So I am trying to understand the new crafting system for the alchemist I want to make. Can someone please help me understand this some.
If I wanted to make level 1 alchemical fire bombs, I could make up to 4 of them at a time. Each of these normally cost 3gp each, so normal price would be 12gp, I would have to invest 6gp of materials up front and at the end of 4 days I would then have to pay the remaining 6 if I managed to succeed on my craft roll.
Is this correct? For small cost items it seems such a waste of time when it would be just easier to buy them from a npc especially since you pay full price anyways.
And yes I realize if you take extra days you can reduce the remainder of the price but it seems such a waste of time for only 4 of them.
That is in fact how "mundane" crafting of those items would work. The Alchemist class leans heavily towards using their incredible alchemy rather than actually crafting most items to be fair, especially in the case of bombs.
I can see more specialized items like Elixers of various types being more worthwhile to use downtime to craft, since you can build a stockpile of "just in case" items that you don't need to replenish too often. Things like Cheetah's Elixers or Bravo's brew. Not to mention the "mundane" alchemical items like sunrods and the like are good candidates for standard crafting. This way you can build up a stock of them.
That is assuming your GM or the AP you are playing has a decent amount of downtime in it. Your mileage may very.