Yeah luckily there is still trading for the recipes... I guess...! It makes things a lot harder, but you can make a trade with the alchemist every four days. A year of living in town or maybe traveling up and down the Rhine by boat should get the party close to having all the recipes.

No problem man good luck

Useful guide to profiting from alchemy in Darklands btw:

www(dot)darklands(dot)net/tools/winning.shtml

(I'm not allowed to post links presumably because of low rep.)

Also I wanted to chime in to say something else: the single most reliable (and also free) way to get new formulae in my experience is to set the party alchemist to leader while at the alchemist's shop and request trade of alchemical knowledge. Often I get run out of the shop for attempting this and my suspicion is that it's because the alchemist doesn't have any opportunity for trade. If I'm right then acquiring more formulae may mean increased chance for successful trade. I do this after any other transactions I want to conduct so that getting kicked out won't matter. It's essentially a zero-risk method this way.

After doing this don't forget to switch your leader back.

I always create my own party characters, and have #1, the leader, be the alchemist. That way there's no switching the leader back and forth, which is a major pain in the ass.

For the leader/alchemist I set the endurance as high as reasonably possible, mid thirties, and strength will be in the high 20's. The idea is that I can count on running across the Schrat that's fleeing the hunt, and saving it and getting the magic apple. I give it to my leader, for a 4 point boost to strength. That will usually happen a couple of times in the first few game-years of play.

I have #2 and #3 both max endurance & strength, 40-40 to start then goes to 41-41 after being a recruit. I generally have all characters start at 20 years old.

The quick way to some of these things is to get a commission from the Hanse to kill a raubitter, and take the Hanse along with you. Or, visit a village near a raubitter castle and talk to the Schultz. Often he'll ask you to kill the raubitter, and will come along. Either a Hanse or Schultz has virtue well into the 30's or higher, so you can get into the churches, get saints, get religious training for your priest, speak latin for your leader. If you get SL to 40, you can hire a teacher at a university virtually every time. (You might need to get read and write up as well.)

A good source of virtue is the evil castle lord. Go to a non-raubitter castle, ask to come inside. Most often, they won't let you in, but if they do, click the "find out more about...". It will tell you whether the people are suffering or happy. If they're suffering, you can demand that he treat them better, and your leader gets between 3 and 5 virtue points. Then they kick you out of the castle.

And you can go right back in and do it again.

If you get the "We have no time for people of your kind" or whatever it is, you have to wait eight days before going in.

Never refuse an offer to escort pilgrims to a shrine outside a city, you get virtue about half the time.

One other thing on Alchemy, there's a bug that lets you basically get all the formulas you need without any effort. You go to the Fortress Monastery, go to the graveyard and say the right name, then head to the right. The first door that you get to along the bottom wall of the main courtyard opens to a room with nobody in it, and a staircase leading up. Take that staircase, it leads you to the laboratory. There are three doors, the one on the far right is a room with a table.

Go in that room, and you get a cut scene where the option "copy the silver writing on the scroll" (or something like that) gives three alchemical potions to whichever member has the highest R&W. There is a threshold, I'm not sure exactly what, 50, 60, something like that. Pray to a saint to boost your alchemists R&W and you're good.

You can keep going back to the table and doing it over and over again, you don't even need to leave the room first.

Even if you don't "cheat", going to the Monastery and getting three new formulas, without having to engage in any combat at all, is a pretty good score. It virtually guarantees that no alchemist in any city is going to say, "You have no formulas that I'm interested in". You'll always get a trade.

By the by, the door at the top right of the courtyard (on the top wall) takes you to the room with four bears and a hidden room with 6 30Q full plate armour V&L in a chest. You need good enough artifice to disable the trap, usually around 40 or so. If you have a Hanse, he can do it, otherwise, you'll need to pray to a saint.

But again, six suits of 30Q plate armour, and all you gotta do is kill four bears.