Ylialkemisti
Ylialkemisti (listen 
) (also known as High Alchemist or Alchemist Boss) is a boss found waiting in the Abandoned Alchemy Lab.
The High Alchemist moves very slowly, but it has several deadly projectile attacks and a shield that reflects projectiles back toward their sender. Killing the High Alchemist unlocks and drops the extremely valuable Greek Spells, which can be used to copy other spells. It is a powerful enemy for any who braves its domain.
Behavior
The High Alchemist will remain idle in the center of its arena until you approach, at which point it will become aggressive and the fight will begin. Be wary, as the High Alchemist can see you about a full screen away and may begin attacking before you see it.
The High Alchemist moves by floating around very slowly, pursuing you in a manner similar to Limanuljaska and the many other floating enemies of the world. It passively generates a special shield around itself — any projectiles that you fire at this shield will be redirected at you, changing ownership and becoming damaging to you, or casts Explosion dealing massive damage. The shield lasts for 10s. This shield turns on and off at even intervals throughout the fight, and you must take care when to fire your wands.
While you are in its sight, the High Alchemist will periodically fire a bouncy, homing orb projectile, which dissipates after a short time. As the orb travels through the air, it will summon three large, ethereal wands that aim at you before firing, telegraphing their attacks similarly to Intense Concentrated Light. There are four different types of ethereal wands the High Alchemist's orbs can summon, and each orb that is shot will only summon one type of wand.
Dark Wand
A ghastly purple wand that fires a tight cluster of fast, potentially bouncy beams; nearly identical to Intense Concentrated Light. Very deadly in enclosed spaces, especially if all three instances of the wand are angled properly. Due to its dark, transparent appearance, this attack may be hard to spot when there are many projectiles and/or effects present on the screen.
Glowing Wand
A shimmering white wand that fires a burst of explosive lasers, similar to Pinpoint of Light. The lasers can cleave through most terrain, and are likely to hit you if you are hiding behind fragile cover.
Volatile Wand
A fiery orange wand that shoots a Meteor at you. Can set you on fire, and can instantly kill you on a direct hit unless you have accrued a large amount of HP. The Alchemist is capable of damaging itself with this attack.
Thunder Wand
A cyan electrical wand that fires a Lightning Bolt at you. Although short-ranged, it can be lethal in closed spaces, stunning you and leaving you vulnerable to deadly follow-ups.
Rewards
Upon death, the High Alchemist will violently dissolve into a cloud of magic particles, dropping four random Greek Letter spells (listed below), plus the Crystal Key. On the first kill, a Full Health Regeneration will also be dropped and all Greek Letter spells will be permanently unlocked.
Location
Rather than going through the Dark Cave and the dangerous Ancient Laboratory, it is usually easier to dig down from the Snowy Wasteland on the surface. The horizontal location can be found using a building on the mountain in the background art, which never changes. Note that the image may look a bit different than your game because the background changes color depending on the time of day. It is the church-type building on the middle of the first mountain in the background art of the Snowy Wasteland when entering from the east side. SPOILER: This is not applicable to Parallel Worlds, where the background is aligned differently.
Shields and self-damage
On occasion, the High Alchemist may damage itself with its attacks. There are various factors that may contribute to this.
Notably, its own lightning bolt can hit it. Additionally, as mentioned above, the High Alchemist periodically creates a projectile-reflecting shield. It can reflect its own projectiles, which can hurt it. However, this may not happen in most circumstances. When it creates a shield naturally, it also sets its damage multiplier to 0, which causes many attacks to simply bounce off. However, there are caveats to this. This is not caused by shields created by either high damage (40) or accumulated damage (75). Additionally, when any of its shields expire, its damage multiplier is set back, which can cause brief moments of vulnerability with a shield active, should their timings appear to overlap.
Lightning bolts can deal self-damage quite easily during times when its damage multiplier is not 0, which can lead to a shield which can then be used to have its other attacks deal self-damage. Kicking the High Alchemist can be useful to reposition it for such cases, as this will cause it to fall down. Moreover, its accumulated damage is only checked when it takes damage, and either damage-based shield decreases it by 75. If it has already taken heavy acute damage (for instance, from lightning), one may be able to predictably trigger this shield with a simple kick or weak projectile.
Combat Tips
- Be very careful about your position throughout the fight — each time a wand spell is spawned, it will be aimed directly at where you currently are, and then fire after a short delay. Prediction of when, where, and how the wands will fire is key to survival.
- Each summon orb will summon multiple spectral wand spells, aimed at where you are when that spell is cast. Take care that avoiding the first attack does not leave you in the path of the second attack.
- Unlike a typical projectile shield, everything that hits the High Alchemist's shield will be reflected at you. The Tentacle spell can be very deadly towards you if reflected, but can still be very effective against the High Alchemist when the shield is down. However there is no animation when the shield activates so it is advised to only go in for damage shortly after the shield is gone, then stop and wait for it to go up again.
- The High Alchemist raises its shield after receiving 50 damage in a single hit or 75 damage across multiple hits. It will also raise its shield once every 10 seconds. These checks are done independently and can result in overlapping shields.
- Due to the nature of its shield and vulnerabilities, a reliable method of killing the High Alchemist for longer runs is to acquire a wand with Lightning Bolt, Thunder Charge, Explosion of Thunder or Ball Lightning (behind a trigger for safety) midway through a standard run along the Main Path and return to the surface via the shaft from the Snowy Depths up to the Lava Lake; with a teleport wand or the right perks and potions, it should be a simple matter to reach the arena, and from there a few shots will be enough to take down the Alchemist quickly.
- If you have ways to increase your movement and flight speed and/or time such as Hastium or the right combination of Perks, you can fly around the alchemist in circles and consistently avoid the wands, shooting when its shield is down.
- Using Teleport Bolt to move behind the High Alchemist after it throws an orb also guarantees you'll have enough distance from the spawned wands to dodge their spells (or even fully stay out of range for the lightning wand)
- The High Alchemist will easily erase large amounts of terrain to get to you, if necessary.
- Patsas can be lured in from the Ancient Laboratory and can fight the High Alchemist on its own, as Patsas are immune to all of its attacks.
- The High Alchemist can hit itself with its own spells, they deal very decent damage in case you don't have a good damage wand but have a travel/teleport wand.
- The High Alchemist's shield blocks all attacks but not you. So a reliable way to win the fight quickly is to fly inside the shield and attack from close range.
- If utilizing Chain Bolt to bypass the High Alchemist's shield, be aware that the shield still functions as intended -- it will change the ownership of the projectile, but due to Chain Bolt's behavior, it will not reflect and will instead continue on to damage the Alchemist (remember that spells owned by the Alchemist still hurt it, such as Prickly Spore Pod). If this happens, credit for the kill does not go to you, which means it won't unlock in the progress menu. To guarantee your kill is recorded, finish off the boss with a high-damage projectile when its shield is completely down.
- A small pool of Ambrosia can make the fight much easier, but be wary of the Alchemist's attacks destroying terrain and washing off the stain.
- if you managed to kill Kolmisilmän sydän earlier in the run, the Saha can kill the alchemist in literal seconds if it has no spells attached, thanks to its extremely low cast delay and recharge time and Always Cast Chainsaw and Bloodlust. Just wait for the High Alchemist to throw his first orb, dodge it and its wands, and then jump on him and rip him to shreds. He won’t even have time to throw a second orb.
- Piercing Shot on Prickly Spore Pod is an infamous combination that can routinely instantly kill the Alchemist, and with both not being too rare to find, proves to be a pretty foolproof method.
- The mechanics of the damage shield also allow one avenue of attack with repeatedly-hitting wands which are normally not suitable. If you first heal the Alchemist with healing damage summing up to its entire health pool (three Homing Piercing Shot Healing Bolts can suffice), then if you subsequently deal damage with rapid instances of < 50 damage, it will not raise any reactive shields (though it may still raise a shield+immunity on a timer).
Builds
A large amount of explosives can kill the Alchemist in one shot. Bomb Cart or Unstable Crystal can also be used.
Shuffle
Spells/Cast
Cast delay
Rechrg. Time
Mana max
Capacity
Speed
A simple rapid-fire Chainsaw with any damage modifier can kill the Alchemist through his shield. This is somewhat dangerous since it requires you to fly into the center of its hitbox. Ambrosia will not help much, since the boss bleeds slime which will wash it off.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Plasma Beam Cross and other plasma spells will do damage through the Alchemist's shield. Other plasma spells also work, preferably with Homing or Short-range Homing.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Note spells with a lifetime-increasing modifier work well. The notes convert to explosives when the Alchemist's shield is raised, dealing massive damage. Take cover after firing — sometimes these can be shot back towards you!
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Personal Lightning Caster and Personal Tentacler on any spell will kill the Alchemist very quickly. Personal Fireball Thrower can also be used; however, it is often VERY slow and therefore not recommended unless you have no other options.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
The classic rapid-fire Ping-Pong Path Luminous Drill combo can be used as well. Add Mana and any cast delay/recharge time modifiers are omitted here. Targeting the Alchemist's head is the most effective way to use this build: his hitbox extends just beyond his shield, allowing damage to be dealt even when the shield is up.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
A Magic Guard on a trigger or timer (preferably rapid-fired) will attach to the boss instead of you. The Magic Guard's projectiles will explode when the Alchemist's shield is raised.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
This build kills the High Alchemist in a single hit, as long as its shield is down. The Spark Bolt With Trigger can be replaced with any other trigger. Ping-Pong Path is optional. Removing Orbit Larpa is possible at the cost of needing to hit more shots. Any barrier spell can be used.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Prickly Spore Pod's spikes will do massive damage when his shield is raised. Fire this from above when his shield is down. Take cover so you don't get hit by the converted projectiles!
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Any Summon Swarm will home and damage the boss when converted by his shield. Cast it inside his shield for best results.
Shuffle Spells/Cast Cast delay Rechrg. Time Mana max Capacity Speed
Parallel Worlds
In Parallel Worlds, the Alkemistin Varjo (listen ) (or Alchemist's Shadow) can be found anywhere on the surface, along with the shadow version of Sauvojen tuntija. These pink-shaded copies do not drop anything besides gold. They also have slightly different immunities, such as a slice damage multiplier of 1.0; an Omega Sawblade at the end of a trigger (when all shields are down) can be quite effective, as it will nearly always trigger a reactive shield that "reflects" it back to the enemy.
Soundtrack
While fighting Ylialkemisti, the music from track 5 of Noita Official Soundtrack vol. 3 titled Noises All Around Us[1] is played.
References
History
- Apr 8 2024:
- Wand Refresh is no longer dropped by Ylialkemisti.
- Added holy damage multiplier of 0.2.
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Limatoukka • 
Ylialkemisti • 
Kolmisilmän Koipi • 
Sauvojen tuntija