Quick Alchemy:
Yes, there are 2 different uses of Q-ALch, one burns a VVial to make a consumable item, of any [consumable] item in your formula book.
The other Q-Alch is to make a temp vial that can only be used as a basic bomb, or for your special Chir action.
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The "most powerful" use of your recharging VVials is whenever you know the party is about to kick in a door and start a fight. Just before you initiate the fight, you make and drink / pass around some buff elixirs, such as Soothing, Numbing, Cheetah, or a mutagen.
Getting those effects for 0 combat actions is very potent. But it can feel cheap / boring to do.
Quick Bomber is considered essential for all Alchemists, as this will let you make and throw bombs in 1A total. This is typically better than spending 2A to make + use an elixir in combat, even for a Chirurgeon.
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Poison afflictions (once the poison is inside the foe) are typically considered to be exempt from the Quick Alch 10 min potency thing.
It's actually a old rule before the remaster. For the sake of loooong term poisons, they needed to last more than a single day when all infused items poof and reset, even the Adv Alch daily items.
This "only non-permanent effects vanish" rule is also why your HP healing elixirs don't reverse and take away the HP after 10 min are up, by the way. Or why the damage delt by your bombs does not reverse in a similar manner.
It is a little jank / odd that poison afflictions get to be in that category, but it is kinda needed.
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Alchemical Gauntlet is a weapon, and not a consumable. It's incompatible with your Advanced and Q-Alch, so you'll need to use the base Craft action to make one.
There's also the formula for the Alchemical Siphon, which is a weapon modification that adds the same siphon function to melee weapons.
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Because Blowguns are a reload weapon, they are not recommended. If you are worried about splash, basically any other ranged weapon you can wield is just outright better than a blowgun.
The Alchemical Crossbow is as good as it gets for reload weapons.
Most(?) tables consider the Reload action itself to contain a free Regrip. This matters for Alchemist so that you can drop a hand, do stuff with it, then Reload to get both hands back on the weapon to ready for the next shot.
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Medic's "cooldown override" works like a separate special ability. Any time you want to Bttl Md someone who you can't because of the normal cooldown, you can use that override.
Once you do, that override is on cooldown, and cannot be used again.
1. Quick Alchemy: So the second part of QA, quick vial, states that an alchemist can make a versatile vial for the use as a bomb or for the versatile vial option of the selected research field. I am a Chirurgeon just to mention it somewhere. My current understanding is that I can make a vial, without using one that I already have of the 6 max(lvl 3 currently with 4 INT), and turn it into a bomb to which I have a formula for OR, in the case of chirurgeon, a sort of elixir of life that I can throw at someone/thing that loses the acid and splash traits but gains the healing and coagulant traits. Is my understanding correct? I have been reducing my VV quantity whenever I make a bomb, that isn't the VV acid bomb, because of this. Am I instead using the first part of QA, create consumable, and using a second action to throw my bomb correctly?
Not exactly. The first use of Quick Alchemy is "use a versatile vial to make an item you have the formula for." This uses a vial.
The second option is "create a vial that can only be the basic versatile vial bomb or the item from your research field." The stats for this bomb are in the Alchemist class description. So as a Ciurgeion, you can use the bomb stats, or you can do this with it:
Your versatile vials can be used to heal a living creature a number of Hit Points equal to the vial’s initial damage. A creature can drink the vial for this benefit, or you can throw the vial at a willing creature within 20 feet as an Interact action to heal that creature. In either case, a vial used this way loses the acid and splash traits and gains the coagulant and healing traits, plus the elixir trait if a creature drinks it.
You can do nothing else. So you can't turn it into say Bottled Lightning. You have to use one of your regular vials for that.
When would I say that I want to make my formulas? Currently I have only been using my VVs with QA during fights because I'm not sure when I would say that I want to make lasting elixirs, bombs, poisons, etc. To be fair my group hasn't really needed the extra healing. I was given a formula book after our first quest and as per the DM it was completely filled with alchemical formulas so I now do have access to a lot of stuff I can make. I'm just not exactly sure when I would be able to make stuff that I would stow and of course use actions to dig from my backpack to use. Would I ask the DM if I could run off to make stuff? I do also have an alchemist's toolkit so if I'm understanding Advanced Alchemy correctly I can just make up to 8 things without taking any time or the normal materials cost, yes? Am I limited to making only 8 formulas per day or just at a time? Like, could I make as many as I could stow in my backpack?
Remember that you get two pools of "free alchemy" and a third way to make it:
1. Quick Alchemy. These are the versatile vials you use on the fly to make something that replenish over time. Note that if you craft something this way with a duration over 10 minutes, it lasts 10 minutes.
2. Advanced Alchemy. This is 4+INT items you can make during daily preperations that stick around until the next time you do daily preperations. These are free and last the item's full duration, so very handy for longer lasting items like higher tier Darkvision elixirs (giving your entire party Darkvision makes sneaking around a dungeon MUCH easier). You can also increase this number with feats.
3. Crafting. This uses the Craft action in downtime and costs materials (aka: gold), but these items last until you use them. IMO this isn't usually necessary for an Alchemist, but it's there if you need it.
So the ones that you would stow and have on hand are #2 and #3. You'd generally do this with things you want to have on hand, things that have longer durations where you want the full duration, or things you want to give to other people (such as giving them a healing elixir to carry so they can heal you if needed!).
3. Along with #2 I took the Alchemical Gauntlet formula. How does that one work exactly? I bought a regular gauntlet for myself but have yet to inquire about using the formula to make it alchemical. Did I make a mistake in buying the mundane gauntlet when I can make the alchemical version separately? Also, one of my group has a gauntlet bow and I had said that because I have that formula I wanted to enhance it for them so that they could get extra versatility, if they wanted to. They said that I wouldn't be able to, though I cannot remember the reason why.
Gauntlet, Gauntlet Bow, and Alchemical Gauntlet are all distinct items. They're not augments/additions to the Gauntlet, so RAW you can't combine them into a single item. Your GM is free to overrule that, of course.
4. I took Blowgun Poisoner at 2 because while I have access to about 20 bombs they all have splash damage and 2 of the 4 in the group use melee attacks and I didn't want the damage I dealt, albeit 1 or 2, to potentially be either us winning or losing the fight. The description for blowgun poisoner doesn't specify if adding the poison to a dart costs an action so I wasn't sure if attempting to use one of my injury poisons with the blowgun would be 2 or 3 actions. 1 action for QA or pulling the poison from my bag, 1 or none to coat the dart then 1 to attack.
Yes, you hit the unfortunate problem with non-Bomber alchemists: bombs are not fun to use when you have melee allies. This is actually why the Alchemist in my Spore War group is a Bomber but with Medic dedication: still get the healing (from Medicine/Battle Medicine/quick alchemy elixirs of healing), but can just spam the hell out of bombs without risk to allies. It's significantly easier to play, offense wise.
As Trip H mentioned, the Blowgun requires an action to reload, so the action economy here is quite difficult.
The action cost here is based on the cost to Activate the poison:
An injury poison is activated by applying it to a weapon or ammunition, and it affects the target of the first Strike made using the poisoned item.
Spear Frog Poison for example says "Activate: 2 actions", so it would take 2 actions to apply and activate the poison. I don't see anything in Blowgun Poisoner that changes the action cost. Toxicologist can do it as 1 action instead as their field benefit, so this feat is probably more suited to them.
5. With QA, the description says "Any effect created by an item made with Quick Alchemy that would have a duration longer than 10 minutes lasts for 10 minutes instead," how does this affect drugs? I was able to discuss this on the P2e subreddit and my own group but there was conflicting interpretation. I was curious as to how QA would work with drugs in the game. When I asked in the subreddit the one person that replied said that any drugs that had an onset time greater than 10 minutes wouldn't take any effect because by the time the onset timer finished the drug effect would become inert. My group said that despite the onset timer the effect wouldn't START until it was done and then after 10 minutes it would end. The discussion on the subreddit was for if drugs made with QA would eliminate the Addicted condition to whichever drug was used. Someone else, prior to my own question, had said that the Addicted condition could be neglected because the effects of the drug would end after 10 minutes. Their words were "Addiction is a disease, which is an effect. All effects of items created through Quick Alchemy have a maximum duration of 10 minutes. The Onset of addiction is a day, meaning regardless of what is rolled the addiction is removed before it does anything." Can I please get clarification on this?
Ask your GM. There isn't consensus on this, unfortunately.
6. Last one, for now. I also took Medic dedication and Battle medicine at 2, DM is allowing the free archetype. Medic says that once per day you can use Battle medicine on a creature that is temporarily immune due to having already been treated with BM, but it doesn't specify if that's one, overall, creature per day or that I can use BM on multiple creature a second time once per day. Which one is it?
Medic Dedication's ability is something you can activate once per day (until it becomes once per hour). Activating it lets you use it on one creature. So it's "one time per day, you can battle medicine one person who is immune." It's not per-ally.
If your party is heavily reliant on battle medicine healing, other players taking feats like Robust Recovery or Godless Healing help a LOT because they lower the immunity time to an hour.
"initial damage" would be the dice roll and no splash or other bonus damage, yes.
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Craft still costs money to do, and only gives the player a discount if they spend extra days to reduce the cost. So no worries about buying it.
With my #3, I will of course ask my DM this, but am I able to, generally, make the gauntlet I already have alchemical or did I waste my money buying it? It's only 2 sp but if I didn't need to spend it then I'm gonna go back to the NPC I bought it from and sell it back to them.
I'd let you put the value of the gauntlet towards the cost of crafting the upgrade (which is how things like upgrading runes works), so it wouldn't be wasted. But that's ultimately a GM question. :)