You have 16 Days Until Your Place of Business is Shut Down

> I'd recommend we take the time to go back to town. Once there, we can empty the basket and then plan an expedition into the forest properly, as well as perhaps recruit other people to our cause. Sarah, Dave, you have other friends you can call on, right? Especially if we offer to pay them per day.

> New friends mean new dual techs, too. We must find them all. All of them. Teched. Dually so.

>Personally, I think we should continue our current expedition. No one is really hurt that badly and the basket is nowhere near full. Leaving now would waste half a day of travel.

>I say a round of finding new ingredients at least before we go back.

> Yeah, fair enough. Let's go for finding ingredients then, since that's what we're going to need for alchemy. Monsters will turn up from time to time anyway, so we'll get all the combat experience we need that way.

You decide to look around for ingredients. You manage to find some more of the herbs you found before, as well as some wild grapes and bits of dead wood which seem like they might be good as fuel or something. No monsters really show up to bother you while you're doing this, fortunately. After that, you head back to town, saying goodbye to Dave on the way to the workshop.

It's mid-afternoon, and the strange watch Master gave you says it's about 3/4 of the way through the day. Now that you're here again, you decide to finally take a look at the very first section of Alchemy for Beginners, since it doesn't seem like it'll take too long to do.

The first part of this section has a subheading: "A Warning", but it's been crossed out by Marie and next to it is scribbled "Be Lazy!". The rest of this section reads:

To the outside observer, alchemy appears easy. It looks like just throwing some things together into a pot and coming out with something new. This could hardly be farther from the truth. Alchemy is equal parts art and science, and even the simplest of recipes requires time and concentration to carry out. Don't misunderstand: This warning is not about commitment. It is about pacing yourself. The level of concentration necessary for performing most alchemy is tiring to uphold for the long hours most recipes require, and to go into the creation of any item already exhausted, or to become exhausted midway through, is to invite disaster and failure of all kinds. The intuition that a hopeful alchemist really needs to develop is that which can count the cost ahead of time, and know whether one will be able to complete the work before becoming exhausted. If you are at risk of being exhausted, or already exhausted to begin with, you should take some time to yourself to rest. Do whatever it is that makes you happy, or sleep; it doesn't matter as long as you are well-rested afterward and ready to take on the task at hand. Ingesting caffeine in whatever you favorite form is is a quick fix if you are exhausted and must get something done immediately, but it is no substitute for a proper rest; if you use caffeine, you will then crash, and be in a worse state afterward than you otherwise would have been.

Information: Resting and Energy
While in town, you have the option to spend a chunk of time resting. This is the only way to recover Sarah's energy, which is needed for alchemy and skills; injuries, on the other hand, will generally heal over time regardless of whether you're resting. Of course, resting longer recovers more energy, and you have the option of choosing to rest up to a specific energy state, or something like "just enough to complete this recipe" if desired. Other characters' energy may fluctuate but tend to recover as they spend time in town. Some items can temporarily recover energy, but typically come with negative side effects.

The rest of the section on alchemy reads as follows:

That out of the way, alchemy is indeed the process of combining objects together to make new things. This combination is a conceptual one, rather than a physical one, and getting this idea through one's head can be the toughest step a would-be alchemist ever has to take. Beyond understanding this, and comprehending that as a result recipes must be followed to the letter to produce the intended results, there is little else to it other than to try it yourself. The more alchemy you do, the easier it will be, and more difficult recipes will become easier to grasp. Even the recipes you already know will steadily become easier and less exhausting to perform as a result.

Included in the middle section of this book are a few basic recipes any alchemist is likely to want to know: Supplement, a basic intermediary needed for countless other recipes; Healing Salve, for repairing the wounds often incurred on expeditions; and Bomb, a simple explosive useful mainly for self-defense.

Marie drew an arrow from the part that says "must be followed to the letter" to a note in the margins, where she wrote "but a GREAT alchemist knows when and how to improvise!"

You take a quick skim of the three recipes provided in the book, and make a mental note of the ingredients for each, and about how long it looks like they'll take. None of them seem all that hard, but both of the ones that aren't Supplement require a Supplement to make, so it seems like you'd have to do that one first. You could also take the time to check in with the rest of the shopkeepers Marie listed in the "interacting with people" section to get an idea of what sort of inventory they have, or go see who Stahl is.

>

Date: 1/2
Time: About three quarters

Status & Inventory:

236 Cole

Character Status:

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Sarah Kennigan: Barely Scratched, Energetic
Weapon: Basic Staff
Armor: Normal Clothes
Accessory: None
Skills:

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Ether Light: A self-defense technique from Master. Non-elemental magic attack, any 1 square.

Dave Barrett: Barely Scratched, Just Fine
Weapon: Hatchets
Armor: Normal Clothes
Accessory: None
Skills:

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Hatchet Throw: Throw a hatchet in any of 8 directions. Does physical damage to whatever it hits first.

Fee: 0 Cole

Basket (15/60):

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Magic Grass x 6
Puniball x 1
Wolf Fur x 2
Wild Grapes x 2
Wood Chips x 4

Container:

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Spoiled Milk x 1
Tap Water x ∞

Known Recipes:

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Ingot: 1 Day; [Metal]
Cloth: 1 Day; [String]
Supplement: 1/2 Day; 1 [Any]
Healing Paste: 3/4 Day; 1 Supplement, 1 [Medicinal Herb], 1 [Fuel]
Bomb: 3/4 Day; 1 Supplement, 1 [Paper], 1 [Fuel]

Locations:

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Syzygy: Home town.
-Sarah's Workshop (Current Location)
-Castle Front Desk
-Castle Hallway
-Hagel's Smithy
-(???)
Nearby Forest: Half a day's walk east of Syzygy.
-Forest Entrance

A/N:

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Time required for recipes "rolls over" from one day to the next, so if you start making a Supplement now it'd push time forward to 1/4 of the way through the next day and successfully make it.

I should probably mention that moving things between the basket and container is a manual thing to be commanded unless you include something like "dump basket contents into container" in a command to go to town. This is partially because the basket is also where usable items go.