Please read:

The text below the line represents what I thought of alchemy and poisons before they became powerful. See my new post, which is post #9.
TLDR - Alchemy and poisons are not powerful until you have reached 80 in Alchemy and are able to unlock the first 3 effects of ingredients.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My character is a selfish Nord [censored] who wants to poison people who don't like her. She is at level 9 and has over 30 in alchemy. I used six perks in alchemy including one that makes all potions brewed 40% stronger. The strongest poison she's made causes 40 points damage to health instantly and 50% slow for 30 or 60 seconds. I'm happy for the slow but not for the poison damage.

At her level, against some of the tough bosses she's killed, I would want it to be more. Unless those bosses were tough from armor rating, not by having lots of health. It's too early to call off on poison, but I've invested so much into it. But it is clear to me that right now I can't depend on poison and alchemy skill alone, I will have to spend some perk points to increase archery damage.

i was about to ask how alchemy is in skyrim since I'm deciding if I wanna level it or enchanting. This kind of helps me out

Putting all your eggs in one basket isn't a good idea. Alchemy and poisoning are decent as supplemental skills but trying to get by using just those skills isn't going to get you far. Might I suggest investing in daggers, since it should be easy for you to grab the 15x bonus, and you can also poison them?

It could be that I need to find more of the right ingredients. In order to know the first effect, you have to eat the ingredient. At level 25 in alchemy you can get the second effect. I can see that alchemy still has the potential to be powerful later on. There is a perk that allows poison to last twice as many hits for the weapon poisoned. I think I will stick with it until it becomes clear that it's a dead end.

Edit:
What 15x bonus? I'll have to look at that. Yeah, I was expecting modded Oblivion grade poisons. I'll go ahead and increase archery and see about daggers, which would suit my character.

Alright, her alchemy is now at 40 and overall it is decent. She turns an insane profit by selling off potions she made for no reason. Her perks let her to make 60% stronger potions. The restore health potions are generous in healing. But the poisons are still a bit weak, although 48 seconds of slowing an enemy is nice. They definitely seem to be more of a nice bonus and helper rather than a clear advantage.

Augh! Poison should be lethal and painful, that's why it's called poison. When I get my hands on the Skyrim Construction Set I will endeavor to make poison satisfying to see your victim suffer in agony.

Maybe it;s not so much that Skyrim poisons are weak, but that Oblivions poisons were overpowered. I mean, seriously overpowered. With decent alchemy skills and a sneak bonus, one could pretty much one shot everything.,

My alchemy isn't much to write about yet, but even now a dose of poison adds only around 1/3 to my weapon damage (Which I'm not so hot at either).

People often complain Oblivion's poisons were OP (Literally capable of slaying gods - true story ;p), but considering the effort required to prepare a triple-elemental paralysis poison, having it auto-kill seemed like a fair trade ;p

I'm up to about 50 alchemy and have a few perk points in it. So far it's mostly good for making gold...and it's *very* good for that. Other than that, I wouldn't say I make very heavy use of my poisons, and the health/magicka/stamina poisons I use I could have just bought. But it's fun to play an alchemist this time around since there are so many different ways to gather ingredients, so I'm going to keep at it. My suspicion is that once I get to a high enough level alchemy, it will probably be pretty powerful (although less so than enchanting).

Alchemy and poisons, for me, seemed weak climbing up to 79 in Alchemy. Poisons were not the evil I had hoped them to be, and my prime boss killer was the poison of slow. The grand turning point was hitting level 80, where it allowed the Experimenter 2/3 perk. Knowing the first 3 effects of ingredients you eat unleashes the Alchemy Archvile in you. Paralysis, invisibility, and ravage effects are yours to use, as well as potions made simply to be expensive. The more a potion is worth the more it counts toward leveling Alchemy. And because your knowledge of ingredients has increased the power and cost of your potions, it will not take so long to reach 90.

So now at 90 Alchemy, for a character that refuses to use enchanted weapons, let's look at my single use poisons:

1. Damage Health 73 points instantly ( Slow for 70 seconds is available for this poison if using the correct 2 ingredients )

This damage is added to my attack and it is the equalizer for me being wimpy from limiting to daggers only ( WEAK! ) on expert difficulty, because I'm one of those who gimps themselves. But Alchemy has a perk named Concentrated Poisons which will allow my weapon to poison through 2 hits. Double damage from a single poison that requires two hits.

2. Lingering Damage Health 15 points for 10 seconds

That's more than twice as powerful, 150 poison damage from a single poison and running them around for 10 seconds. Combining the above two

3. Weakness to Poison 29%

This is the optional enabler in a situation where I want something dead and out of my way, fast. Poison #1 now does 94 poison damage each hit, 188 total for 2 hits maximum. I wouldn't know how it would effect the Lingering Damage Health poison and haven't tested it.

So that concludes my experience with Alchemy, for you to see so that you can decide if you want to pursue poisoning through Alchemy. Relying on poisons alone, my wimpy dagger poisoning Nord female dog can be the bane of vertebrates any time she wants to, and she can back it up with 14 seconds of paralysis. But it didn't happen until 80 Alchemy. Fortunately, you can find the alchemist in Whiterun who will train you up to 75 for gold.

How do you mix damage health poison with 73 damage? What ingredients do you use? I have 100 alchemy with all perks and can still only make damage health poison of 45 or 30 damage.

you know if you mix the right ingredients, you can learn all 4 effects without those perks... right?

The missing ingredient could be the river betty.

One still can.

Grabbing the 15x dagger modifier I have been one-shotting dragonpriests since...forever. Now level 36ish somewhere and I still do. With unenchanted daggers, no poisons. Playing on expert.

It got a bit boring after a while since I could literally sneak in a room full of enemies and one shot all of them - even the scripted events where several high-tier draugr spawns. In one particular one I one-shotted 4 draugr something high tier and the dragonpriest didnt even get out of his coffin. I just jumped up on it and sat on his face for a while before I slit his throat..

I agree with the OP that poison seems to be underwhelming. I thought that poison damage would be multiplied with the sneak attack multiplier, but it isn't.

There are ways to improve on poison.

You could make it so that instead of doing instant damage, poison does long but powerful lingering damage.

So enchants are the ones that do instant damage, but poisons do damage over time, like 500 damage over 20 seconds. This will make poison the stealth character's choice, where the strength isn't in direct combat, it is in a slow combat and waiting for the enemy to die while he hides.

Coming from Oblivion to Skyrim, they seem to have made enchants and poisons exclusive.
In Oblivion, it was possible to make poisons that do fire damage. In Skyrim, fire damage is now exclusive to enchants only.

Yes, I think poisons should do very strong damage but only over time. That will give them a unique playstyle advantage over enchants.

People seem to be talking about having to have perks to know more than the first effect of an ingredient, but that perk only works by eating the ingredient.

you can combine ingredients to find out any of the 4 effects as long as they match - i have been making invisibiliy and paralysis poisins and i dont have those perks

What i'm saying is you can know all 4 effects of an ingredient without investing a single perk point in the alchemy tree.

Well I don't like to look up wiki pages. I like to find out on my own.

I haven't looked up any wiki pages. You experiment in-game. Sometimes it says fail and sometimes it says "effect found - Fortify Conjuration - (name of ingredient)

I dont know what vampire dust gives you after the 1st effect cos i dont want to use it up on getting it wrong cos if the potion fails, you lose the ingredient.

I had 50 chorus eggs from a dungeon and experimented the life out of them and now know all four effects.

Poisons are useless in Skyrim , they are so damn weak. Alchemy is one of the major skills of my Assassin, I chose it in hopes of brewing deadly poisons but now I see that even the deadliest poisons are two weak and not viable at all. I should have used all my alchemy perks in another skill tree, I am so disappointed with Alchemy so far. My skill in Alchemy is 70 btw, I hope it gets more effective from now , otherwise it'll be a complete waste.

I do agree that the poison side of things is weak - even poisons i've found in the wild at low levels hardly did any damage. Slow and Paralyze are pretty usefull for offensive poisons but in terms of actual damage done, the other offensive ones are rubbish.

The restore health ones can be pretty good, except i dont think much of the fortify health/stamina/magicka potions, i end up not even creating those, just selling them if i find any