I’ve always found the mechanics of this trope endlessly replayable across fantasy subgenres. The exile itself strips away all institutional crutches—no guild library, no familiar lab, no reputation to trade on. That forces a pivot from theoretical perfection to brutal, scrappy pragmatism. The alchemist starts brewing potions with roadside weeds and tavern scrapings, which often leads to rediscovering forgotten, 'impure' branches of the craft everyone else dismissed.
What really builds the legend, though, is the unintended audience. While they’re just trying to survive or help a village, some passing bard or merchant witnesses a miracle cure from what looks like kitchen garbage. The story spreads, twisted and amplified, far ahead of the alchemist’s own travel. By the time they stumble into the next town, people are already whispering about a wandering sage, setting up expectations they never asked for and must now navigate, often clumsily.