The trickiest alchemical ingredient to harvest has to be hawk feathers and beaks. I've heard you can kill the hawks, but I've never had any luck with it. I svck at archery and my fire breath shout doesn't seem to work on them.

There are recipies for sale in every alchamist shops, for about 30-50 gold, use these instead

i always use alchemy. my favorite potions are paralysis and lingering damage health.

frenzy is ok, bit only sticks on chars lvl29. Needs to go higher than 29 and needs a longer duration.

gathering/harvesting is not a grind either. For me it creates the game to be more fun, non time consuming and immersive. The level of detail that went into creating the land also helps greatly to make harvesting even more realistic and non gridning. It keeps the pace of the game imo moving.

Kinda wish i could add water or somethong to the plants in the houses so i can reharvest those too. But after picking them, the pot /plant stays dead.

the paper roll btw looks like a joint.. I donno why that came to mind i guess its because i was thinking of watering the plants in the houses.

I love Alchemy. In fact my user name and avatar is based on alchemy . Alchemy in every context I am all over it. I collect all the alchemy books in game too. Think about it also, alchemy is the most powerful skill in Morrowind and Skyrim with the exploit.

You can get 100% shout reduction on console using alchemy exploit. I do not support making 5000 damage weapons though. Besides you don't actually have to go to a very high % at all with the Amulet of Talos to get 100% shout reduction.

The last time I played Morrowind was on my Xbox until I crashed the game because I had made potions that were restoring health for a total of 16,000 points over 200 some minutes, fortifying health, stamina, magicka, strength and agility by a few hundred points each, much moreso for the health and the stamina.

I went through Morrowind, cackling like a madman as I crushed anything and everything that got in my way. I struck down a god in a few blows while his were received like a punch from a gnat. I was naked, carrying a daedric daikatana and he couldn't even damage enough to leave a hint of an impression on health. I struck down Dagoth Ur on the first shot.

Then I went to some fishing village that had a problem with breeding...netch? Whatever big floating gas bags there were that were breeding there. Saved, game crashes after. Every time I load up the save, it gets as far as the screen and the background water sounds.

Alchemy in Morrowind was ridiculous, and that was pretty awesome.


I managed a shot with an arrow on one, once in Solitude. It landed outside the walls. 5 minutes of chasing the bastard, just for curiosity, and that's what I got for it.

I find the hawks are quite easy to kill with magic. There is always a large amount of hawks in Solitude. And yes, Alchemy is a must. It's just too convenient and gathering ingredients is fun

I landed my first hawk the other day with a firebolt spell. Got three hawk feathers and a beak. You can also find these at merchants.

Its not free, you have to spend time gathering ingredients and building up your skill. Sure it is overpowered, but not moreso than Enchant or Smithing, and at least with Alchemy you are always on the hunt for more ingredients because your potions get sold or used up. With Enchant, once you get the master perk and enchant up you best suit of armor with the most powerful enchantments, what else is there left to do?

I love Alchemy. I played Morrowind for 2 months before I realized I could make potions.
Every character of mine, no matter how warrior like they are still picks flowers and happily closes the door on the world to see what they can come up with.

Alchemy is great in this game. I kinda prefer when I could bring my alchemic gear with me so I could test out the plants at the scene instead of running to the closest town........Im pretty forgetful.

It really does reward inquisitive minds. Love, love, love alchemy in Skyrim!

Absolutely hate it, instant health potions are just a horrible game mechanic, as are the fortify skill effects. Too bad since I like playing poison using characters, but I can't get over how stupid some of the design decisions were when it came to Skyrim's alchemy system.

I can see your point. It would make combat strategy much more interesting if potions healed over time.

I just started getting into Alchemy on my new thief. I'm looking forward to pick-pocket-poisoning people

The reason I always used hardcoe mode for fallout - HoT stimpaks. I didn't care for the other hardcoe features but instant healing you can use while paused with no limit to how many you can spam in a row other than a cheap, low weight resource you can stock up tons of? No thanks. I think it's one of the features of Skyrim I /facepalmed the hardest when I first learned of, a major disappointment. Sometimes it really seems like Bethesda just doesn't learn anything when it comes to combat.

Its all about expediency. Let the player stay in the battle until he/she wins, don't let them die. Essentially, provided you have enough health potions, you could go up against the strongest enemy, pause 10-15 times throughout the battle to heal, and defeat your foe. Yes, it is very much an absurd system to play by.

I love alchemy, always have from my twink gnome warrior picking flowers in WoW.. I love finding plants and other ingredients , love mixing potions and love the gold they bring in .. just one little gripe.. why can't alchemists make dye ? The first dyes were made from plant matter so seems logical to me

It would be interesting to make non-combat related stuff like perfumes to sell, with quests related to it. The power gamers would complain about it being useless.

I love mixing up grotesque poisons. My new favourite thing in TES.

Yeah, heal/restore magicka over time potions would have been better, along with a limit of how many potions could be in effect at once. On the otherhand, Enchanting and Smithing are so overpowering in Skyrim, maybe they wanted to ungimp Alchemy so it could be just as overpowering as the other two crafting skills. My vote would be to tone down all three.

I enjoy Alchemy but I try not to use it too much in battle. I have my own little unwritten rules that I follow most of the time. Only one frost resist potion against a frost dragon for instance, and if it runs out I do my best to finish the battle without taking another. Never use healing potions to bring my health to more than half level, and never quaff a healing potion in the first place unless my health is really really low. At first it was easy to follow these rules cause I didn't have many potions and they were really weak, so I had to conserve. But, now that I have just a few points in Alchemy, I have an abundance of really powerful potions so the temptation to spam potions in the heat of a tough battle is there.

I keep the Poison potions i make & sell the rest once finding the greater potions in caves etc.. although i do find it hard to sell them off, i usually end up trading expensive small items or strong potions from a shopkeeper, then sell my potions in return.

Bottles are heavy, maybe ingredient aren t balanced in weight, we all know this is another of the company blunders, some leaves have ingame weight but arrow doesn t for example.

My greatest bit[cencored]ing point with the actuall sytem it the watering down that ocurred compared to previous games, Now you can t avoid anymore side effect throught decanting etc etc etc. Alchemy is still good but it has lost 40% of its lackluster. There was a reason for the complexity of alchemy in previous games, working harder was merely an option. Again the producers of Skyrim robbed us options ingame.

Is there a in-game book with recipes for potions?

No maybe the so overpriced and less than usefull guide to skyrim or you can seach the net.
In game so far only the recipes alchemist give you the oportunity to buy, which IMO is fine.

Well my character loves playing around with potion-making but he (me) svcks at it. So it would kinda cool with a book on potions at least.