WAR crafting guide: Apothecary

Apothecary is one of two production crafting trades, where you basically make varying potions to aid you or your allies. These potions can range from strength buffs to healing to resistances, and much more. These potions can become essential to your character later on in the game, especially if you're playing a class that can't heal itself, and you tend to solo a lot. You'll also be able to create dyes as an Apothecary, which are always a popular commodity in any MMO.

Apothecary is considered an easier crafting trade to take early on, as all of the ingredients for low-level potions can be purchased from the Apothecary trainer. Most of the first potions you make will be considered volatile, so you'd be better off selling them to the merchant until you can get to a higher level. These volatile potions, being made by a complete alchemy noob (you), can have negative side effects for your character if consumed. They're basically used for training purposes only.

First, you'll need to get your ability icons ready. Press V to bring up the Abilities window, then click on the General tab to see your crafting skills. Drag your production crafting skills to your skill bar for easy access later. When you left-click on that skill, it will bring up your crafting window where you do the crafting itself. To make a potion, you'll need a container, a main ingredient and 3 other ingredients. Each of these features are clearly marked on the item's description. The ingredients are all an experiment, kind of like your chemistry set you had as a kid. Mix and match to your heart's content, and see what happens. Fun with science! Later on, you'll get stabilizers (or fixers for dye) which help to make your potions less volatile, and have less of a chance to explode or have other negative side effects. The further along in the skill you progress, the better ingredients you'll get, which will create much better potions.

If you haven't noticed the game's keen sense of humor by now, there are some elements of the Apothecary that can invoke quite a chuckle. Elvish Parsley anyone? How about some Motley Smedleycap?