Adeptus Alchemicus — Understanding alchemy to maximize your composite profits

Industry Gameplay Center Science & Industry
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Hello there,

Over time I’ve noticed that a lot of players don’t know about alchemy in the composite reaction process.

That’s a shame because it can sometimes significantly increase the profitability of composite materials, whether you’re selling them directly in Jita or using them in other manufacturing jobs.

What is alchemy in Eve?

You know that composite materials come from two stages of reactions: the first one uses raw materials (moons + FB) to produce intermediate materials, which are then used in a second stage of reactions (with FB) to manufacture composites.

Alchemy reactions take the place of the first stage.
To do this, you need specific BPRs — the ones starting with “Unrefined” — which you can buy on the market like any other BPRs.
The main advantage of alchemy is that you get intermediate materials using cheaper moon materials than what synthesis reactions (the standard reactions) require.

For example, if you need 200 Ferrofluid, you can run one cycle of “Ferrofluid Reaction Formula”, which will require 100 units of Dysprosium (R64), 100 units of Hafnium (R32) and 5 Hydrogen Fuel Blocks. Since you need R64 and R32 moons, the purchase cost of these materials can be prohibitive.
If you go through alchemy using an “Unrefined Ferrofluid Reaction Formula”, you’ll need 5 cycles this time, requiring a total of 500 units of Hafnium (R32), 500 units of Cadmium (R16) and 25 Hydrogen Fuel Blocks. You’ll get 5 units of “Unrefined Ferrofluid”.

This material is not usable as is. You might be thinking: “what’s the point if you can’t do anything with it?”. Well, to make it usable, you need to reprocess it to get what you actually want.
In our example, by refining the 5 units of Unrefined Ferrofluid, you get the 200 units of Ferrofluid you wanted, but also 475 units of Hafnium.

This is where the real power of alchemy lies: not only do you replace R64 moon materials with R16, but you also recover part of the R32 used in the process.
This recovered moon material (the “side”) can be resold or kept in stock for your next production run, which will naturally lower your raw material purchase costs.

The second option is the best one if you produce composites regularly: after an initial investment, you’ll have a nearly permanent stock allowing you to relaunch at lower cost, thereby increasing your margins and quantities over time.

Be aware though, alchemy comes with a few constraints: you need specific BPRs (purchase cost to factor in), it requires a reprocessing step which means you need “Scrapmetal Processing” at level 5 (I wouldn’t recommend going lower, 4 being the bare minimum to get started), and it generally requires more production cycles to get the desired amount of intermediates, with a much longer base cycle time than synthesis reactions.

So it’s not a magic solution, but it is an interesting alternative worth using.

When should you use alchemy?

The benefit you can expect from alchemy obviously depends on moon material prices on the market. While alchemy can be very profitable, it’s not automatic — you need to run the numbers regularly for each intermediate material.

As far as I know, there’s no freely available online tool that lets you do this calculation; that’s why I put together an Excel spreadsheet that consolidates all this information and lets you see when it’s worth going through alchemy or if you’re better off sticking with synthesis reactions (or buying composites directly without manufacturing them).

You can download the file via this direct link:
Adeptus alchemicus - V1.1.xlsm
(Please don’t request edit access — simply go to File > Create a copy > Download a copy to save the file to your computer)

Prerequisites:

  • Excel 365 installed on your computer with an active license,
  • The official Eve Online plugin installed on your Excel (installation instructions here) and a character logged in.

In a nutshell, the file lets you:

  • Compare prices between two market hubs (HS Hub like Jita and a regional hub of your choice) to figure out where to buy, where to sell and how much to produce.
  • Plan your production by choosing SYN or ALC for each intermediate material where it’s possible (not all of them support it),
  • See the detailed cost breakdown (purchase, transport, manufacturing, taxes, market fees) and estimated profit per composite,
  • Automatically generate the shopping list and the list of jobs to launch in game,
  • Deduct your existing stock from purchase and transport costs to see the real impact of the side you’ve accumulated over your production runs,
  • Track and archive your productions to measure your actual profitability over time.

A user guide is included in the file (first sheet). The last sheet uses a VBA macro to automatically generate the job lists; you don’t have to enable it if you’d rather not use macros.

Make sure to regularly refresh the plugin data by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F9 to keep prices and market information up to date.

There you go, it’s not perfect but I think this file can really help you make the most of alchemy reactions, whether it’s to reduce your production costs if you use composites in Tech 2 manufacturing, or to increase your margins if you sell composites themselves.
It’s the first time I’ve made this kind of file, so don’t hesitate to let me know what you think and if there’s anything to improve or fix.

o7

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I looked at ferrogel and your calculator says to use the unrefined version of hexite. This is a HUGE mistake. I’m guessing you set it up with the logic of “if alchemy price < standard price then use alchemy” but that’s unwise. This is because for that unrefined hexite you need 180 runs at twice the length of a standard reaction run to match 18 of a standard one. You’d be investing 20x the slot-time for a tiny margin there. You need to take into account profit per reactions slot.

FWIW I haven’t seen a point in using alchemy to replace anything other than an R64.

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Fair point, the file calculates the impact of choosing between SYN and ALC on production profitability, not on the extra slot-time required. You’re right, most of the time it’s not worth using alchemy for intermediates that don’t use R64.

That said, the file is just a decision-making tool, it doesn’t tell you that you SHOULD use alchemy. It lets you see the impact of your choices based on your current stock and market prices at any given time.

Adding a profit/slot/hour indicator is a good idea, I’ll look into integrating that in a future update. Thanks for the feedback

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You need to take into account profit per reactions slot.

Thanks again for the feedback, it was very helpful. I’ve updated the file with two new metrics:

ISK/slot-hour : this shows how much profit each hour of production slot generates. When you switch an intermediate from SYN to ALC, the number of runs increases and the cycle time doubles, which means more slot-hours are consumed. This metric lets you see whether the extra slot-time is worth the savings on raw materials. Higher is better.

ISK/day : this shows how much profit each day of production cycle generates, from the first intermediate job to the last composite job. Since alchemy has a longer base cycle time, choosing ALC can extend your total production duration even if it increases your overall profit. This metric lets you compare how fast each configuration actually makes you money. Higher is better.

Together, these two indicators help you make more informed decisions: you can now see at a glance whether switching to alchemy is worth the extra time, or if you’d be better off sticking with synthesis and using your slots for something else. With all the available settings — production mode, max job duration, max runs per slot for each step — there’s everything you need to tailor your production to your own priorities, whether you want to maximize profit per day, optimize slot efficiency, or find the best balance between the two.

The file has been updated on the download link.

I also renamed it to Adeptus Alchemicus (if you’re going to fake Latin, might as well do it properly)

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