Finally transmuted a Screaming Mandrake while Foxified
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Yes, but most of it felt worth it, and contributed to making it an accomplishment.
The main thing that felt painful rather than providing a sense of accomplishment was chewing through Raw Materials to get Refined Salt randomly. Potash is available elsewhere now; it’d be nice to have a reliable way to refine salt as well. Doesn’t have to be a way to obtain it directly; it’d be satisfying if there were a way to make it that wasn’t up to chance. It feels like, there’s already a hugely random way to get a Screaming Mandrake quickly; Alchemy should be the slow-and-steady way to get it without dealing with randomness.
In its current state, I did it once for the achievement and the feeling of accomplishment, and now that it’s done, I don’t anticipate wanting to do it again.
Other than that, it was mildly annoying that many of the ways to obtain Alchemy used up precious resources that couldn’t be spared; I had to get almost all of the Alchemy from the Stale Soda / Arsenic mixing and from completions of the raw materials refinement while hoping for refined salts. But if not for the randomness, that would feel like a somewhat interesting puzzle: do you want to spend all your Alchemy effort and resources towards a single reliable Screaming Mandrake, or do you want to make all sorts of other potions instead?