Ok I am sick up to my thingy about the difficulties finding difficult comms. Not common comms like wood or silk, but comms that come out of chance - sugar and mercury.

Personally, if you are going to refill say, 20 health vials and then bam, you lose it... what do you get 1 sugar? Damn, all that for 1 damn sugar? Make the chance of number of sugar ratio to the number of ingredient therewithin.

For mercury, make it so it's a lump of mercury which can be seperated into different pieces. Using gemcut perhaps or just crush mercury at a forge or something.

I almost always have a little mercury, and I've never personally seen someone ask for it on market. I get mercury as a byproduct and it is totally useless except for sale. I'm sorry I don't have a shop you can stop in at, but if you're asking the 3 cartels full of forgers who will find mercury whether they like it or not, you should be able to find some...

Offer refill discounts for people who give you mercury? Use advertising to your advantage? Do things in trade for comms and other trade goods instead of looking for gold profit?

I have like 50 mercury that nobody asks for.

but since I once sold 10 mercury for 5 credits, I'm waiting for a good offer.

Oh yeah, the times I've sold mercury it has been for nice profit, but I never see anyone ask. I'm not hording it.

I just said I was selling mercury on market, with no response. Apparently, the dire need isn't so dire after all.

I was told by an alchemist that a batch of 20 potions sugaring would give you 20 sugar crystals .... is this incorrect?

There are five forging cartels actually.

And about chunks of mercury, or whatnot... Isn't mercury, aka quicksilver, a fluid?

You can only batch ten at a time anyway, or at least how it was at the start of the realms, and I have never gone past that, because I haven't wanted to waste potions.

Anyway, if it produces sugar, it produces one sugar for every batch of a potion in there. Make 6 health, and you'll get 6 sugar crystals.

Mercury is easy to find, and whoever tries selling it for credits.. is very foolish. I usually trade sugar for mercury at a one to one ratio. If all else fails, then I buy it for like 50 gold per, or someone gives it to me for free.

Mercury is a transable material. It can be a liquid, which will go through almost anything, like skin, or it can be a metal at room temp. For example for you CSI watchers, the mercury episode were the boxing glove killed a man? Injected as a liquid, then hardened into metal balls.

Which is basically what I was saying
and means that sugar isnt as rare as was originally claimed, although I think its still too rare, heh

It's ALWAYS a metal at ANY temperature. But it's a liquid at room temperature, the only metal that is. CSI is one of the worst things like that ever, don't trust it. Seriously.

Nope I put 20 set of herbs worth of health in the Alembic and comes out with 1 sugar.