Learn the secrets of Alchemy!

It seems that the chem dealer who once lived in pre-war Sanctuary Hills had come into possession of an ancient book. The book was about a pre-industrial science known as alchemy. He locked the crumbling book in his safe, where it remained for over 200 years, when it was discovered by a scrap salvager known as Scavver Phil.

Phil started to read the book, but quickly realized that too much physical handling would destroy the fragile pages, some of which crumbled at a touch. He tried to preserve as much knowledge as he could by copying the recipes onto a printed holotape record. Some knowledge was probably lost, but we will probably never know what, as Scavver Phil appears to have died from an infected radroach bite. Phil's holotape was left behind, but there is no trace of the original book anywhere.

What this mod does:

Read Scavver Phil's journal holotape to learn the secrets of alchemy. Once the holotape has been read, a menu category will appear in any chemistry workbench, and you will have access to the recipes for making potions and a few other items. You will not be able to make all of the items right away. You will need to invest several perk points into abilities that fall under Intelligence in the SPECIAL chart. By the way, players who are not near Sanctuary Hills (playing an existing save game) can fabricate a copy of Scavver Phil's holotape. You will find it in the Utility section of the chemistry workbench. You need one plastic to craft the tape. You can then read the holotape to gain access to the alchemy recipes.

Some of the craftable items are:

- Buffout - There was no crafting recipe in the vanilla game, so I made one.
- Daytripper - Again, a new crafting recipe that did not previously exist.
- Grenade Type Weapons - These thrown missiles behave like a molotov cocktail, but have a variety of different damaging effects (fire, frost, shock, plasma, nuclear). Note that the fire and shock bombs do actual fire and shock damage, effects that exist in the game files, but were never implemented.
- Defensive Potions - Provide temporary defense buffs against a variety of different attack types - each potion protects against a specific damage type. Fire and shock damage resistance potions are actually effective against the fire and shock effects mentioned above.
- Buffing Potions - Provide a temporary buff to character abilities, things like HP, AP, a SPECIAL attribute, and so on.
- Permanent SPECIAL increase elixirs - These potions will permanently increase a specific SPECIAL attribute by one point, even beyond 10.

Hopefully people will enjoy this mod. I use it in my game on Survival difficulty, and I find that some of the potions are real life savers, especially because incoming damage is much greater than in normal difficulty, and Stimpacks work so slowly. Also, alchemy potions don't have the nasty side effects that stimpacks and other drugs do. Dehydration, addiction, and hunger are not problems when using potions.

Finally, I want to thank a rather famous modder known as Neeher for kindly helping me with a problem I ran into while making this mod. I could not figure out how to have the alchemy recipes remain invisible in the chemistry workbench until after a player reads Scavver Phil's holotape. Neeher was kind enough to help a total stranger. Not only did he explain to me exactly what I needed to do, he used small words and short sentences so I would understand what he was telling me. It is a rare individual who will take the time to do this for someone he does not know.

Thanks Neeher!