 10 Fish. You could get the exact temperature by using Grey spirits, but the yield is better this way. For example, a temp 82 essence using 10 fish of fire yields 4, rather than 3 drops for 8 Fish + 2 Grey. If you have a very rare essence (rare herb), you might consider using better quality spirits, such as Air or Life, if you have them.
• 83: 9 Grey + 1 Grain. Since Grey are cheap, I use more of them where possible.
• 84: 8 Grey + 2 Vegetable.
• 85: 8 Grey + 1 Vegetable + 1 Mineral.
• 86: 8 Grey + 2 Mineral.
• 87: 9 Grey + 1 Vegetable.
• 88: 9 Grey + 1 Mineral.
• 89: 9 Grey + 1 Fish.
• 90: 10 Grey. I expect only yield 3, so this only tests 88, 89 and 90. However, if you get any drops, you will immediately know the correct temperature.

For very low temperatures, I try using as few Rock spirits as possible.