With every new Atelier trilogy developer Gust mixes things up and introduces a new synthesis system. Atelier games are, of course, famous for their synthesis. Atelier Sophie 2 has a slightly different system as well. A very important part of the game, so one you will have to master. Now I’m lucky, as I love the alchemy part of the game. If you don’t, you can choose for the game to auto-add the items for your recipe. But although it’s working fairly well, I would advise you to master Alchemy yourself. As only by tweaking and adjusting you will make the best items, weapons and armour. And believe me, you will need that in your battles and story progression.
Want to know more about how to get going in Atelier Sophie 2 in general? Here’s our guide!
The Info on the Screen
For this guide, I’ve chosen the example of a Nectar of Life synthesis and I’m taking you along in the basics. It would be very easy to show how Alchemy has more possibilities later in the game, but I’ve chosen to show you what you can do from the start.
Let’s get started! When you are scrolling along your recipes and Nectar of Life is highlighted, you can see some info on the left-hand side. It shows what Alchemy level is needed to make, my Sophie is high enough to make it. Should you not be high enough yet, then the letters in the circle LV 61 would be red. It is a medicine that can be equipped by Sophie, Plachta, Ramizel and Diebold.
You need the ingredients Avus Weg, (Puni), (Elixirs) en (Neutralizers). If a material is between brackets you can use material from the same family of items. But the Avus Weg is very specific, you can only use that.
Press Y and you bring up more Recipe Details. As I haven’t made Nectar of Life before, the screen is pretty much filled with ???. Let’s make one see what appears there. Press A for Confirm.
When you press ‘-‘ it shows you the related materials you need, and more info on the Nectar of Life itself. Again, as I’ve not made it yet, the screen is pretty bare.
Checking out Avus Weg shows us more info: it’s a plant of the medicinal family of items. They are dropped by Snow Puni, and you can gather them at The Snowy Corridor and the Dusk Forest. Pressing ‘–‘ once again shows more info on the kinds of plants or medicines you can use as material, but also on the Snow Puni.
Info like where it lives, what items they drop and what elements they are resistant or weak to. You can even bring up the comments the party members have made about them by pressing Y.
Material Selection, First Attempt
As you can see, the Nectar of Life has wind (green), ice (blue) and light (purple) elements to its effects. The green one, KO Recovery, is the most important one, as it lets you revive a fainted party member. We will try to max this one, but it’ll be interesting to see what the blue and purple ones do.
It’s invaluable to sort your materials with X -> Sort, but you can also work with X -> Filter to make a more detailed filter to find what you want. To get the maximum results it’s not always quick to work, for this article I will try to make the best item possible. That this doesn’t always work at the first attempt, you can see below! But I will persevere….
First of all, I will choose the Avus Weg that has the most Wind element slots to fill. So, I’ll sort the materials with X to Wind slots.
Next are ingredients from the Puni family. I have several different ones, I’d like them to have the max of wind slots, but maybe a few ice slots too. So I’m sorting on wind slots and choosing the top one. Can you see, on the right-hand side, that it has filled prognoses of a number of green slots filled, and has upgraded the first effect to KO Recovery M?
But as I had to have two Puni, I’m going to try to fill some ice (blue) slots too by pressing X again and sorting to ice slots. This white puniball is interesting, as it also gives off some purple. Checking the white immediately brings out the ice (blue) effect: MP Recovery M.
For my third ingredient, from the Elixir family, I tried some combinations with lots of wind or lots of ice slots, but the bars aren’t really going up higher. So instead, I’m going to focus on an ingredient of high quality. This brings me to this Anti-freeze Water: it has high quality as well as all three colors in the elements. As I’ve now added to purple too, the light effect now has a name: HP Regen S.
The last ingredient to add is a Neutralizer. They come in various colors, and will only have the element color they represent. As KO Recovery is the most important effect that I want to reach, I’m going for the green.
Let’s Synthesise, First Attempt
Now it’s time to play with the colors and the slots. This is the material board that I have at my disposal (5×5). The slots of the cauldron have icons for the elements on it as well. In this panel, you see two ice slots and two wind slots.
For every component I place, the number of bars on the right-hand side of the effects fill out. One slot filled is one bar. But, if a wind (green) component is placed over a slot with the wind icon, I get 1 bar extra. When I now place the biggest green tile I have on both wind slots, it gives me 6 bars filled. Note that even when starting, there was already one bar filled.
Whenever you can, add more of the same element next to each other, and make sure the little stars are next to each other. This creates links (See the white links between the green circles at the bottom of the panel below? These are the links that you want to form). As soon as I had made three links, Alette has a message for me: the final product quality increased by 3x the number of wind links.
Making even more links, five, I can even change one placed component into a wind component. I didn’t need that here as I already had too many, but as soon as I had these five links, my last bar was filled out. My KO Recovery now went to L. Nice!
Eventually, when the friendship with one of your team members goes up, they get more assist abilities. Each team member has its own element effect. Alette has Wind, Sophie and Plachta have Light, Ramizel has Fire, Olias has ice and Diebold has Lightning.
Soon though I found my challenge. Though I have to place as many tiles as I can to fill out the maximum of bars, overlapping also makes the bars empty again, and that’s not what I want. However, having so many components as I have now, I simply cannot place them without overlapping!
I tried my best to keep KO Recovery as high as I could, even with overlapping. But I still had to place the purple light components as well. In the end, I managed to make the following item: a Nectar of Life with KO Recovery M, MP Recovery M and HP Regen S and a quality of 83. It had the traits Critical, Frostbite Cure and Few Bonus. By accident, as I haven’t really selected on those.
That’s not half bad, but I sacrificed a lot of good ingredients with a lot of components and ended up having too many. And by the way, I tried auto-placement too to see what the game made of it and got a Nectar of Life at quality 78 with KO Recovery S and MP Recovery M. So not as good. Time to rethink my strategy.
Material Selection, Second Attempt
This time, I am going to focus on using less precious materials, if possible get even better results and try to get the best traits too. For this, the filter option is invaluable. I chose my first component of the Avus Weg: the one highest in quality.
Then to the (Puni) material. I used X -> Filter and capped it on component slots in an effort not to have too many like in my first attempt. I now have 18 to choose from, and can now sort them to the highest quality. It might be a good idea to keep an eye on the traits of the material as well. The Puni Candy is the highest in quality, but it only has Expensive+ as a trait. Won’t do me much good, but as I need two I’ll take them anyway. These Blue Punibals have Recovery Up as a trait, that might come in handy, so I’m choosing that one too.
Next, the (Elixirs). I’m going to forget about the light element (purple), I think it will be hard enough already to fit all components in. So I’m filtering to find materials that are green and blue. I have these five to choose from and am going for the highest in quality.
Finally, the (Neutralizers). I think I have enough wind components already, so I’m going for the white neutraliser, giving me light elements. So now this is my number of components to work with, still a lot but less than the first time.
Let’s Synthesise, Second Attempt
I placed the components on the panel again, taking care to make as many links as I could ( I managed them in wind ( green) and ice (blue) and I even managed to put some light components up. After placement, the board looked like this:
Almost all rows and columns are filled, which gives me a higher chance of Super Success, which improves the quality of the finished product quite a bit. (You’ll see it when Super Succes indeed kicks in as when they show you the final screen of the item made, that a gleam circles the picture of the item.)
In the end, I had Nectar of Life with a quality of 84, KO Recovery M, MP Recovery M and HP Regen S. As I was on the lookout too for traits, I managed to add Recovery Up, Frostbite Cure and Sleep Cure, all good traits for a medicine.
You could say that it’s not much better than the Nectar of Life in my first attempt, but keep in mind that I didn’t have to throw my best materials with loads of components towards it! So I’d say, a very successful attempt.
I’ve mentioned them in my first attempts and in this second one: Traits. Aside from effects, you can also add traits to an item by inheritance from the materials you use. Every item you make can have three traits, so pay attention to the ones you are going for. You can see what they are under X -> Guide -> Effects/traits.
Catalysts and Restricted Panels
Just when you think you have it down, the game adds a new perspective: Catalysts. These only unlock after you have beat the monster in the Snowy Corridor and got doll-Plachta’s soul back. Maybe if you rush the game you’ll reach it faster, but I only got there after some 30 play hours. Talk about a huge game!
The Catalysts you can use are not consumed and have different effects when you activate them. At first, you get Growlia and Limitia. Both have an effect on how many bars you can fill in the effects, and both give their potential when you make a number of links. Later on, you will unlock more of them.
You can also re-synthesize catalysts in order to imbue them with stronger effects. Most importantly, they can enlarge the synthesis panel and prevent components from being overwritten. Both really are a game-changer: much more components can be placed, and you don’t have to be afraid to overlap them anymore.
From now on, you can now select restricted panels when you start on synthesis. This makes it more difficult, the panels miss squares that will make placing components harder. Switch between the ordinary and restricted with L and R.
Where to Get Your Recipes?
Sophie can think up recipes everywhere and anywhere. Certain actions or fulfilling certain conditions inspire her to make new ones. You are helped along in the Recipe Ideas section.
In this game, you work with two alchemists, Sophie and Plachta. They share a recipe tree, but they also each have recipes that only they can learn. And then there are recipes that you can only learn from books. These unlock as the story progresses.
Make sure that you make every new recipe that is added. Some will prove to be invaluable, but some items are needed to make other recipes even better.
So there you have it, Alchemy in Atelier Sophie 2. I’m having a blast in the game, and I hope with these tips, you can enjoy it too!