Apothecary profession

Similarly to Talisman making, this seems to be a bit of a money pit! I started but have stopped crafting at the moment. Wanted to wait until I got my mount before spanking any money on this profession.

Butchering, Cultivating and Scavenging are all viable skills for providing Apothecary mats. I have gone with butchering and it does provide quite a few ingredients but I think there is not much difference between them all. Cultivating takes the seeds you get off loot from bodies and you use them to grow the ingredients for Apothecary but quite often you still need to spend money on mats so I stuck with Butchering as at least I only have to fork out for the Apothecary side for things like glass vials etc.

Will be giving Apothecary more attention now Catnip has his mount and will post any more info if I have anything to report!

It's a good idea to get all your characters using a combination of gathering skills to give you all the mats you need for the professions and just take the professions on 2 characters not all.

Will soon find out if there is much value in these professions.

A few general pointers regarding apothecary training for all the Slytherins out there. Some slight spoilers for the profession included so if you want to learn yourself (ie. the hard way) then avoid this post!

Apothecary is a pretty straightforward profession.
Its chief advantage is you get lots of useful potions. These can make all the difference for those times you need to take down Champions and Heroes...or have just picked up the flag in Phoenix Gate. Your average level 16 potion of strength will give you +10dps...wonderful for acquiring PQ stage 1 influence.

Its chief disadvantage (at least at levels 1-19) is you get lots of potions you can't use. Ok, as a black orc I expect that potions of intelligence, ballistics and willpower are next to useless for me...but the real problem is the large numbers of "min level 20" and "min level 30" potions you'll produce.
Factor in the variability of potion making (a potion that lasts 10 mins... a potion that lasts 15 mins) and you soon have an inventory full of undrinkable goods.

A secondary disadvantage is that potions don't vendor for much. Be prepared to mail them to bank characters, stick them in the guild vault or steel yourself for regular auction house trips.

With these pros and cons out of the way here's some tips.
A potion (I won't cover dyes they're kinda straightforward) consists of a glass vial, a main ingredient and up to three additives, secondary ingredients.
Your three main secondary ingredients you'll be using are
Cloudy Water - stabilises your potion
Dusty Fusk (green herb) - makes more of the potion
Callous Gobswort (yellow mushroom) - makes the potion last longer (typically increasing the required level).
Crucially you can use more than one of the same type.
This is vital at higher levels where you need increasing amounts of water to make a stable potion.
Two water + one other should be the standard recipe you use. Consider using 3 water even right from the start - this will make weak potions but crucially, these will be potions you can use at a low level!

I'd start by using vendor bought ingredients to skill up as high as you can... probably to around skill 25 or 30.
Then burn through all your cultivated ingredients and hope you reach skill 50.
At this point you can buy better glass vials costing 12cp each.

By skill 100 you'll start struggling a little. Many potions will need 3 water by now and some types (notably restoration potions) will fail even with 3 water. At this point you need friendly scavengers to supply watering cans, or else to carefully hoard any stabilising herbs you cultivate.

With a stabiliser you can be confident your potion will work. Just be careful not to ramp up the other effects too high (ie. adding 2 gobswort) as you'll just end up with a level 30 potion you can't use.

A word on failure. Don't be afraid to experiment with recipes. If you make a failed recipe then all that happens is you lose your vial. Your other ingredients survive the failure.
I'd also advise against brewing volatile potions. These are very weak indeed...level 16 potions that heal 300 damage over 12 seconds etc. Its better to save the ingredients till you have stabilisers.
Skill does not affect failure. To my knowledge if a recipe fails at skill 1 it'll fail at skill 100.

Potions sell for less than the raw ingredients to vendors. The AH may prove differently...don't mind me though...ramblings of an old orc...one too many volatile potions and all that.

wow nice one bud, will keep that in mind if i ever get round to crafting, still need to work on talisman skill at somepoint just cant bring myself to do it yet.

I watched all of Tin Man whilst apothecising / cultivating from 50 to 120... 5 and a half hours of standing in IC next to the merchant. Its not the quickest of professions to master!

Have tried in-combat cultivating but find I tend to end up trying to grow potion bottles and my spare axe :-)

Ouch!

Oh well, will have to bite the bullet some time and get on with it on Catnip. Gues IC is best place to do it so you can access bank and AH too Have a fair few mats in the bank but probably nowhere near enough.