Laughless Saint Alchemy Guide

Getting started

Alchemy is one of the two systems the Steam page names outright as “fully featured,” alongside spell crafting. To use it you need equipment and ingredients.

The mortar and pestle is the core tool. As one player put it after acquiring one: with a mortar and pestle, you can make just about anything. It is sold by the alchemist along with a range of crafting stock — a bag of snakes and assorted crafting materials were on the same vendor list.

Training costs gold. Alchemy training was observed priced at 25 gold, which is cheap enough to be worth taking early.

Where to find the alchemist

The alchemist is a named NPC and appears in two different contexts, which is worth untangling:

• In the starting town, the alchemist’s house is reached by heading north from the tavern along the main road, then turning left. She is the person the Dark Water questline sends you to.
• A playthrough separately described her as selling alchemy supplies in the southern swamp.

Her name appears as both Bronwyn and Brunwin across sources, and NerveLabs has published no cast list. We treat the spelling as unconfirmed. Both descriptions are consistent about her role.

Her involvement in Dark Water is where most players meet her, since she is the one who diagnoses the well curse and tells you what to do about it.

Ingredients are in the world, not a shop menu

Ingredients are picked up as you explore — mushrooms are common and were being looted directly out of houses in one playthrough, which the game counted as stealing. That is worth remembering: taking ingredients from someone’s home is theft and feeds into the reaction systems described on our amphitheater page.

Hotfix 5 also noted that “some pickable ingredients are now pickable,” which is a fair indication that ingredient interaction was buggy at launch and has been actively fixed.

Gear that boosts alchemy

At least one equippable item exists specifically for crafting: an alchemist’s item observed to grant +15 to alchemy while equipped. Items that boost a crafting skill rather than combat are a real category here, so check vendor stock rather than assuming everything is a weapon or armour piece.

Patch history that changes how alchemy plays

The Update 7 change is significant. Before it, discovered effects were not surfaced, which meant tracking them by hand. Note the wording — effects show when discovered, so the discovery loop is intact; the UI just stopped hiding what you already knew.

Also from Update 6: potions correctly stack effects, while identical spells no longer do. That asymmetry is deliberate and matters for anyone comparing potion buffs to spell buffs.

Alchemy as a skill

Alchemy is a use-based skill like every other one here — see skills. Combined with the Update 6 XP increase, brewing regularly is now a reasonable way to level it.

Sources

• Steam store page for app 3849000 (feature list).
• NerveLabs official announcements, Hotfix 5 / Update 6 / Update 7, 19–21 Aug 2026.
• “First Look” gameplay playthrough for vendor stock, the 25 gold training price, the +15 alchemy item and the southern swamp location.
• “Where To Find Spongestone (Dark Water Quest)” walkthrough for the alchemist’s house route and her role.