The Biochemist is a rather interesting job, since it has a host of item-utilizing talents. (Un)fortunately its big power comes in the form of a single ranged skill, Acid Demonstration.
Causes explosion for up to 10 consecutive hits. Target's weapon and armor has a chance to be destroyed (10% at max level). Deals only 50% damage to other humans.
Damage formula per hit is: (0.7 * Target's VIT * Creator's INT^2) / (Target's VIT + Creator's INT).
As you can see, INT is extremely important, the most important part of the formula, as well as the opponent's VIT. Think Occult Impaction or Ice Pick when viewing this skill, just it only cares about the target's VIT value. =)
It also has a 1 second cast/delay, so the better your cast & delay timers the faster you can spam that stuff; it can be especially deadly when used against Swordsmen and Priests if they find themselves unprotected by Pneuma.
Getting the materials together though is probably the worst hassle of any job's item needs in the game. It requires one set of an Acid Bottle and a Bottle Grenade each throw. Sounds simple enough.
Acid Bottles need 1 Empty Bottle and 1 Immortal Heart each. Not bad, Immortal Hearts drop off Verits in the different Pyramid levels, mainly the first Basement level (the one right under the Thief Guild).
Bottle Grenades need 1 Empty Bottle, an Alcohol, and a Fabric. This is the really bad one usually.
Thankfully on this server Fabrics can be gotten off of Whispers, Wraiths, and Wraith Deads fairly easily. (Ludes also drop this at a sort of decent rate, though I'm not sure if you'll find any in Skellington, but sometimes a Quve might turn into a Lude. Not something to depend on though.) You can access GH Sewers for 10k per trip from the ex-Stylist in Alberta, that should help you locate some Whispers fairly easily. They're at the first sewer level, not the Sting one, so make sure you're at the right place!
Alcohol, something you can also make, requires 1 Empty Bottle, 5 Stems, 1 Empty Test Tube, and 5 Poison Spores. Part of this is easily solved by Plant Cultivation, a skill Biochemists can use to summon plants and mushrooms. You need a Mushroom Spore to summon a Black or Red Mushroom at 50% chance, and they drop 2 Mushroom Spores and 1 Poison Spore each. They also drop Alcohol on their own as well as a bunch of other goodies, so it basically takes care of itself. Stems however cannot be effectively farmed for this purpose, so you'll have to farm them off natural plants. The Yggdrasil tree (where people usually get warped to for Nifflheim) is a good place to collect stems together, especially from Green Plants. There's a whole bunch of other goodies there too so it might be worth your while to just hunt all the Plants you can find there.
That pretty much solves how to get the materials for Acid Demo together. Now some equipment ideas:
Surely, you'll want lots of Int to make your damage count. If you can get an Instant Cast and/or Kiel build going as well, that can help too.
If you don't have an SQI, I highly recommend wearing an elemental weapon of some sort while using Acid Demo. Unless times have changed, this will make your Acid Demos bypass Neutral property Reduction cards, most notably Raydric and Deviling.
That's about all I can say about Acid Demo, just watch out for Pneuma and use your resources wisely. =)
Moving on to Homonculi, that's a very big topic that I don't think I can summarize well. It'd do you good to research this in other threads, like
http://www.animusro.com/forums/index.php/topic,8968.0.html or
http://irowiki.org/wiki/Homunculus_SystemThere's some criitical information to know about Homunculi in general, so here's some advice:
Only have your Homunculus out when you know you're going to be active at the computer. Homunculi are basically extensions of the Cute Pet system so they need to be fed regularly. Try to feed them between 11% and 25% hunger whenever possible.
You get Base exp if your homunculus kills something by themselves, but no job exp. You both get a 25% exp boost if you two fight together though. Depending on the Homonculus you get, your methods of leveling might be different.
The most important part to getting started though: Homonculus embryos cost about 60k each attempt, make sure you have a good success rate before trying to make them. Also, the Homunculus you get will be randomly chosen out of 8 (4 unique kinds, each with an alternate sprite).
Best of luck.
