Advanced Twilight Alchemy II Guide
Disclaimer: This guide may be out-of-date and/or biased and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the jRO staff or wiki editors. As this is a player created guide, it is based on the opinions and experiences of its author(s). Please do not make any major changes or alter the original intent of the article. Thank you!
This guide is intended for players already familiar with the basic workings of creating Condensed White Potions (Slim Whites) but lack information on generating the highest success rate possible with the lowest cost.
If you are looking for a basic understanding of Twilight Alchemy II, please see the existing guide Twilight Alchemy II Guide (Mass Slim White Potion Making) by .jing-jing. which can be found on the anthemRO forums at http://www.anthemro.com/forums/index.php/topic,19078.0.html.
Contents
The Cost of Twilight Alchemy II
Most people who make large amounts white slims usually have the ingredients and costs associated with them memorized or at least written down. As shown in .jing-jing.'s Twilight Alchemy II Guide the cost of creating one slim white is exactly 1,287z. This cost can be reduced if the player uses a rogue with the skill Compulsion Discount to reduce the cost of the white slim ingredients.
Using the Rogue's discount, the cost of creating one white slim drops to 1,271z. That will save you 16z per potion. If you are doing a batch of 30,000 slim whites, the savings adds up to 480,000z. To make things simpler, it is highly recommended that you create your rouge on the same account as your alchemist or creator. This will eliminate the need of transferring your ingredients when you want to begin making slim whites.
If you are intent on producing slims only from using the Rogue's Discount on NPC's the cost to attempt to create 30,000 slim whites is 38,130,000z.
The costs of creating a slim white drop further if you are willing to utilize other sources to obtain white potions.
The cost of creating a white potion if you farm or obtain a white herb for free is 13z. The 13z comes from the fact that you need a white herb (free in this case) an empty medicine bowl (6z) and an empty potion bottle (7z). Using your 13z white pot, the cost to create the white slim will now drop to 384z. Or if you frequently go to the sphinx dungeon level 4 or 5 and kill the anubis monsters they frequently drop white potions. If you can get a white pot for free, the cost goes down even further to 371z.
Now that you are using a rogue to purchase your ingredients, the highest you should be paying for white potions are 900z. You can also look around the shops in Prontera, Alberta, Payon Dungeon, etc. to see if alchemists are selling their own white potions for less then 900z. If they are, you will save even more zeny when you begin your mass production. One word of warning though. You should try to buy the potions in round lots of 200. It seems gravity has fixed the error where you could have normal potions, your potions, and someone else's potions in random quantities and still do Twilight Alchemy II as long as they added up to 200. Now, if you do not have 200 of the same kind of potion in your inventory when you invoke the Twilight Alchemy II spell, the spell will fail. As a side note, if you are buying white herbs off a vendor, its recommended that you don't buy above 887z per white herb. Remember you have to convert the herb into a white potion, and if you did not get the empty medicine bowl and empty potion bottle for free you will spend more zeny then buying it from an NPC at 900z.
Also, if you have already purchased a Kafra clip from the Item shop, you can use that to save zeny every time you have to restock your depleted materials for another run. While it may not be cost effective to purchase a Kafra clip just to make slim whites, using one if you have it can save roughly 5,000z per 30,000 batch. If you include moving your slims around to other characters, producing multiple 30,000 batches, and selling them in 8,000 increments, the Kafra costs will add up.
So in summary, the normal cost of producing a batch of 200 slim whites is around 1287z per slim. However if you use these techniques, you can get your costs down to 371z. So in the off chance you cannot sell your slims on the market, worse comes to worse, you can always sell them to the NPC with your alchemist or creator using level 10 overcharge for 744z. Or if your engaged in a price war with competing alchemists or creators you would be better equipped to weather the price fluctuations.
The Characters Needed for Twilight Alchemy II
There are additional characters that are extremely helpful in helping create massive amounts of slim whites. All of these characters can help increase your success rate, lower your costs in production, or just make it out-right faster to do. In .jing-jing.'s guide, the basic characters are the alchemist or creator, gypsy, high priest, soul linker, and super novice. The additional characters are 1 or 2 paladins with the skill gospel, a dancer with the skill Service For You (or a soul linked bard with level 10 Apple of Idun will also gain access to service for you), and a professor.
The reason for the paladin is because of the All Stats buff from gospel. For the next few minutes, all the stats of the affected target are increased by +20. Not +2 like in the description, but +20. As for using 2 paladins, while gospel skills will not stack (you will never get +40). The odds of you getting the All stats buff will increase. However, there is a upper limit to how many gospel paladins you can run in a party before you start slowing down in production because your spending all your time managing the 5+ paladins. (Thanks to Kenji64 and BlackMageRose_13 for helping me that one time to empirically test it.)
The dancer or soul linked bard using the Service For You skill is useful because they not only increase the max SP but also they reduce the cost of the Twilight Alchemy II by around 50%. So not only do you get more SP, but you use less SP while producing white slims. That means less trips to the doctor (1,000z for SP heal) or less spamming of GJ or blue potions.
The professor is useful because of the skill Soul Exchange. If your alchemist or creator gets low on SP you can have a professor cast soul exchange. This will swap the available SP on the professor (which should always be full and/or higher then your max SP even with Service for You activated) with your SP. So that means less trips to the doctor or using less GJ and blue pots. If you have a professor, it will be a boon to your paladins because they will be constantly running out of SP because of the constant gospel upkeep requirements.
In summary, there are additional characters beyond what was listed in .jing-jing.'s guide that will greatly increase your success or lower your cost in producing white slims. While these characters are again optional, they are extremely useful. Now not many people can run all 9 clients at once. I, at most, was only able to run 7 clients. When I did solo batches, I would forgo the extra paladin and the professor. If you have help, the 9 clients are really easy to do.
The Stats and Equipment Needed for Twilight Alchemy II
Everybody knows that alchemists or creators should be at least job 50 as an alchemist or job 70 as a creator and hopefully base level 99 as well so they can pump the most amount of stats into dex and luk as the can to get the highest success rate. The equipment shown in .jing-jing.'s guide is an excellent starting point for most players, however, there is even better gear to use if you have access to it. The picture below shows you some of the gear you can get to boost your stats.
The Kaho of course is needed for the boost to int and dex. The Djinn increases dex by +40. If you slot two drops cards into the Djinn it will also increase your dex by 2. I am aware of the injustice combo that is available if you have the Zherithsh Guard (Dominatrix Guard). For simplicity sake, I just put in two drops cards. If you can slot a Djinn with Drops and Injustice and have a Zherithsh guard for the extra 3 luk (net gain of 2 stat points because you lose 1 dex by not using the drop drops djinn) go for it. The wild glasses are used because for every base 11 str points you put into your character, your luk bonus increases by one. At 99/70 for a creator you will have left over stat points even after you set both your dex and luk to 99. Now I only set my base str to 11 so I could get that extra str point. But if you don't mind having low int, you can set your base str to 22 and reduce your int to 9. That will give you an additional luk point to increase your success rate.
This is what I was able to achieve in stat points using various boosting techniques. Yours can be higher if new combos are made, you set your base str to 22 or if you use the injustice combo mentioned above.
To get the stats listed above, I used the equipment shown earlier, I used +10 dex food and +10 luk food , bless, and gloria. Most of the time you should have these stats because there will be gaps for when you do not have the gospel buff activated.
When the gospel buff of All Stats activate, you can achieve the above stats. If you have multiple paladins working with you, these stats will appear more often. While it is extremely rare for you to fail to hit 200/200 with these stats, it is possible. But many times you will successfully produce 200/200 white slims.
If you want to make sure you get 200/200 white slims every time you get the gospel buff, you can use a box of gloom. Boxes of gloom cast improve concentrate level 1 (The same skill as the archer class). The box of gloom only lasts 60 seconds, so in my opinion, is not really worth it but in every trial run where I used a box of gloom when I had the all stats buff active, I never got any rate lower then 200/200. These boxes can be found in merchant vends or you can get a Cloud Hermit accessory and farm them yourself by killing plant monsters. Again, in my opinion, it's not worth the effort, but you are free to do so if you want.
Calculating Your Break Even Point
Most new alchemists or creators wanting to sell their slim whites on the market are concerned about how to calculate their break even point. Knowing your break even point is important because you will know at what price you have to sell to make sure you do not lose any zeny. While selling slim whites is an easy way to make big profit, selling for less then you make will have the potential of wiping out your zeny reserves quickly. Here is a basic formula I created to help track your break even point.
Formula:
(((Batch of 200 – Successfully Made Pots)*Unit Cost) / Successfully Made Pots) + Unit Cost
For example, assume you were only using the Rogue NPC discount to purchase all your ingredients. Also, let's assume after you performed the Twilight Alchemy II you successfully created 185 slim whites (92.5% Success Rate). The formula would work as follows:
=(((200-185)*1271)/185)+1271, which equals 1,374.05z or roughly 1,374z.
This means that in order to recoup your original investment of 254,200z, you would have to sell each of the 185 slim whites for 1,374z. If you have all the equipment and characters listed in the previous section, you should not be creating such a low amount of slim whites. On average you should be able to produce a 98% success rate. So your total slim whites created would be much higher and your break even cost would be much lower.
Now just for fun, assume you farmed 200 white herbs and turned them into white potions and you purchased everything else using the Rogue discount. If you again made only 185 slim whites your break even point would be as follows:
=(((200-185)*384)/185)+384, which equals 415.14z or roughly 415z.
To recoup your original investment of 76,800z you would have to sell your 185 white slims at 415z. So if next time you want to sell a few slims at say 1,000z. Let people PM you in-game and tell you how stupid you are for selling your slims at such a great loss! Go ahead nod, smile, and keep right on selling.
Surviving Slim Whites Price Wars
Now assume the worst has happened, and you are locked in a price war with rival creators. If you were only using the Rogue Discount technique or even worse buying everything with your creator you would not have much room to wiggle on the price. Even at 100% success rate, you would begin to lose vast amounts of zeny if you dropped the price below 1,271z or 1,287z respectively. But if you were to combine techniques, you would have much more wiggle room on the price.
For example, make some of your 30,000 batch, say 10,000 from white herbs (and before you complain that you can't get 10,000 white herbs for free, see the picture below. It's HARD mind you but it is doable), 5,000 from white potions you and your friends picked up from anubis in sphinx dungeon level 5 (or white pots they just outright donated to your cause), and buy the other 15,000 from the NPC using the Rogue Discount.
Calculating your break even point becomes a little more complex, but you should be able to arrive at the amount you need to stay at or above before you start to incur losses. Now let's assume you have attempted to created a batch of 30,000. If you are using all the equipment and characters listed above you should have around a 98% success rate. Doing this I created 29,401 out of 30,000 white slims (98%). Writing down your results after you finish a portion will slow you down in production, but it is definitely worth it so you can track your cost easier.
Formula:
(((Portion of Batch attempted – Successfully Made Pots)*Unit Cost) / Successfully Made Pots) + Unit Cost
Example above:
Free White Herbs:
=(((10000-9800)*384)/9800)+384, which equals 391.84z or roughly 392z.
Free White Potions from Sphinx Dungeon and donations
=(((5000-4900)*371)/4900)+371, which equals 378.57z or roughly 379z.
Purchased White Potions from NPC
=(((15000-14701)*1271)/14701)+1271, which equals 1296.85z or roughly 1297z.
Multiply by the ratios to get an accurate weight:
10,000 is 1/3 of 30,000 so 392z * 1/3 = 130.66z
5,000 is 1/6 of 30,000 so 379z * 1/6 = 63.166z
15,000 is 1/2 of 30,000 so 1297z * 1/2 = 648.5z
The total break even cost for this 30,000 batch of white slims is 842.326z or roughly 843z.
As a double check, let's make sure our math is correct.
Attempting 10,000 slim whites from free herbs costs 3,840,000z.
Attempting 5,000 slim whites from free white potions from friends and dungeon runs costs 1,855,000z.
Attempting 15,000 slim whites from white potions from the NPC costs 19,065,000z.
The total zeny cost for the 30,000 slims is 24,760,000z.
Our calculated break even cost is 843z. So 843z * 29,401 slim whites equals 24,785,043z. Since our break even price was not a whole number (you can't sell for a fraction of a zeny) the amount was higher then expected since we rounded up at the end. But even if you sold all 29,401 slim whites at 843z a piece you would gain a profit of 25,043z. Not bad for trying to break even.
Now assume you have a rival creator and they are trying to out produce you and drive down the price to force you out of business. Normal prices ranges for white slims are anywhere from 1,300z to as much as 1,450z. Rival creators usually will slowly bring down the price and assume that you both will start taking heavy losses selling below the 1,287z threshold. It's a good idea to price match them and not immediately go down to your break even price. Remember, they will most likely be taking heavy losses to their reserves while they think they are driving you to bankruptcy. While you will not be bringing in as much profit as you were at the normal price, you will still be turning a small profit.
Now in the chance that they are aware of these techniques and also have a low break even point. Then you will have to resort to the normal techniques of bringing in additional zeny to support your losses.
In summary, while for most normal white slim makers, a price war going down below 1,287z or even 1,160z would mostly likely spell disaster. Usually only ranked alchemists who have the backing of a large WoE guild would usually be able to survive such a harsh price war. But if you use some or all of the techniques outlined in this guide, not only can you increase your proficiency and profit, but in bad economic times you will be well equipped to weather even the harshest of storms.
Acknowledgments and Credits
Thanks to everyone who helped me understand the intricacies of mass slim white production. Much thanks to JeNn for helping me find a lot of the techniques and applications found in this guide. And also for sticking with me and helping me produce the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of slim whites needed to eventually rank.
Thanks to the guild members in TA, Maelstrom, Carpe Diem, and members of other guilds for providing me with MASSIVE amounts of free herbs, potions, witched starsand, bowls, and almost everything I would need to make extremely cheap slim whites in bulk.
Thanks to .jing-jing. For making such an excellent beginners guide to Twilight Alchemy II.
And special thanks to HeavenlyBabe and Miss All Sunday. You two made doing this really interesting and helped JeNn and I greatly enhance our knowledge on this subject by forcing us to think of ways to survive.
