this alchemy lark - its hard work isn't it ?.

I don't mind putting in a bit of graft but if I run out of Barnacles or Void salts it can be quite a trek to find some more - especially as they don't immediately respawn

I've taken to using alchemists shops as a giant walmarts. buying up everything in bulk. a few good potions repays the investment but I'm not sure thats what Bethseda had in mind.

how do all you veteran practitioners of the dark arts get by ?

Alchemy is one of my low skill abilities.

Even though I have several skills at 100 and a few more in the 90s, alchemy and one other are still low, in the 30s.

Probably training is the best way to go.

Stores for Void Salts. They're not too difficult to find. And there are mods that increase (or decrease, optionally) the ingredients quantities in stores, too.

I just gather everything I see, and store it in a chest. Once in a while I spend an hour making pots.

I collect ingredients for maybe 50 hours, store em all @ one house, and make potions in one fell swoop. that way I don't need to keep going back an fourth, alchemy isn't a huge deal in this game with the ability to buy ingrediants and sell the potions back, its essentially free alchemy training to level 100 lol.

Best Bet, Wait a long time between making potions til u stock up on ingredients

My characters (mostly sorceresses or mages) prefer to just let it come naturally. They begin collecting ingredients as they travel (on foot), and while dungeoneering. They seldom purchase ingredients from vendors, unless they are exotic or hard to find. My habits were established in Oblivion in the wizards tower. I would never create potions on the fly. I would store master level equipment near the alchemist table for the buff, and create the potions in bulk. In Skyrim, I have selected the barrel in the Markarth home to store all ingredients. I will dump them in the barrel after each trip. Once or twice a week, I will create hundreds of potions in bulk. Most are sold, but the more powerful restore health/magica are retained and used by the character, and given to followers. It doesn't seem like work, and is just another natural aspect of the game for my characters.

five o hours - thats a long time ?

I suppose once you know the recipes its easier to collect them all in advance. you know what you need

I'm glad I'm not the only alchemist who goes on shopping sprees tho.

Yea I do that too.

Imo, alchemy (along with speech) is one of the most important skills to level up quickly. Once you have a high alchemy skill potions can do the work for you in battles (except for the few creatures that resist poisons), especially the ones that work over time (lingering). I can hit a high-powered enemy with a combo potion that does poison, as well as lingering, damage (for example: damage health + lingering damage stamina) one or two times and watch it stagger and fall down dead.

Leveling up alchemy quickly requires activating the thief stone, having the well-rested perk and buying/stealing apparel that increases alchemy power. I scour the country side for ingredients and buy/steal rare ones from vendors, like canis root used for paralysis. A few paralysis potions can save your ass when suddenly confronted with multiple adversaries!

I look for recipes on the internet so I don't have to eat each one to discover its effects (I don't look at is as cheating, but using people's experience before me). However, there are some in-game recipes.

A good recipe generator can be found here: http://skyrim.melian.cc/?cmd=cmdSkyrimAlchemyWizard

Alchemy is very easy (and profitable) to level pretty quickly, because the XP you get is based on the value of what you make. That makes it one of the few skills that you can actually level FASTER at high levels.
Use one of the many tools out there to find recipes that yield high value potions / poisons, and mix away. Wear a set of maxed out Fortify Alchemy gear while doing so for extra value, and buy any perks you can afford that will increase value further.
You'll end up with lots bottles of useless stuff (due to odd mixed effects) so expensive nobody can actually pay for them. That's OK, sell them anyhow; your speachcraft goes up based on the value of what you sold, not the money you received. And hey, clearing out every merchant in town on a daily basis is still just as profitable, even if you sold your stuff for much less than full value.

A bit of self horn tooting - once I get my alchemy workbench out of beta, use it. The new version totally kicks ass, and lets you do all the stuff other tools do, plus some other fun things, with a very nice interface. The new version is http://209.46.18.232/wiers.us/skyalc/index.php and should be fully functioning Monday morning (gotta upload at work because of our VPN). Its specifically designed with tablets in mind, so if you have an iPad, Kindle Fire, or some such it's a blast - no tabbing out of your game to use it, no need to type in any settings or scroll through drop menus. At the same time, it also works in the oldest of browsers, even if you have javascript turned off.

Check all kinds of barrels and sacks for salt piles, buy 'em from every vendor you pass (nearly all merchant types carry it, including innkeepers), fish barrels are guaranteed to have at least 1-2 portions.

Then, go running about in circles around the Morthal swamplands, finding all the deathbell you can, along with any swamp fungal pods and canis root. The deathbell combines with salt piles to make slow poisons, which are worth a nice amount, and with around 80-100 portions to find in the Morthal area, a good source of income. Swamp fungal pods and canis root are an ingredient an paralyze poisons, both very useful and valuable.

If you're the sort to go out ingredient hunting, it helps to pay attention to what you're finding in a given region. Mountain flowers, lavender, and tundra cotton grow in varying abundancies along many stone paths throughout the grassier climes of Skyrim, with snowberries being more prominent in the snowier areas. Lots and lots of dragon's tongue to be found in the deadlands area of the Rift (so much so that with having taken the alchemy perk that yields me two ingredients harvested, I had gathered nearly 600 portions and had covered perhaps close to 3/4 of the region). Plenty of creep cluster, too. Nightshade I've only really found in abundance in the Solitude area.

I've found myself really enjoying just striking out from a given city and running along the path in a new direction, gathering as much in alchemy ingredients as I can. On top of finding new locations to revisit and explore, I find myself loaded down with ingredients to take back to Honeyside and dump into my stock.

And it's easy enough to just get a little notepad and keep track of which kinds of potions tend to have the best combinations for resell value

Gathering ingredients (picking flowers) has been my favorite activity since Morrowind. Immersive, rewarding, and a great way to explore. If you don't enjoy it, though, there are plenty of other paths to bolster your effectiveness in battle.