Is there a reliable source of alchemy?

[acerthorn]

I'd like to know ... is there a place where I can get a consistent, reliable source of bugs, butterflies, and metals for alchemy?

With food and fish, I can simply farm that stuff.  But insects and metals can't be bred.

The consignment shop usually only has one of each ingredient daily. Not very useful for spamming Bottled Blessings of the Fae to make lots and lots of money.

[Deklitch]

If you have a collection helper, that'll show you the locations where the different bugs, butterflies and metals are. Unfortunately the collection helper doesn't tell you the type of bug/metal/butterfly at each location, just that they are there. One way around this is the bug hunt/butterfly bonanza/metal collector opportunities that are given to kids from from school occasionally. If I remember rightly, these have the names of the type of bug/butterfly/metal at each place.

Of course, if you have both supernatural and university life, and have a high enough science skill, you can clone bugs/butterflies/metals to your heart's content and use these cloned items for your alchemy needs.

Witches can convert items with one of their spells, but there is no guarantee what you are going to end up with.

Alchemy station seems to provide spawners, so maybe another option may be to put a number of alchemy stations around the place and see how many bugs/butterflies you get that way (don't think that'll work for metals). Mining from ambitions and the inventing skill can come back with metals/rocks.

Breaking space rock boards (martial arts/world adventures) gives gems after a while.