I'm not sure if it's just me or maybe something new, but I've never had success in compounding any low rank metal items (that have ore version, like iron, tin, aluminum) into higher rank ones if I use rock-base (marble, shale, obsidian, basalt) second item. It'd always end up result in ores.

I also never managed to get bluestone from compounding

But I feel like I haven't do enough alchemy for both cases so i'm not sure yet.

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offtopic:

Also, how do people figure out what are the new items' base/subbase1/subbase2 etc? From what i read melone don't work anymore for that, but I can't find any discussion about how do people figure things out.