Alchemy Jug 5e DnD (2024) Guide (2024)

Have you ever wanted to have your own personal jug of funny liquids? Something to give a bit of extra taste to those boring trail rations or give your foes a taste of their own medicines?

Well, the Alchemy Jug has totally got you covered! You can even use it to prank (or delight) your friends or put out a small fire in an emergency.

What is the Alchemy Jug in 5e?

This uncommon wondrous item is one of the more gimmicky magical items in Dungeons & Dragons, although creative players may be able to find interesting uses for it.

Dungeon Masters love having items like this because they can feel free to distribute them as loot after boss fights at low levels without having to worry about changing the fighting styles of their players or making them more powerful.

Essentially, this 12-pound jug can distribute one type of liquid each day. Depending on your choice of liquid, there is a different maximum amount the jug can pour before waiting until the next sunrise.

For example, if you decide to use your Alchemy Jug for wine at dinner, you can’t change to acid for your post-dinner combat. Even if you didn’t expend the maximum amount of wine (1 gallon), you still can’t switch liquids. Once the alchemy jug has poured out the maximum amount, you have to wait until the next day for more.

For combat-oriented people, remember that it takes an action to cause the jug to produce the liquid of your choice. Then it takes an additional action to uncork the jug and pour it out. That means you’ll be dedicating two rounds of combat to doing this.

The alchemy jug can pour up to 2 gallons per minute, which translates to approximately a quart (1/5 of a gallon) every 6 seconds (the length of a round of combat). Eight ounces is ¼ of a quart, so you could theoretically use two rounds to dump acid on an enemy, but that’s probably not worth it.

Another drawback of this item is that you have to say the name of the liquid to cause the jug to produce it. That means you can’t show up to a soiree and pretend you’re pouring the Big Bad a nice chalice of wine and actually pour out poison. Or, if you want to do that, you’ll need to have already set the jug to poison and then present it or somehow slip the poison into the wine.

If you’re going for the stealthy approach, you might have some problems considering it’s a large jug (appears to hold 1 gallon and weighs 12 pounds), and the text says that it sloshes, even if you’ve expended the liquid for the day and it’s currently empty.

Alchemy Jug (Blue)

As you’ll see below, the options change slightly, but the quantities don’t. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a blue, orange, or original Alchemy Jug. You’re only going to get 1 gallon of wine out of it.

However, the blue version does offer a tantalizing taste of boiling hot tea. You could let it cool and serve it at a fancy party or dump it on a frenemy to make a point (and maybe do some damage). Whatever you do, be sure to spill the tea!

You might be especially enterprising and bottle your own wine. We’re not sure how effective that would be since you could only make about five bottles per day, but it might be worth checking out to make a little gold on the side.

Another way you might be able to utilize the Alchemy Jug for damage is the quart of oil. Spreading oil, even a quart of it, will likely make the ground slippery and possibly force enemies to make Dexterity saving throws or slip and fall prone.

Alternatively, coating someone in oil makes them highly flammable. You could work with your group’s spellcaster to set up a combo attack that lets you use an action to coat a target in oil, and then they follow up with a fire damage spell.

We highly recommend talking to your DM before executing that kind of combination attack since they may not rule that oil does any extra fire damage (in older editions of D&D, the grease spell added extra damage to fire spells, but that was taken out for 5e) and, depending on your initiative rolls, you and the spellcaster may have to hold your actions.

Alchemy Jug (Orange)

Unlike the blue version, the orange Alchemy Jug doesn’t offer any tea options. Instead, this alchemy jug seems more suited to players with culinary visions of grandeur since it gives you a gallon of soy sauce. Exactly how are you meant to use a gallon of soy sauce? Presumably, to give the fish your party caught some flavor when you sit down to cook them over a campfire that night.

Although somewhat unconventional, a kind DM might let you use honey to make difficult terrain since it’s so sticky. Or let mayonnaise act like the grease spell and make things slippery.

If your opponent is trying to get their hands on an object, you might try coating it in something slick and forcing Dexterity saving throws or Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) checks to pick it up and carry it while fighting in melee.

Your best bet is probably using the Alchemy Jug to bribe NPCs with plenty of fine wine or buying a tavern whose place you just wrecked a couple of rounds of beer.

Notably, the Alchemy Jug doesn’t give any indication of how nice the beer or wine is, so you the player likely get to decide. The tavern owner may still charge you for damages, but at least they’ll let you back in someday. Maybe.