    === Alchemists ===

    Description
    Alchemists are the only class that can harness the abilities of the
    essences found in the dungeon. They can add these essences to staves,
    rings, wands, rods, and sometimes weapons and armour to create new items
    or recharge old ones. They can also extract essences from magical items
    they find. Using these abilities, Alchemists can get very good items at
    low levels. The trouble is getting them to survive later on.

    Alchemists are extremely proficient with all kinds of magical devices,
    and have made a fine art of extracting, storing, and using these
    objects' magical energies.  Because they neither fight well nor cast
    powerful spells, Alchemists rely on their craftsmanship to cope with
    the dangers of the dungeons.  They will quickly learn to create damage-
    dealing wands, rods, and staffs, forge powerful weapons and armour,
    make highly useful objects of other kinds, and eventually, at great cost
    to other knowledge, they can learn the perilous art of artifact creation
    itself.

    Starting Stat Modifiers
    Strength         -5
    Intelligence     +3
    Wisdom           +0
    Dexterity        +1
    Constitution     -2
    Charisma         +1
    Bonus Blows       0
    Hit Die          +d0
    Exp Penalty      30%

    Starting Skills:
    Skill                   Start Level     Skill Point Gains
    Combat                  1.000           [0.700]
      Weaponmastery         0.700           [0.700]
    Sneakiness              1.000           [0.900]
      Stealth               0.000           [0.400]
    Magic                   3.000           [0.900]
      Magic-Device          1.000           [1.250]
      Geomancy
        Fire                0.000           [0.100]
        Water               0.000           [0.100]
        Air                 0.000           [0.100]
        Earth               0.000           [0.100]
      Meta                  0.000           [0.500]
      Conveyance            0.000           [0.100]
      Divination            0.000           [0.500]
      Temporal              0.000           [0.100]
      Mind                  0.000           [0.100]
      Nature                0.000           [0.100]
      Necromancy            0.000           [0.100]
      Runecraft             0.000           [0.700]
      Thaumaturgy           0.000           [0.100]
      Alchemy               1.000           [0.800]
    Spirituality            1.000           [0.800]
      Prayer                0.000           [0.500]
    Monster-lore            0.000           [0.500]

    *An Alchemist cannot learn the Geomancy skill, but it is shown in his skill
    screen because the elemental schools are sub-skills of it.

    Innate Abilities:
    Ability              Character level
    Perfect casting             1

    Starting Equipment
    An Alchemist begins the game with:
        a Dagger
        six Essences of Explosion
        an Empty Bottle
        a Set of Leather Gloves
    Alchemy
    The alchemical techniques are accessed using the 'm' key.
    Alchemists may then 'E'xtract essences or add 'P'owers. The Alchemist must
    be wearing GLOVES to use their alchemy powers.

    Alchemist's are also capable of creating their own artifacts, but
    this is a time-consuming, and costly, activity. To do so, they must first
    learn the ability Artifact Creation, which costs a whopping 70 skill points
    to learn, and requires some high pre-requisites. Once they have done so,
    they need to imbue an ego item with a number of essences of magic (equal
    to their skill level) and then wield the item. While using the item,
    it will gain experience (which reduces the amount of exp the wearer
    gains during this time). When the Alchemist feels that the item is
    powerful enough,  they can finalise the artifact by "buying" powers
    using the experience the artifact has collected. They will also require
    exotic ingredients to add the abilities.

    Most (but not all) potions, scrolls, wands, staffs, rods, rings, and
    amulets contain usable magical energies.  An Alchemist taps that
    energy, using the technique "'E'xtract essences" to create one or more
    essences of a type appropriate to the original object.

    The drained object itself is now called "of nothing".  Unlike any
    other kind of object, it can have new magics added to it.

    An Alchemist can add power to such items by using essences he made
    or found.  He does this with the technique "'P'ower".  He
    can then select the object he wishes enchant, and the kind of
    object he wishes to create. Only object types that he knows the
    recipe for will be displayed, and ones for which essences are
    lacking will be displayed in red. Objects whose level exceeds his
    own are sometimes difficult to create, though he can always add
    gold to improve the chances of his success.

    A few pointers:
         -Recipes are (usually) logical. Acid essences don't make Dragon
          Weapons. And you can always look at the recipes you know with
          the "recipe 'B'ook" command.
         -Not all objects or ego-item types can be made using alchemy.
         -Alchemy is mostly reversible.  Most items that you can
          'E'xtract from, you can later re-create, if you learn about
          them when extracting from them. You won't always get enough
          essences from destroying an item to recreate it, though the
          chance of doing so will get higher as you increase in skill.
         -*identifying* an object that you can destroy will always teach
          you how to create it (if creating it is possible).
         -Since you can't create abilities in artifacts that you aren't
          aware of, make sure to *identify* all the artifacts you can.
         -You can't *identify* things you buy in shops, so you'll have
          to extract from them and take your chances.

    Some Recipes:
    Any Alchemist worth his salt knows lots of recipes.  By extracting from
    items in the dungeon, he learns to create more and more items. You can
    see the recipes you know using the "recipe 'B'ook" command. The Alchemist
    starts off knowing some basic recipes, and gains more recipes as time
    goes on.

    More details can be found in the Essences SPOILER).