I've never actively looked for them, but I have found them on loot from dead mages.

Pearls come from oysters, not clams. You can only get clam meat from those. In Skyrim, pearls only exist in an already harvested state.

Dungeons with ghost enemies are where to get it, usualy. Looks like an ordinary bowl of salts or bone meal lying on a shelf and you can loot it from the ghosts ashes if they leave any.

Pearls, never looted one yet and only found a couple in the stores. Harvested a load of Clams too, but no such luck.

I looked at my ingredient barrel and i have a bunch of deadra hearts but very few pearls andwisp wrappings. Wisps are pretty rare when i play.

Wisp wrappings and Canis root are the rarest for me. I believe I've seen two wisps and only three or four canis roots plants in the wild. Pearls at least show up in merchant inventories but I rarely get canis root there.

Pearls are the rarest.

660 hours in my game and I've only found (or looted) around 5 or 6 of them.

The human heart/human flesh thing is kind of asinine to me given how many humans with perfectly good hearts and flesh walk around. Imo, the perk for doing "The taste of death" should have been that you could loot human hearts and flesh from human corpses. That would have made it actually worth completing, much like how pieces of the past made daedra hearts more accessible.

Canis root is out there but you have to look at a lot of dried up branches. I've been finding more when I do that. I just found a human heart on a hagraven. I have lots of dwarven oil because I love those Dwemer ruins. I don't think I've ever seen a hawk beak but I have one pearl. Those dang jazbay graqes are tough. I found a strip of them once along a road and now I can't remember where they were. Chicken eggs aren't too tough but you have to check their nests. I'm always surprised how much weight I drop when I unload my ingredients into a satchel. Who knew I was gathering 20 lbs of stuff?

Just use Glowing Mushrooms and Blisterwort to make Fortify Smithing potions. These ingredients are much easier to come by.

I really don't use most of the "rare" ingredients, because most of these items can be easily substituted with more commonly found ingredients.

Pearls, Wisp Wrappings, Powdered Mammoth tusks, Antlers, Spriggan Sap - I really have no use for those. I can make pretty much all of the potions I need without resorting to those ingredients. I have a few characters with Alchemy at 100. I love alchemy and I will always use it, just as I've done in Morrowind and Oblivion.

@ Kicenna: Jazbay Graqes grow in abundance around the hotsprings (around the Atronach Stone).

You can kill the hawks flying in and around Solitude with a bow or magic and harvest them for beaks and feathers. Although its pretty hard to do!

I would think human flesh and hearts would be common! But I guess harvesting regular npcs for them is a bit gruesome.

Pearls are hard. They should be found in some of the clams on the coast but are missing.

Wisp wraps are rare since they only come from the wisp mothers. And the glowing dust from their little wisps.

Daedra hearts are tough. I've seen them in three daedric quests and shops, but that is it.

I have to agree with all the corpses laying around after clearing a bandit cave human flesh and hearts should be available by the bags full.

Jazbay graqes. Alchemists occasionally have them and you might be lucky to find one or two in certain ruins. I've only found them growing in one location where you can pick up five or six. There's a quest to get 20 of them and it's pretty hard to find them all.

Wisp wrappings are the rarest and most difficult for me for sure. What to do with all these human and daedra hearts!?

I went up and down one of the roads over there where I thought I had seen them but found nothing, so thank you! I'll check again. Right now I only have 6 so I need 14 more. I'll keep checking with alchemists too.

The main road South of Morvunskar (SW of Windhelm) might be the place you were thinking about.

I'm surprised about the lack of Canis Roots people are reporting. They blend in to the terrain very well is why they seem so hard to find. They usually appear on top of large rocks and look like mini bonsai trees without any leaves is the best way to describe them.

I've never found Spriggan Sap on a spriggan (never looked at vendors) and most of what other people are reporting as rare I've experienced the same results.

Because of what Moloiriel suggested: i only use my most common ingredients for potions and won't sell any ingredients.


Yeah, they kinda' look like short mesquite bushes without foliage...and they look windblown (dramatically leaning).

This.

Agrona, Kicenna - try the road going southwest outside of Kynesgroove. I picked up around 20 graqes just walking along the road. You're in the right area if you're near Steamingcrag Camp. They grow just on the edge of the road (among other places).

Clams are all over the place, but I've never gotten a Pearl from harvesting clams. I always get clam meat and nothing else. And my Mage is an Argonian so I harvest quite a few clams. They must be extremely rare or something.

I agree with Spriggan Sap as well. I don't remember ever getting Spriggan Sap as a drop from Spriggans, only Taproot.

Void and Frost Salts would be extremely rare if they weren't somewhat common from vendors. I've only ever seen 2 enemy Frost Atronachs (unsummoned ones anyway) and I've never seen an unsummoned Storm Atronach.

Ectoplasm is pretty rare as well. Ghosts don't seem to drop it very often (I miss the 100% Ectoplasm drops from ghosts in Oblivion) and ghosts are a lot less common in Skyrim also.

Wisp Wrappings are definately up there as well. Wisp Mothers are rare.

In Skyrim, pearls (and small pearls) can only be obtained from already harvested sources. You cannot harvest pearls yourself. Check UESP or the Wikia.

Oh, get off the road. They grow on the stones around the hot springs!


Yes and this, what Starlifter said. I do remember there were a ton on that road, when I followed Delphine to Kynesgrove!

I forgot about the hawks beak. But I can buy those from most alchemists. No one sells the pearls though.

You can get a bunch of Jazbay Graqes from the Arch mage quarter's garden at the college.

Does that stuff grow back? I assumed it did, but I've had issues with Nightshade not growing back after like 2 pickings in Solitude and the wilderness, so I've never touched it. Does the Dawnstar Sanctuary garden behave the same as the Arch-Mage's garden?

1.) You do not need Spriggan Sap to make smithing potions. There are two other and more common ingredients with the effect on. (Blisterword and Glowing Mushroom)

2.) Dwarven Oil: Rare, but not that rare and the effects are not very interesting. You can ignore it.

3.) Hawk feathers & beaks: Rare, but you have not lived if you have not tried shooting hawks! See Solitude and the harbour area for hawks if you want to shoot some. You will have plenty of these ingredients after that.

4.) Pearls are indeed very rare. They may have been overused in Oblivion is what I am thinking. (Or was it Morrowind?). There were too many of them in the past that I could say that I am missing them now.

5.) Human hearts & flesh. Agreed, these are rare, too. I remember seeing those however quite often throughout Morrowind and do not miss them now.

6.) Jarrin Root. It is a special ingredient and therefore it svcks. It has no place but in the minds of geeks. Use a River Betty, it is a good and commonly found poison amplifier. You find this fish in many lakes and rivers. if you see dragonflies over the water then you will have a good chance of finding one.

7.) Antlers are somewhat rare, agreed. Even when one goes hunting does it take a while to get a good stock of them.

8.) Powered Mammoth Tusk is another one of those special ingredients, I think. I have found it, but I have no idea what to use it for. It is of no meaning to my game, but sits in a chest as a trophy until I know what it is needed for.

9.) Whisp Wrapping, agreed, are rare just as the whisp mothers themselves.

10.) Chicken Eggs can be found in villages as you say and can be bought in shops, too. They are rare for an ingredient but not by much. They should have been just food. Chicken eggs are a quite common food source I would say.

Rule of thumb: the harder an ingredient is to find, the less useful it becomes. The effort in finding them does not make up for what can be gained by them.

My favourite ingredient, though I have no real use for it anymore, is the Canis Root. It is light-brown in colour and is very easily missed. One can stand in front of it and not see it. It took me a while until I figured out its pattern. They like to sit in a crack of a commonly found land formation in the Rift! Trying to find them in the marsh below Solitude is a real tough challenge. If you ever get bored, then try to find them there.

Halldirs Cairn has heaps of ghosts.

i never seen a spriggan sap, even in stores. How do u get it anyway. Killed like 50+ treewomen and still no sap, only taproot.
Pearls, only gotten once in the quest to find Grimsever. And that is Small pearl...
Jazbay graqes, seen only like 2 or 3 and i dont fast travel nowdays.
Antlers, i didnt even know they exist until u said so. Gonna hunt some deers.
Crimson nirnroot, i ended up consoling the 30 items instead for a quest...
powdered mammoth tusk is quest related
Human heart and flesh are limited
Daedra hearts are super rare =.= Did all the daedras die out or what. I remember in oblivion i had to throw some excess hearts away.
oil are easy if u just run through a dwemer place.
Chicken eggs are found in villages usually 2-3 of them
jarrin root is quest related.
wisp wrappings, seen only once. I cant even find those wisps and their mother...