I am currently playing as a sneaky Argonian archer who also dabbles in Two-Handed weapons. I decided not to raise Enchanting with this character, as I pumped it to 100 with my last character, a High Elf, and it made the game far, far too easy. So I've had pretensions of raising Alchemy with my current character, athough I am finding it very slow going. I pick up every ingredient that I come across, and I make sure to eat one of each kind before engaging in any alchemy, although I am finding it extremely difficult to raise the skill. It seems like the game expects you to make an ungodly amount of potions before awarding you with a stat increase. Are there any cheap ways to power level this skill? Thanks.

Strangely, alchemy is the only skill were the xp you get depends on the quality of what you make. i'm not sure which give more xp but the early ones such as stamina, health and magicka potions give very little xp indeed. Always try to make the best and newest potions you can.

Wheat, chaurus eggs, hanging moss, and giant's toe are the primary ones needed as far as greater experience in different potion combinations. Wheat is easily gathered from random barrels and picking it when you drop by near a farm (don't sell it), and of course, the odd trip to the alchemy shop. Chaurus eggs can be gathered by the hundreds beneath the frostflow lighthouse and in tolvald cave. Hanging moss is found in decent quantity inside the solitude catacombs and around a lot of ancient ruins, especially outside. Also heavily found in grottos.

Giant's toe is the trickier one. There's several places where 1-2 of them spawn you can check for skyrim wiki. But they give a huge magnitude increase to the base cost and thus base experience to potions. Deathbell+salt pile makes a valuable single-effect poison called "slow", which isn't as great for leveling as the aforementioned items, but it does suffice.

Wearing fortify alchemy gear while you are making potions adds to the value of the potion, and thus impacts the exp gained with each brew too.

So... as long as you have one of these ingredients in a recipe then there will be a large XP gain?

Generally yeah. There's some low-grade recipes you can make with them, but UESP/skyrim wiki gives the combination's for the ones with the best leveling output without taking too much time to gather.

Exp gain is based on the potion value. This can be done with choice ingredients for sure, it is also accomplished by getting multiple effect potions.

Giant toe and wheat was the combination I used.

The highest priced potions I've been able to make have both Giants Toe and Creep Cluster.

And then add either Hanging Moss or Wheat to those two. Depending on your level and any fortifying, you should get potions worth from between 1000 to 3000 septims easily.

My level went up one for each one of these I made at first. You might have a hard time selling them though because of the high price.

I leveled alchemy this weekend and this was invaluable: http://rp.eliteskills.com/skyrim.html

Sorry if you already know some of this stuff, but I'm going for full coverage here.

• Use the Thief stone, and be at least well rested before making any potions.
  
• Wear alchemy gear. You can buy a lot of it if you don't want to make it.
  
• Take all of the Alchemy perks that increase potency (Alchemist 1-5, Physician, Benefactor, Poisoner) as soon as possibly can.
  
• Use the potions you make to pay for training. Just a few expensive one should easily cover 5 sessions. Arcadia's Cauldron is ideal until you hit 75 skill.
  
• Try to time your crafting so you will be unlocking (and taking) a level of Alchemist just beforehand, and train in between, to optimize your ingredient consumption.
  
• For the most part, don't even bother buying/harvesting ingredients that produce low value potions.
  
• Once you get to the 90+ range, find the skill books and quest givers that provide +1s to Alchemy.

Here's what you should be looking for:

Giant's Toe + Wheat [+ Creep Cluster]
Luna Moth Wing + Vampire Dust
Luna Moth Wing + Charus Eggs + Garlic
Death Bell + River Betty
Death Bell + Salt Pile
Blue Mountain Flower + Blue Butterfly Wing [+ Butterfly Wing]
Bear Claws + Hanging Moss
Bear Claws + Blue Mountain Flower
Blue Mountain Flower + Hanging Moss

and anything with Invisibility or Paralysis

I use a combination of Deathbell, River Betty (damage health bonus!) and Abecean Longfin for a nice damage health, slow, weakness to poison triple effect.

deathbell are easy to find growing in swampy areas and both fish spawn in big numbers around goldenglow estate just outside of riften (I can usually find 10-20 of each in one swim around) another good area to find all 3 in abundance is in the swamps between morthal and Solitude. if you're looking for fish, the easiest way is to swim around above the water and look for a set of 3 dragonflies then dive down to find 3 random fish.

it's a great mixture as they level you at a good pace, sell for good money, and can be quite usefull as an attacking poison (I use it with my thief to survive)

As mentioned above, the higher the value of your potions, the more XP you get. That means you want to ALWAYS
1) Use the best (combination of) "Fortify Alchemy" items you have, and improve them ASAP when your enchanting improves (if you go that route).
2) If an ingredient has a special value boosting effect, be sure to use it in potions that produce that effect. The most notable examples are Giant's Toe (Fortify Helath), Nirnroot (Damage Health), and Deathbell (Ravage Health)
3) Concoct potions that have multiple effects, regardless of type / utility of effect. The value is the sum of the values of all effects.
4) Visit these links and follow the listed recipes (or figure out your own) http://209.46.18.232/wiers.us/skyalc/workbench.php?recipes_tab&show=results&11 http://209.46.18.232/wiers.us/skyalc/workbench.php?recipes_tab&show=results&10

Discovering Alchemy Effects

If you do not want to just look-up the receipts, then here are a few tips...

Discover the effects yourself. You do this in two steps and will get quick results. This is how you do it:

1.) Take all the ingredients of which you have plenty (flowers, insects, fish, roots, ...). Then combine them with each other and two at a time. Whenever it says "Unknown potion" do you give it a try. This will uncover the more common effects on the common ingredients. You will soon know all four effects on quite a few ingredients. Do this whenever you think you have an overflowing supply of ingredients.

2.) Your success with the first step will slow down eventually. Once you think you have discovered the more common effects do you go after the rare effects. Obviously, the first step will have uncovered the more common effects, but you will also have used up a good amount of your supply. To make this second step fast and effective do you use exclusion. So what you now do is you only test ingredients with undiscovered effects and you put all those away that have all four effects discovered. This will greatly reduce the number of tests you need to make, while leaving you with a high chance of discovering the rare effects and without losing too many ingredients.

The user interface will help you a bit in finding effects. Each time a combination fails will the UI remember it and grey out their combination. So you do not need to remember anything, but only go by what is being highlighted as untested and you only test it when it says "Unknown potion".

With these two steps will you be able to find 90%-95% of all the effects on the ingredients. Most of your ingredients will have all 4 effects uncovered by that time and only a very few will have unknown effects on them.

Discovering the effects will increase your skill and it will get you quickly up to around 70 in Alchemy. Just keep collecting ingredients wherever you find them. The remaining skill points will be had by creating potions and poisons for specific needs and spending some gold on a trainer for a few extra levels early on.

You will also see that it does not need you to uncover all effects on all ingredients to get something done with alchemy. In fact, if you take into account how difficult it is to get some of the ingredients then you do not really want to use them as there is little point in discovering their effects when they are hard to come by in the first place.

If you wear some alchemy gear (i.e. a Ring of Extreme Alchemy with 22% bonus) then the potions that eventually come out of these experiments will give you a better profit.

When you sell unused potions to alchemists then they will often run out of cash. Check their stock of ingredients and trade as many of them for your unused potions instead of taking gold. Pick those ingredients that you either like having or that have undiscovered effects on them (you will be able to run some more experiments sooner).

One more tip: The alchemist in Dawnstar will give you an increase in Alchemy for helping her.

Good luck!

Sdack - Thanks! That is some useful information. I'm trying to avoid looking up ingredient effects, but I may have to do so for the rare items.

If you do the Return To Your Roots quest there's a chance to make two identical potions with one set of ingredients. I think one of the Bard's quests will boost Alchemy as well.

Although it is harder without enchanting, the rest glitch can still be done, and will take you all the way to 100. I was at 30 when I did it. Also you can then sell that potion and instantly get 100 speech

Blue mountain flowers and blue butterfly wings make a good potion for leveling.
I find them better than giants toe since they are both easy as pie to find.

Crank out a few ridiculous resto-loop potions, valued in the millions. You'll max it in no time.

The problem with this site is it does not allow for all combinations. i.e., Giant's Toe, Swamp Fungal Pod, and Wheat. The site doesn't recognize it. It is a four effect potion, 1/2 good 1/2 bad. Only useful for selling and leveling up. I haven't found better. I wanted to compare it to what has been listed here and before to be sure I was correct.

I've mae all of the 4 effect Giant's Toe (fortify Helath) potions, and that one is indeed the one with the highest value. The possible exception would be if you have perks that boost some effects more than others, but in this case the recipe you listed still comes out on top. However, the difference is pretty small, so I prefer to save my Swamp Fungal Pod for other things, and use Rock Warbler Egg or Blisterwort.


A solid recipe, though I'd argue the Blue BF Wings are a bit harder to find than some things. Depends how much time you spend collecting, and where, I guess.
Also, you can add Giant's Tow to that as a third ingredient to that recipe and GREATLY boost the value, to one of the top five. I'd save up some blue wings and flowers for that, or other potions (Blue Flowers + Wheat is my fave health potion, frex).

Use the following calculator to find the most expensive potions you can make with the ingredients you have on hand. Use all means at your disposal (perks, potions and enchantments) to make better potions.

http://rp.eliteskills.com/skyr%20im.html

Thanks for the info. Since the diff is so minor, I'll use blisterwort instead as I have lots of it.

I made a tutorial a while back about how to level it quickly - it relies on a tool that allows you to select all your ingredients and will calculate the most valuable potions, but also has quite a few pointers on getting there quickly.


http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1314929-tutorial-leveling-alchemy-and-getting-fast/



This tutorial centers around a useful web based tool called http://keke.itarium.ch/uploads/alchemy/

The URL is http://keke.itarium.ch/uploads/alchemy/

This tool lets you select all the ingredients you own, then gives you a list of the most expensive potions you can brew. As far as I know it's the best alchemy tool out there for making a profit, as it doesn't require you to figure ANYTHING out, like using one of the other tools would force you to do.

Preparation:

For the fastest leveling, you should first follow these steps:

1. Make or buy a full set of the strongest fortify alchemy gear you can get your hands on. Gloves, helmet/circlet, ring, necklace. Wearing these while brewing will make your potions more valuable and stronger, thus leveling you faster.

2. Fast travel back to the original three Guardian stones and equip the thief stone. You can change this back whenever you want. 20% faster alchemy leveling.

3. If you are married, go to your house or spouse's house and wait until late, then wait for them to lie in the bed. Now sleep in the bed to get the "lovers comfort" bonus, which grants an extra 15% leveling speed bonus to all skills.

4. If you aren't married, go to the local inn and spend 10 gold on a bed. Sleep in the bed and you will get the "well rested" bonus which will improve skill leveling speed by 10%


Procedure:

Drop your skyrim into windowed mode and load http://keke.itarium.ch/uploads/alchemy/ up on the right side of your screen. You can shrink the browser window to whatever size you need to be able to see it while skyrim is running.

To start, go to Arcadia in whiterun, and buy all the ingredients that cost less than 100 gold, and all the giants toes if she has them. If you want to wait the 48 hours to respawn the merchant's inventory, do it as many times as you want.

Now alt + tab over to your browser window, select all the ingredients you own, and click the "Show me the most profitable mixtures!" button. alt + tab back into skyrim, Create the top potion, then de-select any ingredients you have used all of, and click show potions again. Do this until Your potions are no longer coming up with a value that you're comfortable with(I stop at about 250), or you run out of ingredients.

Buy all of her ingredients except for daedra heart and void salts(they are uber expensive), Then sell all the potions you made(unless you have some useful ones you want to keep) until she runs out of gold. Now train alchemy with her, and either pickpocket your gold back, or sell more potions. You won't make a profit on your potions by training then selling, but it's a LOT faster than waiting 48 hours every time just to offload some useless potions.

If you want to keep leveling after this, wait 48 hours, buy her ingredients, sell some potions, wait 48 hours, buy her ingredients, sell your potions, and repeat until you run out of potions to sell. Then start brewing again. Don't forget to train with her every time you get a level up.



NOTES:

I recommend de-selecting Daedra Heart in the tool, and not buying it from her, unless you want to buy them to use for things later on such as the atronach forge or Daedric armor. I doubt you will make a profit brewing them into potions if you are buying them. I also usually de-select spriggan sap, as it's kinda rare and has both fortify enchanting and fortify smithing. Blisterwort and snowberries are easy as cake to get, so I hold on to my spriggan sap so I can easily make a fortify smithing or fort enchanting potion when I want.


I haven't had the privilege of doing much using Giant's toes, but Giant's toes utilizing their Fortify Health affect will make potions FAR more profitable than any other ingredient in the game, and thereby level you fastest. For reference, My first run-through with this method, I did not have any giant's toes, but I had nearly every other ingredient. I was missing probably ten ingredients total before starting. I did a grind from 41 to 63 alchemy just as a test of this method, and it took me about 1.5 hours. I did not have the lover's comfort, rested, or well rested blessing, and I was only using two alchemy items - one which fortified by 13%, and one which fortified by 17%