Orb of Alchemy

An Orb of Alchemy is a currency item that can be used to upgrade a piece of normal equipment to rare.

Orbs of Alchemy are uncommon currency items that can be dropped by slain monsters, chests, and destructible containers. They also drop from Arcanist's Strongboxes.

Orbs of Alchemy can also be obtained by combining 20 , which are in turn obtained by selling identified magic and rare items with certain modifiers to any vendor.

Orbs of Alchemy can also be obtained from the following vendor recipes:

Result	Recipes
1×	3 x Identified rare items with same name
1×	2 x Identified rare items with same name and both 20% quality
1×	1 x normal, 1 x magic, 1 x rare (all 20% quality) of the same base type
2×	1 x normal, 1 x magic, 1 x rare (all 20% quality and unidentified) of the same base type

Spending

Orbs of Alchemy can be used to upgrade a normal item into a rare item. The resulting rare has randomly chosen affixes and has a random number of affixes (ranging from four to six [three to four if used on jewels]). Common use cases include upgrading good normal items (especially those with appropriate linked sockets) during the questing phase of a character's development, upgrading a normal map in order to take advantage of the large item quantity bonus from having up to six affixes, and upgrading strongboxes. Orbs of Alchemy are rarely used in the crafting of high-end rare items because it is easier to start with a good magic item and instead use a to upgrade it to a rare.

Orbs of Alchemy can also be used to purchase various items from vendors, including maps, skill gems, and unidentified rare items.

Furthermore, Orbs of Alchemy are also useful for a very large number of crafting bench recipes.

Version history

Version	Changes
0.9.4c	Tripled the drop rate of Orb of Alchemy and Chaos Sphere.
0.9.3g	Increased the drop rates of Orb of Alchemy by 50%, Orb of Chance by 25% and Chaos Sphere by 100%. They're still quite hard to find.
0.9.3e	Increased the drop rate of Orb of Alchemy by 25%.
Unknown	Introduced to the game