I am creating a character for a campaign and I want to take full advantage of the mundane alchemy items available in Pathfinder. I'm having trouble figuring some things out. If my character wanted to craft a flask of acid, for example, he would need 33 silver and a DC 15 check. It would take a normal character 1 week to make. Because I am a level 4 alchemist, I have a Craft (alchemy) check of 16 and I craft in half the time so in one week I would make 2 flasks for 66 Silver with two successful checks(We play with the rules that you take one week regardless). Now, if I take the +10 to craft quickly, how much faster do I craft? What if I take the Master Alchemist Feat? Essentially, How much can I craft with alchemy in a week?
Note: This excludes Poisons which I am not interested in and the rules for which are very clear.
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First off, d20pfsrd.org is your friend for all sorts of rules and item stats related inquiries. I reference it all the time, it's great and free! Learn it, live it, love it.
Normally, it's crafting check (you = 26.5 average) x crafting DC (15 for acid flasks) to find what you make per week. In this case, you average a result of 397 sp worth of work on your acid flasks (rounding down). Level 3 alchemist doubles this to 795 sp worth of work. Voluntarily taking +10 to the DC would accelerate the overall average to 26.5 * 25 = 662.5 * 2 = 1325 sp worth of work, or 13 doses of acid per week! ***P.S. If your GM says that you can't create more than one alchemical item per week based on this house rule you're referencing, he's being seriously unreasonable.***
Now, the Master Alchemist feat. Note first off that you need 5 ranks in Craft(Alchemy) to qualify for this, so you'll have to take it at level 5. Essentially, unless you're creating poison, it works simply like this: that 1325 sp result I mentioned? It's in GOLD pieces now. So, you just went from 13 doses of acid per week to 132! Cool, huh? Note that you still pay the normal amount to create all these items (1/3 base cost).
Now, I'll take on poisons as well. Essentially, use the same rules as I just listed above for your acid flasks, but multiply the end number of poison doses you get by your INT mod. So, let's take crafting medium spider venom (DC 14, 150 gp per dose) as an example. Taking your average of 26.5 on your check, with a base DC of 14, add +10 to the DC to fast craft, double it since you're an alchemist and have the Swift Alchemy class feature, and then multiply the end result by your INT mod (let's just say +5 in this case), the result ends up looking like this...
(26.5 *(14 + 10) ) * 2 =
(26.5 * 24) * 2 =
636 * 2 = 1272 gp worth of work. Divide by 150 per dose (round down) and that's 8 doses per week. Multiply by your INT mod of 5 and that's 40 doses of medium spider venom each week! You have to pay for the extra doses, so that's 2000 gp worth of poison reagents, but still could be worth it.
I know this is a lot of math, but it'd be even harder and less rewarding without Master Alchemist. So, if you're looking to make alchemical items faster, there really isn't ANY better option than this feat when you level until you hit level 18 in Alchemist. Hope this all helped!
*Edit: I left a couple steps out of my math. corrected now. apologies for any confusion it caused.*