Guide to Chemistry

This guide will primarily be useful for chemists but may come in handy to any player and especially traitors. See Chemical recipes for simplified step-by-step instructions on how to make complicated chemicals (sometimes outdated), and for info about using the dispenser's recipe recording function. For grenade making see Grenades. If you don't have a chem dispenser, see the Guide to Ghetto Chemistry.

A helper client for browsing this wiki (with several extra features) can be found here: https://tghandbook.ovo.ovh. That site is unofficial so use at own risk.

 

Machinery
You have all sorts of chems here, and can make many things. You can make medicines, smoke, foam, flash powder, poisons, space lube, acid and much more. The limit on combinations is a limit that exists only in your creativity (and the game engine). Be sure to be careful though, as mixing the wrong chemicals can be bad for your health, and please make sure you know what a chemical does before you use it. Experiment at your own risk.

Dispenser.png Chemistry Dispensers
Chem dispensers can be upgraded to unlock more chemicals, allow for more precise macro usage, increased power recharge rate and higher power capacity. If you run out of power, you can disassemble the dispenser with screwdriver+crowbar and rebuild it by first putting the circuit board back, and then all other things but use a full power cell instead of the old one. Then screwdriver to finish. Or you can charge the machine with an inducer.

Available chemicals: Click expand to see what chemicals are available: Normal:
 * Hydrogen
 * Oxygen
 * Silicon
 * Phosphorus
 * Sulfur
 * Carbon
 * Nitrogen
 * Water
 * Lithium
 * Sugar
 * Sulphuric acid
 * Copper
 * Mercury
 * Sodium
 * Iodine
 * Bromine
 * Ethanol
 * Chlorine
 * Potassium
 * Aluminium
 * Radium
 * Fluorine
 * Iron
 * Welding fuel
 * Silver Removed Oct, 2020.
 * Stable plasma

Upgraded (tier 4 matter manipulator):
 * Acetone
 * Ammonia
 * Ash
 * Diethylamine
 * Oil
 * Saltpetre

Emagged:
 * Space Drugs
 * Morphine
 * Toxin
 * Carpotoxin
 * Miner's Salve

Upgradeable parts: Click expand to see upgrades:
 * Better matter bins: greater power efficiency per unit dispensed.
 * Better capacitor: faster recharging speed.
 * Better power cell: larger maximum power capacity.
 * Better manipulator: unlocks more chemicals. Longer and more complex chemistry macros can be performed. At tier 1 manips, macros round to the nearest 5u, then 3u at tier 2, 2u at tier 3 and 1u at tier 4

Chemical_Heater.png Chemical Heater
Some chemical reactions will require you to heat the reagents in a Chemical Heater. Unless the recipes says otherwise, these reactions need you to heat the reagents above the required temperature. This machine will heat/cool a beaker to the desired temperature, slowing down the heating/cooling speed as it approaches the target temperature. If you don't risk making the chemical explode by overheating it (like with meth) you can just set it to a very high temperature to avoid this. Due to a rounding bug you sometimes need to heat chems 1 degree higher than the recipe says. Upgrading the laser will increase the heating/cooling speed.

Chemmaster.gif ChemMaster 3000
Separates, bottles, and makes pills/patches out of chemicals loaded inside. You can load pretty much any container - beakers, spray bottles, water bottles and so on. Maximum size for dispensed bottles is 30u, patches 40u and pills 50u. Use a chemistry bag to quickly move large quantities of bottles, patches or pills. Can be upgraded with bigger beakers to allow a bigger buffer. By default it contains two ordinary 50u beakers for a total buffer volume of 100u.

Blender.png All-In-One Grinder
Grinds, crushes, liquefies and extracts reagents from materials placed into it. If there is a significant reagent associated with the item, the Reagent grinder will distill a pure sample inside the collection beaker. For example: Plasma/gold/uranium/metal sheets, donk pockets, fruits, dead mice.

Smoke_machine.png Smoke Machine
Dispenses any chemical inside as a smoke cloud. Needs to be secured by wrenching first. A great alternative to smoke grenades, but easily incites lynch mobs. Can only be obtained through the circuit board being printed, and the required parts being assembled first.

Upgradeable parts: Click expand to see upgrades:
 * Manipulator: Unlocks the higher range settings.
 * Matter bin: Increases maximum capacity.
 * Capacitor: Increases efficiency.

Plumbing
On some maps the chemists have access to a large empty area with plumbing tools. The available chemicals those can synthesize should be the same as with an unupgraded chem dispenser, but the workflow is more like a production line chem factory instead of instant dispensing. See the Guide to plumbing to learn more about this system. You may still have access to the pharmacy though, which has chem dispensers.

Metabolism
When a reagent enters a bloodstream it will start to "tick"(aka "cycle") about every 2 seconds. These are called "life ticks", and are not to be confused with server ticks/tickrate. When this happens the bloodstream is purged of an amount of every reagent usually equal to their listed metabolism rates. This is the rate at which the chemical disappears from your body. It doesn't matter how many chems you have in your body, as they are all metabolised separately. If you are hungry (sluggish), this will happen 20% slower, which makes chemicals have a bigger total effect since they last longer without being weaker per tick. Many mobs are "simplemobs" which means they don't have bloodstreams and thus cannot be poisoned, sedated or healed with medicine. Monkeys and most playable humanoids are the exceptions to this.

Active Pure Chemicals
A.K.A. what happens when you eat or splash these. Their metabolism rate is 0.4u per tick/cycle unless said otherwise. Unmentioned dispensable chemicals don't have any effects. Plasma and uranium require you to grind mineral sheets to acquire.
 * Chlorine: Causes 1 brute damage per tick to a random body part.
 * Copper: Can be splashed on metal sheets to create bronze sheets.
 * Ethanol: A decent alcoholic "beverage", with a booze power of 65. Increases the speed of surgery procedures and flammability when applied externally. Metabolism rate 0.2.
 * Fluorine: Causes 1 toxin damage per tick.
 * Iron: Slowly restores blood volume.
 * Lithium: Causes twitching, drooling, moaning and not being able to walk straight.
 * Mercury: Causes 1 brain damage per tick, twitching, drooling, moaning and not being able to walk straight.
 * Plasma: Causes 3 toxin damage per tick. Creates gas form plasma when spilled or heated to 323.15K (50°C). Not to be confused with Stable Plasma, which does nothing.
 * Radium: Slowly causes irradiation (2 per tick). Creates glowing green goo on floor if more than 3u is spilled.
 * Sugar: Gives nutrition. Causes hyperglycemic shock if overdosed (200u). Metabolism rate 0.8.
 * Sulphuric Acid: Causes 1 toxin damage and some instant brute damage to one body part when ingested, and slightly more brute damage when injected. Destroys head-wear and causes burn damage when sprayed or splashed on someone. Counts as a toxin.
 * Uranium: Causes slight (1 per tick) irradiation. Creates glowing green goo on floor if more than 3u is spilled.
 * Water: Slightly generates blood volume.
 * Welding Fuel: Causes 1 toxin damage per tick. Makes people flammable if splashed on.

Catalysts
When a reagent in a recipe is marked "(catalyst)" it means it will not be consumed in the reaction.

Components
These are very basic chemicals that you'll use in a lot of other more complicated chems. They can still be toxic, though.

Hover a chemical component to see tooltips. On Firefox-based browsers the tooltips might block clickable links. If you find an incorrect recipe then please drop a comment in the discord wiki-general.

Medicines
"And that's how I lost my medical license!" Don't be this guy. Make these. Lots of these.

Some medicines have special suffixes to specify which damage types they are meant to treat:


 * Brute = -ibital
 * Burn = -uri
 * Oxy  = -mol
 * Tox  = iver
 * Organ = -rite

Many reagents can also be overdosed and/or cause addiction, leading to a negative outcome. An overdose/addiction will happen when moment the bloodstream (not stomach) gets the exact listed amount of units or above in it. If an overdose occurs, the negative effects will keep being applied every tick until that chemical is completely out of the bloodstream. If an addiction occurs, the negative effects will only start occuring some time after the chemical is out of the system, and can be negated by keeping taking it. You can usually only remove an addiction by waiting it out. Be sure to monitor how many units someone have in their bloodstream.

See Guide to Medicine for more information on what to use and when.

Medicine Changes
Returning chemists may notice several changes (mostly made mid 2019) in the list of medicines. The easily available medicines (including brute and burn patches) are getting severely nerfed or replaced by inferior versions with downsides. This is part of an ongoing major overhaul (as per Aug 2019). The intension is (amongst other things) to add more interesting choices to the /tg/station medical system than to (in most cases) simply apply a roundstart available patch or pill and the patient is fixed. Instead surgery has been made much easier.

During development many more changes may follow.

To prevent confusion amongst returning players some old recipes/names removed from /tg/ are still be visible in the Removed Medicines section. This is also a small service to servers using old /tg/code, which is still widely used.

Core Healing Medicines
These healing drugs may be considered to be cheap or commonly available "core" drugs, used to heal common ailments. Some of them should not be used repeatedly on the same patient, as they may have dangerous side effects. Consider using Tend Wounds surgery if satisfactory medicines aren't available. These are also known as ''"Category 2 Cobbychems". ''

Superior Healing Medicines
These healing drugs are harder to make than the core healing medicines, however they often heal faster and with fewer side effects (if any).

Unique Healing Medicines
These healing drugs perform niche functions that help against less common ailments.

Non-craftable Medicines
These healing drugs are used in some situations, but are otherwise uncraftable.

Removed Medicines
These healing meds used to exist, but have since been removed or renamed for one reason or another. Some servers still use these, but /tg/ does not, and the recipes for them will not work on /tg/.

Narcotics
Narcotics are highly addictive drugs that can aggressively, or passively, provide a benefit. Be wary as its very easy to become addicted, or overdose, on a narcotic.

As a general rule of thumb, the more of a positive effect (or any effect) a narcotic can provide, the easier it is to get addicted or overdose on it.

People who overdose or get addicted to Narcotics tend to usually end up dying to the negative effects or requiring immedient medical attention. Take in moderation.

Pyrotechnics
The manipulation of fire and matter.

Explosive Strength
For chemicals which are explosive, you may notice an 'explosive strength' listed in the description. This is a multiplier that directly affects how large of an explosion a given quantity of the reagent will produce. A few types of explosion have a 'modifier', which adds a flat amount to the size of the explosion. By default the outer 'light impact' radius of an explosion is equal to √(mod+quantity*strength)*√2, while the heavy impact radius and devastation radius is one half and one quarter of that, respectively. Chemical explosions are not a subject to the standard TTV Bombcap. Eventough it doesn't have a hardcoded maxcap currently the biggest possible explosion is that of 2100u custom made chemical payload bomb.

Note that all non-standard explosions or other AoE pyrotechnics, such as Flash Powder or Liquid Dark Matter, do not work like this. The scaling and max size of these effects vary on a case-by-case basis.

Other Reagents
These are other chemicals that usually have non-medicinal uses. Many of these are useful in the manufacturing of grenades, but some can be quite dangerous.

Virology Recipes
These chemicals are used to mutate viruses, and have few uses beyond that.

There are also chemicals that do nothing, which can be found in Strange seeds. Example: Plastic Polymers.

Mutation Toxins
Obtainable through xenobiology, these chemicals transform humanoids into other races. It only takes 1u to start the transformation.

Toxins
The deadliest of deadly chemicals. You can get some of these through the traitor uplink. The human liver will quickly purge individual toxins at 3u and under from the bloodstream (1 unit per tick at full liver health). Toxins in the stomach is also taken into consideration, i.e. having 2u in the bloodstream and 10u in the stomach means the purge doesn't happen. The purge threshold lowers with higher liver damage. All toxins deal liver damage at higher volumes in the body.

Lavaland Chemicals
Found primarily in Lavaland flora.

Reagent Delivery
There are different ways you can apply chemicals to a person or the environment.

Delivery types
There are 5 types of delivery, called ingest, inject, vapor, touch and patch. If you are not interested in the details, you can skip to Smoke vs Foam vs others.

Ingest
Ingesting reagents puts them into the stomach. The individual reagents in the stomach will then be digested over time, which slowly moves them to the bloodstream at a rate partly based on the amount of them in the stomach, and stomach type (race). Most reagents have no effect until they have been moved to the bloodstream where they start metabolising (an exception is milk). They can be ejected if the person vomits. Ingestion is used by pills, cigarettes, e-cigarettes and drinking/eating the reagent directly. Inhaling smoke counts as ingesting, with the difference that smoke bypasses the stomach and is added directly to the bloodstream. Probital works best when ingested.

Inject
On inject the reagent simply enters the target's bloodstream and starts metabolising. Reagents in blood can be filtered out using surgery. Used by syringes and IV-drips. Syriniver works best if injected.

Vapor
Vapor is used by (ranged) spray bottles and foam. A portion of the reagents will enter the bloodstream of the target, but clothes will protect from some/most/all of it depending on clothing. Any hardsuit typically makes the target completely immune to getting it into their bloodstream, if the helmet is closed. But if the reagent has a "vapor" based component, that component will still affect the target, like Fluorosulfuric Acid. See more about foam below, with examples. Hercuri works best as vapor.

Touch
Touch is used by smoke and splashing. If the reagent has a "touch" based component, that component will affect the target (such as the instant heal part of Synthflesh), without being blocked by clothing. Nothing at all will enter the target's bloodstream, with the exception of smoke if the target has no internals on. Currently all "touch" components are also "patch" components. See more on smoke below, with examples.

Patch
Patch is used by patches and medical gels. The reagent enters the target's bloodstream entirely AND if the reagent has a "patch" based component, that component will affect the target. Currently all "patch" components are also "touch" components.

Smoke vs foam vs others
These are the major practical differences between pills, syringes, patches, cigarettes, smoke, foam, splash and spray.

Pills
Pills can be instantly ingested if used on yourself. It doesn't work if mouth is covered. Plasmamen will have trouble taking these. They hold up to 50u. Aren't added to bloodstream instantly.

Syringes
Syringes can inject into people even with their mouths covered, either by hand or with a syringe gun. It doesn't work on players wearing hardsuits or other pierce-immune clothing, unless you use a piercing syringe or manage to aim for an exposed part of their body. Golems are completely immune to syringes (even piercing syringes), but patches do work on them. A syringe holds between 10-60u, depending on type. Common syringes hold 15u.

Patches
Will add all reagents into a person's bloodstream through any clothing, including hardsuits. Also apply touch/patch based effects. Example: A patch of 20u Synthflesh will instantly heal 25 brute and burn (touch component), and also enter the target's bloodstream (which in this case does nothing). Usable by plasmamen. Can hold up to 40u.

Cigarettes
Can be dipped in reagents to be filled. If smoking/vaping, you will slowly ingest whatever reagents the cigarette/cigar/e-cig contains. Though, if the reagents are too diluted, they may not build up in your bloodstream fast enough to have any effect at all. E-cigarettes can be trimmed with a screwdriver and multitool to also create smoke.

Smoke
When a smoke reaction occurs, the smoke will consume any other reagent in its original containers, and spread that reagent to flooring and people/mobs who enter its area of effect. People who enter the smoke will be touched by the reagents. If they do not have internals or gas mask on, they will also ingest the reagents. The amount of smoke does not dilute the reagents. The reagents will be copied to every individual or tile (not walls, windows or doors) over the cloud's duration. Reagents that are special coded to affect floor/environment (such as blood, acid or Space Cleaner) will do so. Smoke will usually block sight. Smoke example 1: Smoke containing 20u Synthflesh. Everyone caught in the cloud, including people wearing hardsuits, will slowly heal 25 brute and burn (and take toxin damage), if they stay in the smoke for its full duration (otherwise they will heal partially). Those who are not wearing internals will also ingest 20u of the medicine, making it enter their bloodstream (which does nothing in this case).

Smoke example: Smoke containing 20u Chlorine Trifluoride(CLF3). CLF3 has a touch(and vapor) component, so everyone caught in the cloud, including people wearing hardsuits and internals, will catch on fire. It will also deal burn damage to the environment, since CLF3 is coded to do so. Those who are not wearing internals will also ingest 20u of the CLF3 and thus, start heating up from the inside, effectively burning from both in and out at the same time.

Foam
When a foam reaction occurs, the foam will consume any other reagent in its original containers, and spread that reagent to flooring and people/mobs who enter its area of effect. The foam will spread slower than smoke and is usually slippery. Reagents will be copied through the vapor type delivery to those affected over the duration of the foam, BUT the reagents will be heavily diluted depending on the amount of foaming reagent used. Any clothing will reduce how much of the reagents will enter a person's bloodstream. Furthermore, foam reagent bloodstream insertion is divided into several 'ticks'. A minimum amount of reagent is required per tick for it to enter a bloodstream. So if too little reagents are contained in the reaction, or too much foam is used, the foam will do nothing. These ticks are counted after dilution and protection from clothing. On the other hand, if you use very small amounts of foam, the reagents may instead multiply in the bloodstream to more than the original amount. Hardsuits with helmets on will make people immune to getting reagents into their bloodstream through foam. Despite dilution, the foam will still copy remaining chems such as acid, CLF3, or Space Cleaner to any tile it touches (but not walls, windows or doors). Foam will not block sight.

Foam example 1: 250u foam containing 10u Cyanide will spread a blue foam that does nothing to those it touches. The poison is too diluted to work at all.

Foam example 2: 20u foam containing 250u Fluorosulfuric Acid. A small area and everyone touched by the foam will have large amounts of acid slowly melting their clothing and the affected floor and items. Those who did not wear a hardsuit with helmet on will also have a large amount of acid in their bloodstreams, depending on what they were wearing and how long they were in the foam. If they had internals on or not doesn't matter.

Splashing
Throwing a beaker, or using a beaker on anything with harm intent, will splash its contents. The longer throw distance, the more the splash will spread out. A grenade will splash its content unless it also contains smoke or foam. Splashing only does touch delivery. This means most chemicals will do absolutely nothing when splashed. Reagents that have special properties to affect environment, such as Water, will do so where splashed (creates slippery tile). Reagents that have a touch component will apply that component only. Example: If you throw a beaker of 80u Synthflesh at someone, you will instantly heal them for 100 brute and burn (and deal up to 150 toxin damage), since Synthflesh is touch/patch based. It doesn't matter if the target uses hardsuit or internals in this case. This means throwing a beaker of poison at someone will do nothing at all. Splashing can apply chemicals such as Thermite to walls.

Spraying
Spraying reagents will apply them to environments (if they have any such effect), and will enter hit people's bloodstreams through the vapor delivery. This means clothing will protect from some/most/all of the reagents, depending on what they are wearing. Using a hardsuit with helmet on makes them immune to getting the reagent into their bloodstream. Reagents such as acid, CLF3, or Space Cleaner will still cause their special effects when sprayed on people/environments, but will not enter the bloodstream if the target is wearing too heavy clothing.

Beyond the Dispenser
Just because it isn't found in the dispenser or the guide above doesn't mean you can't use it! Drinks, slime cores and plenty of other things can provide limitless fun for an enterprising and curious chemist.