I might just be missing it in the core book, but I can’t seem to find the base cost it takes to set up an alchemists lab. Does anyone have any guidelines for this?
A character with Alchemy 1 has no abilities that require a lab, as far as I can tell (they can identify things, but not create them, with the exception of poisons, which I’ll mention later).
A character with Alchemy 2 can work as an assistant.
A character with Alchemy 3 can “research new potions as if they were 5th level mages, but at twice the base time and cost. See Magic Research in Chapter 7.” (ACKS page 52, which is where the Alchemy proficiency description points us at).
So there’s my cites; the rest is ‘I am not an Autarch’, but it seems to me that it would follow the same rules as mages creating potions, and would require a lab of the same size and cost as a mage would to make the same potion. (Creating a potion of a first level spell would therefore require a workshop of 4,000 gp value; 2nd level would require 6,000 gp in value; and so on.)
On poisons: I can’t find a rule that says they require a lab of any kind to extract poisons from creatures or plants, so I would assume that they don’t.
(Also, I’ll mention that I refound this thread while looking around the forums, which might have useful information to you in the future; http://autarch.co/forums/general-discussion/alchemists-and-potions-without-spell-equivalents )