On my current playthrough, I'm playing mostly as a rogue with alchemy and tinkering. In my current inventory, I have around 20 electrum bars and judging by the current state of the wiki, no way to turn them into something useful. Alchemists need a skill that will allow you to transmute bars into random other bars every (Nth) turn. That would solve a lot of the complaints about archers running out of bolts.