In "The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing" the alchemy system allows you to apply magical effects to your equipment. To do so, you require an "essence" item with the effect you wish to add and you need the equipment to which you wish to add it. Then you just need to talk to the alchemist to start the process. There is an alchemist near the well in Markovna village, though you will have to complete a quest to get him to speak properly before he can help you, and there is another in the sewer hideout later in the game. He has a green vial icon above his head. It seems simple enough, but there can be some confusion once you actually open the alchemy menu. I will try to de-mystify the alchemy process for you.

In order to use alchemy, there are some basic requirements. First of all, you will need at least one essence. You also will need at least one piece of equipment that is "magical" or better. Normal equipment items (with names in WHITE) will not work for alchemy. The essences each have a level based on how powerful they are, ranging from 2 to 25. Just like equipment has level requirements for you to wear it, the level of the essence must be lower than or equal to Van Helsing's level for you to be allowed to use it for alchemy. This applies only to the process of putting an essence into a piece of equipment. To boost an essence's power level, or combine essences to make a new type, you can use and create essences of any level... you just can't use the product in your equipment until you reach a high enough experience level.

So, what are essences? Think of them like magical potions or gems or something like that, imbued with some magical spell that will give special properties to whatever it touches. Really though, the alchemy system works a lot like the ♥♥♥♥♥'s enchanting except that instead of a random magic effect, you get to choose the effect you put on your equipment. And yes, you can have a piece of equipment with BOTH an enchantment and an essence in it.

There are two main categories of essences, just like there are several categories of weapons and armor. Where weapons and armor are called "normal," "magical," "rare," or "epic," the essences are only ever "magical" or "epic." Within the magical category, there are a few different tiers. What I call the tier one essences start at an essence cost of 5 at level 2. Tier two essences start out with a cost of 7 at level 3. Tier three essences start out at either 10 or 12 essence cost at level 5. The next section lists all the different essences by tier. When you are combining two essences, you can only combine them if they are in the same tier but any essence can be used to boost the power level of another regardless of tier.

So, where can you get essences? Essences are dropped pretty much at random in this game. They can come from dead enemies or various containers. Once in a blue moon, stores might also sell some to you but they are pretty expensive. Magical essences drop pretty much everywhere and there is no telling which particular one you will get. Epic essences are mostly tied to specific quests - so don't waste the epic ones!. Essences are less common than health and mana potions, even less common than rare weapons and armor. So use them wisely.

The Diamond essence drops from a goat corpse near the big river on the NW section of the Gallowsbog, but only if you first talked with the drunk man in Markovna.
The Electrical essence drops from the machine that is keeping the werewolves caged in the Gallowsbog. It is a "quest item" rather than an "essence item" though. When the blacksmith gives you his quest to find the power source of the robots, this item is what he wants. If you tell him you would rather keep it instead of selling it to him, then it will become useful for alchemy. If you do not speak to the blacksmith about it first, it can NEVER be used for alchemy.
For the irrational essence, I think you might get one if you give your homemade blade (which would become "Bunnyslayer" if you keep it) to the insane man in Markovna. Not sure about that though.
The other Epic essences seem to drop (but still randomly & VERY rarely) from the wisps that ask you riddles, and from "champion" type enemies.

If you read the description of the essence item in your backpack menu, it will tell you what effect it has. Most essences have different effects depending where you put them. For example, it might do bonus poison damage if you put it in a weapon, but in a piece of armor it will give you physical resistance, and in an accessory it will instead give you mana regeneration. Or something like that. So the type of equipment matters just as much as the type of essence. Remember the equipment types:

Weapons include:
--swords
--pistols and rifles
--spellcuffs
--cannons and nozzles

Armor includes:
--body armor
--boots
--gloves
--cloaks, runecloaks

Accessories include:
--hat, headgear, masks
--trophies
--rings
--necklaces, chokers, talismans, charms, etc.
--charger packs
--belts

In my opinion, the tier one essences are not very good for use with your equipment. They are, however, very good as booster essences to make your teir 2 or 3 essences stronger. So my advice to you is to collect all the essences you can, and save the tier one essence for use only with the essence booster at the alchemist. Tier two and three (and epic) essences give much better magic effects so you should use those on your equipment.

DoT = damage done over several seconds rather than all at once
Tainted Essence: reduces armor and inflicts POISON on YOU, if used in armor or accessory.
This list MAY be incomplete; I will add more essences if I find any.

Once you speak with the alchemist, the first menu tab available lets you add ONE essence into a piece of equipment. The big box is for your equipment. The little box is for the essence. Once you have both of those boxes filled, the box on the right will give you a preview of the product. If you are happy with the result, then you hit the "Enchant" button to make it so. If you do not like the product, you can click the item or the essence in the center window to remove either one from the process and try again with a different one. No items are made or used until you hit that "Enchant" button.

Also bear in mind that the level of the weapon AND the level of the essence must be no higher than Van Helsing's experience level. It is also a good idea to un-equip an item before you put an essence in it, then re-equip it when you're done.

One other thing to note here, is that you cannot put more essences into an item than its essence capacity will allow. The essence capacity is the number shown in PURPLE on your equipment. The maximum capacity on a piece of equipment or an essence is 50. For example, if you have an essence with an "essence cost" of 30, you cannot put it into a sword with only 22 capacity but it will fit into another sword that has 41 capacity.

When you speak to the Alchemist, the SECOND menu tab available will allow you to remove an essence from a piece of equipment. This ONLY works if the equipment actually has an essence effect on it already. You just have to drag the equipment into the big box on the center window and it will show you the result in the other box. If you are happy with the result, click the "Disenchant" button. Nothing will actually get done until you hit that button. You will get to keep the disenchanted item AND the essence, so nothing is wasted except some money.

This function is useful if you have a really good piece of equipment with a low-level essence in it, and then you find a better essence and you want to replace the old essence. Or if you find a horrible piece of equipment that has a really good essence and you want to sell the equipment but you still want to keep the essence to use again later.

This page also has a secondary function. If you have an essence that has already been boosted with another essence, you can put it into the spot where the equipment would usually go, and it will be separated into two lower-level essences. As an example: if you have two of the essences that add 12 capacity to an item... then you combine them to make one essence that adds 24 capacity to an item... you can use the dis-enchanter to UNcombine it back to the two essences that only add 12 capacity. The game does NOT keep track of what kind of essences were combined to make the current one!! That means whatever type of essence it is, you will get two of the WEAKER VERSION of the SAME TYPE by using this method. So if you boosted a ferocious essence with an essence of vitality to get a bigger ferocious essence, when you dis-enchant it will give you two weaker versions of the ferocious essence back, that essence of vitality is gone forever.

Be advised: if you are dis-enchanting a very high level essence, it will level it all the way down to the basic lowest level. Depending just how high it was, you may get more than 2 essences returned to you. For example, I had a maximum level ethereal essence (capacity requirements at 49) that I made by combining a baby ethereal with a greater capacitance. Then I separated that ethereal and got 7 baby ethereals returned to me. Recombining all seven of those would produce the same (49 capacity) high level ethereal essence.

You may be asking at this point, "Why would I ever want to LOWER the level of my gems?" Simple. Let's say you have a level 49 ethereal essence and you want to put it on your sword, but the sword only has 30 capacity. Well, you could dis-enchant that gem into smaller ones, then recombine the small ones until you get close to 30 and then put that "half-power" version into your sword instead. Or maybe you have a level 50 gem that you never want to use... you can dis-enchant it to make a lot of baby versions to use as boosters for your other gems that have more useful effects.

You are not limited to the low-level essence that you find from killing enemies. You can boost them to a higher level if you want to. Boosting the level will also increase the essence cost and the strength of the magic. For example, a level 2 vigorous essence has a bonus of +10 HP. A level 25 vigorous essence has a bonus of +100 HP, but the essence cost also goes up from 5 to 50.

When you speak with the Alchemist, the THIRD menu tab will let you do this. For this, you will require an original essence that you want to make stronger, and also a second essence to use as a booster. BOTH of those essences will be used up and destroyed in the process, and you will get a new essence that is the same kind as the first one you chose (the left box) but it will have a higher level because you added the second essence (the top box) as a booster. When you choose your two essences to use, the product will be shown in the right box so you can see what you will get. To finalize the process, click the "Enchant" button. If you don't hit the button, nothing will happen so you can see the potential result before you decide to go through with it or not.. Also note that the MAXIMUM essence cost is 50, and the level corresponding to that is 25.

So again: the left box is the FIRST essence you choose. The top box is the SECOND essence you choose. The result will be the same KIND as the FIRST, and its level will be increased by adding the SECOND to it.

Let's use the Vigorous Essence and the Ethereal Essence to try an example. The Vigorous Essence boosts HP no matter what kind of item you put it in. The Ethereal Essence will give you either lightning damage, reflect damage, or luck depending where you put it.

First we select a Level 2 Vigorous Essence (5 essence cost). Then we select a Level 17 Vigorous Essence (35 essence cost). The result will be a Level 20 Vigorous Essence.

First we select a Level 2 Vigorous Essence. Then we select a Level 17 Ethereal Essence (35 essence cost). The result will be a Level 16 Vigorous Essence (32 essence cost).

First use a Level 3 Ethereal Essence (7 essence cost). Then a Level 2 Vigorous Essence (5 essence cost). The result is a Level 6 Ethereal Essence (12 essence cost).

Note that using the SAME kind of essence will usually just add the essence costs together to produce the result. Using a different kind will be a bit less effective but you still get a decent boost.

Tier one essences have 32 possible boost levels, from 2 to 25 with essence costs ranging from 5 to 50. Sometimes there are two of the same kind of essences that have the same level but different essence cost with slightly different booster values. Tier two has 23 boost levels from 3 to 25 with essence costs ranging from 7 to 50. Tier three essences have 15 booster levels ranging from 5 to 25, with essence costs from 10 to 50. The epic essences have four or five boost levels each, with essence costs ranging from 10 to 50 for some and 13 to 50 for others. The capacative essence can only be boosted one time, to effectively double its capacitance boost effect. If you read the description on your capacative essence, it will tell you just how high you can boost it. FOr example, you might have a 12 capacity booster that says it can provide up to a maximum of 24 capacity. That means it will not upgrade any further once it reaches its maximum of 24.

So no matter what your equipment's essence capacity, you can build an essence to fill it.

The Alchemist's FOURTH menu tab will let you combine two essences to make a new type of essence. For this operation, both essences NEED to be of the same tier. There are NO combinations available for epic essences, so don't bother trying to use those here. As far as I know, this list is COMPLETE. Regardless of your input essence levels, your product will ALWAYS be the basic lowest level available for that tier. So if you put in a level 20 Vigorous and a level 25 Primordial, your result will still only be a level 3 Corporeal. It does not matter which one you put first or second here, and both of the original essences will be destroyed in the process. Luckily, again you can see the product before you make the final decision because nothing will actually happen until you push the "Enchant" button.

Tier ONE + Tier ONE = ????
Vigorous + Primordial = Corporeal
Mercurial + Vigorous = Fortitude
Primordial + Mercurial = Ethereal

Tier TWO + Tier TWO = ????
Fortitude + Corporeal = Profane
Fortitude + Vaporous = Absorbent
Corporeal + Vaporous = Vitality
Fortitude + Ethereal = Quintessence
Ethereal + Corporeal = Material
Vaporous + Ethereal = Ferocious

Tier THREE + Tier THREE = ????
Vitality + Tainted = Poison

When you rescue your engineer and bring him to your secret lair under the Dreadworks about halfway into the game, some new options open up for the alchemist.

Talking to the engineer and selecting to upgrade your generator will allow you to see the upgrade options. Upgrading the generator will boost your generator capacity so that you can spend capacity points on more upgrades or else more traps. Upgrading the forge will allow you to have additional forging tools in the artifact forge, which you use by talking to the engineer and selecting to forge items. Upgrading the alchemy laboratory does only one thing: it wastes your precious generator capacity in order to cut the gold cost of playing with essences at the Alchemist.

Remember that these upgrades are PERMANENT, and each one costs 5 capacity points so that's one or two (or five) FEWER traps you will be allowed to use to defend your lair against the monster invasions for each upgrade. My advice is to skip the alchemy laboratory upgrades completely. I do advise getting the upgrades for the generator capacity and the forge system, just not the alchemy laboratory. But if you really want to do it, you will need an item called Ink Essence to make the third upgrade. You will also want the Generator Plans for the second capacity upgrade (you already have the first one automatically), and the Electrical Prototype thingy for the third forge upgrade.


The engineer will also let you research new traps. I do recommend doing this since traps do not use generator capacity until you actually build them. Researching new ones only costs some gold, and you will need "Trap Plans" to build a lightning tower trap.


Well, that's about all I have for you on this subject. I know it looks like a lot of info but honestly it's not that difficult. Just play around with it in the game a few times and you'll get the hang of it. Then you can come back here when you need to know something specific. Good luck to you.