Apothecary

Apothecary is a medical production building used to turn raw ingredients into medicines and treatments. It requires a duplicant with the Medicine Compounding skill to operate and consumes 240 W while running. Each recipe uses 1 kg of each listed ingredient to produce one medicine, making it the main workstation for preparing most non-advanced cures and preventative medicines in the game.

The building can produce medicines that increase germ resistance, provide temporary radiation protection, cure Food Poisoning, and create treatments for more specific diseases. Some of the medicines it makes are not consumed immediately by the Apothecary itself, but are instead applied later in another building: one treatment is used at the Sick Bay to cure Slimelung, and another is used at the Disease Clinic to cure Zombie Spores. It can also create Antihistamines, which cure Allergic Reaction and prevent it from returning for 720 seconds.

Typical Apothecary products include:

• a medicine that grants +0.5 germ resistance for 1 cycle
• a stronger version that grants +1 germ resistance for 2 cycles
• a Basic Rad Pill effect that reduces radiation absorption by 100 Rads/Cycle for 1 cycle
• a treatment that cures Food Poisoning
• Antihistamines for Allergic Reaction
• a treatment applied at the Sick Bay to cure Slimelung
• a treatment applied at the Disease Clinic to cure Zombie Spores

The Apothecary is most useful once your colony starts dealing with disease pressure, polluted environments, or radiation exposure. Because it converts straightforward ingredient stacks into targeted medical items, it is often part of a colony’s early disease-management setup rather than a purely late-game convenience. The medicine it creates does not spoil, so the storage solution for it is simple: a Refrigerator is commonly used, but it does not need to be powered for medicine preservation.

A few practical points:

• The building does nothing without a duplicant trained in Medicine Compounding.
• Since recipes generally consume two ingredient types at most, keeping the relevant inputs nearby reduces labor and downtime.
• The building is not just for recovery; several of its products are preventative and can be used before a disease becomes a serious problem.
• Because medicine does not spoil in any atmosphere or at any temperature, storage and transport are much less restrictive than for food.