Dragon Age Inquisition
54 Achievements
1,165
106-134h
Master Alchemist
Upgrade your alchemic potions, grenades, or tonics 30 times in a single playthrough.
15
How to unlock the Master Alchemist achievement in Dragon Age Inquisition - Definitive Guide
Upgrading potions requires a lot of ingredients, so it's advisable to collect all plants you see. Also, each region has it's own set of reagents (though some common plants like elf root of blood lotus seem to grow almost everywhere). Hence, whenever you have enough power available, open a region, and do a sting hunt for some reagents. Once in Skyhold, you can also get access to 'retrieve resources' missions at the war table. Send either Leliana or Josephine to bring some reagents (usually around 6), but never Cullen, as he seems to focus on metals. Also in Skyhold, once you have access to your garden, every time you harvest a plant in the wild, there's a chance you get seeds to plant in the garden. Finally, you can also purchase over-priced reagents from some vendors, which I don't recommend.
You can find the ultra-rare plant Prophet's Laurel on the Storm Coast, in a cave in the most south-east corner of the map. That cave also holds a rift. Every time you enter the map two plants spawn in that cave.
The following list is not complete, but there are more than enough to get you the achievement. I'll update the list if I find any of the remaining recipes. I'm not typing out all reagent requirements as you can easily look them up in the game by approaching the potion upgrade bench.
Healing Potion 2 upgrades
Regeneration Potion 6 upgrades
*Missable* Speak with Adan in Haven to receive this recipe for free.
Lyrium Potion 4 upgrades
*Missable* Retrieve Taigen's notes for Adan from the hut north of Haven.
Rock Armor Tonic 5 upgrades
Hidden in the tower ruins just west of the 'Thelm Gold-Handed, the Dreamer' landmark in the Hinterlands. Use the search function to reveal it.
Healing Mist Grenade 3 upgrades
In Crestwood. After taking Caer Bronach, enter the caves underneath it. Defeat Snowball and loot the recipe from her corpse.
Antivan Fire Grenade 5 upgrades
Buy the recipe from the merchant at the Crossroads in the Hinterlands.
Jar of Bees Grenade 5 upgrades
After recruiting Sera, do the 'Red Jenny: Inquisition Needs Beeees!' quest on the War Table.
Pitch Grenade 5 upgrades
In Valammar, behind a breakable wall (requires a warrior).
*Added:
Tears of the Dead 5 upgrades
Acquired in The Fallow Mire for completing the 'Beneath the Mire' quest. Best done in tandem with 'Beacons in the Dark'.
Confusion Grenade 5 upgrades
*Missable* During the mission 'Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts'. After you climbed to the balcony, solve the bust puzzle in the Grand Library and loot exposed crypt.
I traveled to Val Royeaux and walked over to the merchant on the bottom right. He sells you Elemental Resistance potions (Fire, Ice, Lightning, Spirit) and the upgrades for those potions only require 5-10 herbs (I think it was mostly rashvine). Either way, you can get more than half of the required upgrades from these.
The other half, I just recommend picking up all of the herbs that you come across while playing the game normally. If you have some spare inquisition perk points then you can get the large assortment of herbs (I was given like 80 of them) which helped immensely.
A list of every potion, tonic, and grenade(including their location and a description of how to obtain them) can be found here: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Potions_(Inquisition)
Throughout your adventures in Thedas, you will come across various alchemical materials such as Elfroot and many others, mostly by keeping an eye out in the wilderness and utilizing your Search feature by pressing , as well as being able to purchase select materials from random vendors. As the game progresses, you will stockpile these ingredients (you will need hundreds), and eventually you will be able to spend them at your potions table. Keep in mind that you must discover or purchase some additional recipes as the base potions will not provide enough upgrade opportunities.
When farming herbs, if you travel out of the zone and travel back, the spawn nodes will have instantly refreshed themselves (does not include the garden pots in Skyhold). Simply fast traveling within the same zone will not accomplish this, so find some nodes near a camp you want to farm and go to town. Travel there, harvest the nodes, leave the zone, and travel back; lather, rinse, repeat.
Interact with your potions table and choose to upgrade any of the three categories by spending the required resources. Do this process thirty individual times to unlock the achievement.
Throughout your adventures in Thedas, you will come across various alchemical materials such as Elfroot and many others, mostly by keeping an eye out in the wilderness and utilizing your Search feature by pressing , as well as being able to purchase select materials from random vendors. As the game progresses, you will stockpile these ingredients (you will need hundreds), and eventually you will be able to spend them at your potions table. Keep in mind that you must discover or purchase some additional recipes as the base potions will not provide enough upgrade opportunities.
When farming herbs, if you travel out of the zone and travel back, the spawn nodes will have instantly refreshed themselves (does not include the garden pots in Skyhold). Simply fast traveling within the same zone will not accomplish this, so find some nodes near a camp you want to farm and go to town. Travel there, harvest the nodes, leave the zone, and travel back; lather, rinse, repeat.
Interact with your potions table and choose to upgrade any of the three categories by spending the required resources. Do this process thirty individual times to unlock the achievement.
If you go to an Upgrade Potions table in Skyhold or any Keep, you'll be able to see all the potions you've unlocked, their upgrades and what is needed for the upgrades. With just the few potions you have, you won't able to get 30 upgrades in total. You'll need to find new potions, tonics and grenades through recipes. There are 3 Potions in total. The Healing Potion has 2 upgrades, The Regen Potion has 6 upgrades and the Lyrium Potion has 4 upgrades. There are 7 Tonics in total, all of them have 5 upgrades. And finally there are 5 Grenades in total, four of which have 5 upgrades and one has 3 upgrades. The total amount of upgrades available is 70.
Many of the upgrades require rare herbs. These are found in the wilderness and you need to get a bit lucky to receive them. When you get to Skyhold, you'll receive the "Nursery Seeds" quest to gather seeds. Whenever you pick up a herb, or even a rare herb, you have a chance of obtaining a seed of that herb. You'll be able to plant whatever you seed you have in the Skyhold Garden and easily harvest them there. For more info on this, see the Botanist trophy. Before picking up a Rare Herb, manually save your game. If the Herb didn't give you a seed, reload that save and try again. This might take a few tries, but shouldn't take more than five tries. You can also leave an area and return right after as this will immediately respawn all herbs you've harvested.
There's a Inquisition Perk called Optimal Cutting, which gives you a 10% chance to receive more herbs each time you harvest a herb. The Eagle-Eyed Inquisition perk will increase the range of the ping (search) function. Herbs that are farther away will be easier to find. They also show up on your minimap as a fading dot. The Trainee, Veteran and Master Herbalist perks give you an one time only batch of herbs per perk. They also have a change of giving you herb seeds if you don't have them already. Whether they're worth it or not, is up to you. You can always save before using it, obtain the trophy and reload that save afterwards. You'll of course lose all your upgraded potions and whatever else you did in the meantime.
Click here for a complete guide on the Recipe Locations, the upgrades, the Herbs required, all the common/rare Herb locations and all the Herbs you can receive from the Trainee, Veteran and Master Herbalist Perks. This guide also includes some extra tips.