Alchemy caps at level 10, and level 1 opens gem fusion
✍️ Alice・愛麗沙
Mabinogi Mobile has not launched in English, so treat this as a plan to have ready rather than one to execute tonight. Alchemy caps at level 10 — the lowest ceiling of any life skill, against 37 for the gathering skills. It is not a truncated skill, it is the most front-loaded one: level 1 alone opens gem promotion, gem fusion including cross-type fusion, and ore conversion. Above that only three rungs matter — level 3 for rune promotion, level 5 for fashion-equipment promotion and fusion, level 10 for performance improvement. Levels 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 open no new system at all. So the correct posture is: take it to 3 immediately, decide later whether you need 5, and treat 10 as its own separate decision. Level 10 buys the right to move an entire equipment investment onto a new piece of gear, which makes it the one rung worth maxing a skill for on the strength of a single feature. One more fact people miss: cross-type gem fusion is available at level 1, so the free combat-power chain that ends in a Star Prism has no skill-level gate in front of it whatsoever. What blocks you is material, and only material.
A skill with a ceiling of ten
Put the gap on the table first, because it is where this whole piece starts.
| Skill group | Cap |
|---|---|
| The 8 gathering skills (logging, mining, herbalism, shearing, harvesting, tilling, insect catching, fishing) | 37 |
| Daily gathering, crafting, cooking, potion-making | 35 |
| Part-time jobs | 30 |
| Alchemy | 10 |
Alchemy sits more than three times below every other life skill, and yet it governs the most expensive things in the game: gems, runes, fashion, and the ability to relocate everything you have poured into one piece of gear.
The Korean community wiki’s own guess is that the entry-level alchemy tool being literally named “beginner’s” hints the cap is a placeholder for a future expansion. That is community speculation, not an operator statement. Whatever the reason, the present result is a skill with an extremely low barrier and an extremely concentrated payoff.
What each level opens
This is the only table on the page worth memorising.
| Level | What it opens |
|---|---|
| Lv.1 | Gem promotion, gem fusion (including cross-type), ore conversion |
| Lv.2 | — |
| Lv.3 | Rune promotion |
| Lv.4 | — |
| Lv.5 | Fashion-equipment promotion, fashion-equipment fusion |
| Lv.6–9 | — |
| Lv.10 | Performance improvement |
Six of the ten levels open nothing new. The value of this skill is not continuous; it is four steps.
And the first step is the tallest. Two of the three things level 1 hands you are core loops of the game:
- Ore conversion turns unprocessed ore into Deka and gold. Every Deka ore inside a paid package has to pass through this step before it is money — without alchemy, half of what you bought sits in your bag unusable.
- Gem fusion, cross-type included, which is the doorway to the Star Prism line.
The Star Prism line has no level gate
This section is separated out because it corrects a very common misreading.
“What level do I need for cross-type fusion?” The answer is level 1 — it is already open the moment you take the skill.
The path itself was reworked on 9/9 (Taiwan patch notes 3541097, “gem alchemy rework”): gem promotion and cross-type fusion were merged into one “Gem Alchemy” screen, the triple quartz and dark-light stone recipes were deleted, and only Star Prism and chrysoberyl fusion remain. The path now:
- Three different Rough single-colour gems + a Rough dark-light stone → Rough Star Prism (one fusion; no triple quartz to make first)
- Three different Rough S single-colour gems + obsidian S + diamond S → Rough Star Prism S
- Triple quartz and dark-light stones you already hold still fuse into Star Prisms with obsidian + diamond, or with a dark-light stone
- Star Prism ×3, promoted → the next stage; from Elite upward the promotion recipe unlocks only after “obtaining 6 Star Prisms of Rough S or above” (existing characters are credited by what they hold)
The rework article has the full table and what to do with Elite-or-higher old gems.
| Stage | Mono gem (each) | Star Prism (all stats / HP) | Tag lines | Damage per tag line |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 (green, Advanced) | +8 | — | — | — |
| Stage 2 S (green, Advanced) | +15 | — | — | — |
| Stage 3 (blue, Rare) | +22 | 22／180 | 1 | ? not published |
| Stage 4 S (blue, Rare) | +29 | 29／250 | 2 | 1.7% |
| Stage 5 (no prefix, Elite) | +36 | 36／320 | 3 | 2.0% |
| Stage 6 S | No mono gem at this stage | ? not published | 3 | 2.1% |
| Stage 7 (final) | No mono gem at this stage | +10 / +180 over Stage 6 | 3 | 2.2% |
Mostly KR player panel transcriptions; the stage-5 all-stats 36 / HP 320 match the Heliodor values Nexon Taiwan prints. Taiwan took Korea's 7/16 gem-alchemy rework on 9/9: mono gems can be crafted up to stage 4 (crude S), and from elite up only Star Prisms can be promoted — elite mono gems you already hold can be converted back into crude gems plus gold.
The table above is the real per-stage numbers. Read the third column and the reason for walking this line is obvious: the prism column pays all stats and maximum HP at once, where an ordinary single-colour gem pays one of them. On top of that, tag slots only exist from stage 3, and a tag-damage percentage only from stage 4.
What blocks you is never the alchemy level, it is the raw material. Shards come from gem boxes at 40,000 gold each in the gold shop (ten a day), from the cat merchant’s pack shop, and from hunting-ground zone bosses. And the Taiwan cash shop does not sell gems at all — a sweep of its whole catalogue and price list returns nothing. Paying players walk exactly the same road on this one.
Level 3 and level 10: the two rungs worth pushing for
Level 3 opens rune promotion, and rune promotion becomes a different animal once alchemy catalysts are attached to it: a failure retries once automatically, and a success carries a separate 10% “great success” that produces two higher-tier runes outright. That is a multiplier almost nobody prices in — the same materials, with a one-in-ten chance of doubling.
The catalysts themselves are the constraint, and their rhythm is stiff:
- Lisa in Tir Chonaill: apple juice → advanced alchemy recombustion catalyst, once per day
- Same NPC: alchemy shard ×3 → advanced catalyst, once per day
- Advanced ×15 → rare catalyst, once per day
Run both advanced lines and you make two a day, so fifteen takes 8 days. Run only one and it takes 15 days. Which means “when do I use the rare catalyst” is not a materials question, it is a scheduling question you have to start two weeks early.
Level 10 opens performance improvement, which moves the rune engravings and enhancement levels off an old piece of gear onto a fresh blank one. The point of this rung is simple: without it, everything you invested in a piece of equipment is retired along with that equipment. Is a single feature worth maxing a skill for? Here, yes — the asset it protects is the accumulation of your entire playthrough.
In passing: the five elemental crystals
Dunbarton’s magic classroom runs an exchange that is easy to skip past: alchemy shard ×1 for one elemental crystal, five kinds at five exchanges each per day — up to 25 a day.
The honest part: we could not establish what those five crystals are used for downstream. You can convert 25 a day and we cannot tell you what for. Until you find the exit yourself, do not hoard alchemy shards on their account — the shards are the feedstock of the catalyst chain, and the catalysts have a use that is certain.
What to take away
Alchemy has the earliest payback of any life skill, and most players schedule it last. The order should be: take the skill, push straight to Lv.3, go to 5 if you want fashion crafting, go to 10 if you intend to change gear long-term. The six empty levels in between need no deliberate grinding; handling gems and runes carries you through them.
Do: run ore conversion and gem fusion daily from level 1 rather than waiting; put Lisa’s two catalyst lines in your daily loop; confirm performance improvement is unlocked before you plan a gear swap. Ignore: any ordering that files alchemy under “after the other life skills” — its first level is worth more than most skills’ thirtieth.
Two claims would overturn this page:
- The sub-feature unlock levels come from a community wiki’s itemised list; no operator has published a comparison table. If the real thresholds differ — cross-type fusion at Lv.3, say — the “level 1 opens everything” conclusion has to change. This is also the square you can check yourself by opening the skill page.
- If the cap of 10 is ever raised (the community suspects the number is a placeholder for an expansion), the whole step table above has to be redrawn. What to re-read then is what the new levels open, not the investment logic — returns concentrated at the front is unlikely to stop being true.