Alchemy (DARKLAND.ALC)

Descriptions, ingredients, difficulty, and risk for all 66 alchemical formulae. Formula order matches DARKLAND.LST.

Extension: DARKLAND.ALC
Location: Game root
Byte order: Little-endian (16-bit)
Size: 6,865 B — 1-byte count (66) + 66 × 104-byte formula_definition records
Compression: None
Magic: None — num_formulae byte = 66 at 0x00
Status: Documented
Source: Wendigo — darkland.alc.xml

Canonical source: darkland.alc.xml (Wendigo’s Darklands repo)

File Layout

Offset 0x00:  byte                   num_formulae = 66
Offset 0x01:  formula_definition[66]

DARKLAND.ALC contains 66 formulas
the 66 formulas form 22 three-formula families sharing the same effect description
formula order matches the formula-name order in DARKLAND.LST
stock formulas use 3, 4, or 5 populated ingredient slots; none use 0, 1, or 2
within those 22 stock families, mystic_number increases monotonically in all 22/22
risk_factor is not a clean three-tier ladder within every family; it is monotonic in 20/22 families, but stock families such as Trueflight and Hardarmor break a simple low/medium/high progression
ingredient slot order is best treated as raw recipe data, not as a normalized ascending list; some family members behave more like alternate recipes for the same effect than strict upgrades

Offset	Size	Field	Description
+0x00	80	`description`	Text description (null-padded to 80 bytes)
+0x50	2	`mystic_number`	Base difficulty when mixing a new potion; stock range `80..210`
+0x52	2	`risk_factor`	Mixing risk: 0 = low, 1 = medium, 2 = high
+0x54	20	`ingredients[5]`	Up to 5 required ingredients; unused slots are zeroed

Notes:

within the stock three-formula families, mystic_number increases monotonically in all 22/22 families
stock risk_factor counts are 28 low, 21 medium, and 17 high
risk_factor behaves like a coarse tier rather than a direct encoding of mystic_number; the value ranges overlap
it does not define a universal family tier on its own; a few stock families contain reversed or mixed patterns

Offset	Size	Field	Description
+0x00	2	`quantity`	Amount required (1–5)
+0x02	2	`item_code`	Index into `darkland.lst` item_definitions

Ingredient-order notes:

ingredients are often, but not always, listed in increasing item-code order
in the stock file, 51 of 66 formulas are sorted that way and 15 are not
because of those exceptions, the on-disk ingredient-slot order should be preserved rather than normalized automatically
family members are often related, but they do not form a clean superset chain; many look like alternate recipe variants for the same effect

Medium-high. Documented in darkland.alc.xml.