In short: you should be dual-wielding if you have an off-hand weapon with many powerful effects; otherwise use a shield.
When dual-wielding the effects from both weapons are added together and applied with each attack. So if your off-hand pistol has +X life-steal, then all of your attacks will have life-steal.
However, DPS is only the better of the two weapons (discovered with a little testing). Attack speed averages because attacks alternate between the two wielded weapons, each taking the time of the respective weapon. For example, if you have a quick pistol but a slow wand, the pistol attacks will happen very quickly after each wand attack, but wand attacks will happen slowly after each pistol attack.
What this means is that you should only dual-wield if you have an off-hand with a fast attack speed and many useful effects.
The Dual-Wield skill increases damage significantly, but it is geared towards Berserker as most of his skills add the DPS of both weapons to skill damage. Being an Alchemist, this skill should not interest you nor affect your decision.
Usually the defense of an off-hand shield is more valuable than a weapon that only adds its value in effects. Also, as your mana regeneration increases you will be using only skills, meaning your weapon is never used whereas a shield is (passively).
There are 3 sizes of pet-consumable fish:
- Regular fish transform your pet for 2 minutes and are fairly common.
- Big fish transform your pet for 1 hour and appear about 1/10 as often as regular fish.
- Giant fish transform your pet permanently and appear about 1/200 as often as regular fish.
The rarity of pet-consumable fishes are not affected by the tileset (crypt, mines, ruins, palace, etc) you're fishing in. (Character-consumable fishes are, however)
You can find a list of pet-consumable fish here on StrategyWiki. I don't see one that transforms your pet into an ogre...was it actually a Varkolyn?
Best Answer
Try it for yourself! When you've leveled up, just up your skills and watch the damage you do.
You'll see that for wands, the 'actual damage' is benefited from the dexterity stat and the magic damage is benefited from the magic stat. Since higher level wands are mostly magic damage, you'll want to focus on that if you're serious about high wand damage.