In BDO, alchemy stones are able to give the player benefits depending on the type of stone used. There are three main types of alchemy stones, destruction, protection, and life.
Making Alchemy Stones
Now, before we continue I want to point out that you should have done quite some alchemy before you start making alchemy stones. The reasons for this are both related to your skill level and the fact that you will need an ingredient you can only get as side products from many mid to high-end alchemy recipes. If you are new to alchemy you should read my alchemy guide and then level up your alchemy to at least professional 1.
Also, for each successful production of an alchemy stone, there is an even chance of getting one of the three types and there is no way to craft a specific type. This means you will usually end up with a few stones you weren’t really going for, but they could still come in handy later. In any case, once you have the skills and tools required you will need the following ingredients:
The Recipe For an Alchemy Stone (Random Type)
- 10 Clear Liquid Reagent
- 5 Powder of Time (Nodes: Glish Swamp, Quint Hill, Omar Lava Cave, etc.)
- 10 Pure Powder Reagent
- 10 Shining Powder
- 3 Sinner’s Blood
Once you have these materials you need to use your alchemy utensil to make the alchemy stone. As with all alchemy and cooking batches, just place the correct amount for a single batch into the utensil and start the process.
Where to Get These Materials
It’s obviously easiest to get most of these materials from the central marketplace and if you have the silver then, by all means, do that. But if you want to get them on your own or want to try to make some money making alchemy stones then here is an explanation on where you can get these materials in the wild.
The Reagents and Powder of Time.
Clear Liquid Reagent and Pure Powder Reagent are the two reagents you should focus on making when you are starting alchemy so you probably have a bunch already. If not then please go read my alchemy guide mentioned above and start making those reagents until your alchemy level hits Professional 1. Powder of Time can be gotten by having workers work nodes that give you lead.
Sinner’s Blood
The recipe for Sinner’s Blood is
- 1 Clear Liquid Reagent
- 2 Blood from one of Sheep / Pig / Llama / Goat / Ox / Deer / etc (Blood Group 2)
- 1 Powder of Flame – (Most copper nodes like Coastal Cave, Northern Heidel Quarry, etc.)
- 1 Bloody Tree Knot – (Node: Treant Forest, Elric Shrine, Stonetail Wasteland)
Shining Powder
This material is the most difficult one as it is only produced as a side product from other mid-level alchemical processes. So, to get this material you need to do make some mid-level alchemy recipes. The amount you get is rather random and the low-level recipes such as Clear Liquid Reagent do not give Shining Powder as a side ingredient. However, Sinner’s Blood does give you Shining Powder so go make a lot of that.
Alchemy Stone Tiers and Grades
Alchemy stones come in seven different tiers and four different grades. The tiers determine the amount of the benefit you get from the stone and the grade determines which benefits you get. You can see the benefits from the different tiers and grades in the images below. A freshly made stone will be of the bottom of the tier and grade list and to get a better stone you will need to upgrade it.
Upgrading Alchemy Stones
To upgrade alchemy stones takes a lot of work and even more silver. You first need to polish your alchemy stone by using certain materials and then you need to grow the stone. Both of which are gone in the alchemy window. You can access the alchemy window by pressing the alchemy button at the bottom of your inventory shown in the image below.
Polishing an Alchemy Stone
The first step in upgrading alchemy stones is to polish them. What this means in practice is that you use certain materials to increase the “experience” of the alchemy stone. Once the experience hits 80% you can try to grow the stone. Life stones need special crops and high-quality crops for polishing, destruction stones need ingots and pure metal crystals, and protection stones need plywood and sturdy plywood.
Notice that the experience earned from polishing the stones differs considerably between materials. so it is well worth it to explore the experience vs cost aspect of polishing your alchemy stone.
Growing an Alchemy Stone
Once your alchemy stone is at 80% you can attempt to grow it. Pressing the grow button opens a screen where you can place your alchemy stone in one box and a black stone in the other box. Pressing the “Growth” button will initiate the attempt. If you succeed you will get your new alchemy stone in the side box. If you fail then you lose half of the experience of the stone.
Here is a table with upgrade chances for all the tiers and grades of the stones. You can see from it that each growth attempt has both a chance of upgrading the tier and grade of the stone. To be more clear, what I call tier the creator of the table calls grade and what I call grade he or she calls color.
Note that after you reach the Sturdy tier there is a chance that your stone will lose a tier level if you fail at growing it. Which is the main reason for my hate of growing alchemy stones.
Using Alchemy Stones in BDO
To use your alchemy stone you need to place it in the center icon of your character gear screen. Once there, you need to check the box next to the stone to activate it. Once activated, you start betting the boost from the stone and will continue to do that until you uncheck the box. Having an active alchemy stone reduces the durability of the stone by 1 every ten minutes. When the durability becomes 0 you can no longer use the stone and need to restore the durability (repair) of the stone.
How to Repair an Alchemy Stone
Once you have your first alchemy stone you will notice that it has durability like any other equipment. This durability can be repaired, but it needs a different way than just talking to an NPC and have him repair it. To repair, or recharge an alchemy stone as it is called, you need to use the alchemy tab in-game. This time it will open directly in the window we need to use.
In the “Recharge” window, you need to place your stone in the right slot and the materials needed to repair the stone in the left slot. Then press the recharge button to restore the durability.
In the table below you can see how much durability any type of material restores. Also, you will need more materials per durability depending on the tier of the stone. This goes up by one item per tier, meaning that an imperfect stone will only need one item per durability, while a sharp stone will need five items per durability. I have never owned a resplendent or splendid stone, let alone a shiny one so I am not sure about the number of materials, but I assume that the trend holds.
| Durability Restored | Number of Materials Needed | ||
| Reagents | 1 | Imperfect | 1 |
| Blood | 4 | Rough | 2 |
| Oil | 10 | Polished | 3 |
| Sturdy | 4 | ||
| Sharp | 5 | ||
| Resplendent / Splendid / Shiny | 6 / 7 / 8 (?) |
You can also see how restoring the durability of your alchemy stone is done in this video [Coming Soon].
Is it Profitable to Grow Alchemy Stones?
Personally, I find it way to much work to grow alchemy stones to earn silver and the RNG element is far to hindersome. Having said that, with a good deal of luck you can earn a massive amount of silver from making these stones if you manage to push them into the highest tiers.
So that’s about all there is to growing and recharging alchemy stones in Black Desert Online. Now if you found this guide useful then please share it with friends and allies in BDO and feel free to check out my other guides.