i have a crap load of ingrdiants, im looking to increase my skill but have no idea what im doing, what should i be looking for when trying to get the best xp from mixing, most potions i have 1 known ingrediant, i have level 36, want to raise but sometimes i feel like im wasting ingrdiants if idont get hardly any xp

The more ingredients you use, the better your skill increase will be. Also the Lover stone will give you a 15% bonus skill increase in ALL skills, so you better go find it

oh thats pretty cool, so should i just take all my ingrdiants out my satchel and go nuts? how do i know what to mix with what

The higher the potion's value, the more you will level alchemy. Some of the most expensive things you can make are poisons, particularly slow and paralyze. Invsibility potions are also great.

Slow poisons are easy to stockpile. Go the morthal marshes and grab all the deathbell you can find (there must be close to 100 nodes there), and swamp fungal pods. Mix deathbell with salt piles, and the pods with imp stool or another paralyse ingredient.

You can purchase recipes from various alchemists, but they are pretty basic. You need to mix a ton of stuff to discover new recipes yourself, but it will also net you plenty of skill increase.

Google skyrim alchemy calculator. I found a good one somewhere where you put in the quantities of all the ingredients you have, and it gives you the recipes for the most expensive potions you can craft.

ok so when you guys start mixing what do you look for in the ingrdiants, do you just throw anything or find ones that have similar properties, or do i just mix expensive ones wth expensive ones

There's a handy alchemy guide on Gamespot, in the 360 forums. Check it out.

I keep common ingrediants in the chest on the bookcase and rare items in the satchel. Every so often I will empty the chest and, as you put it, go nuts. I pick the ingrediant for which I don,t have all effects discovered. I just start mixing together any three ingrediats that say "No Known Effect" and see what happens. I have about 99% of the effects uncovered on the common ingrediants. But only about a quarter of the rare ingrediants.

There's a pretty good alchemy recipe finder I made that will (among many other things) let you enter your inventory and then see a list of valid recipes sorted by value. http://skyrim.alchemista.net
Make as many of the high value ones as you can, because the XP you earn using the alchemy lab is proportional to the value of the stuff you make- and obviously the results can be sold for profit, to buy more ingredients for more high value potions!
Sleep in a bed (preferably in your own house) before you do this, because being "well rested" boosts the XP you earn. Similarly, using the thieve's stone (or lover's stone) will boost your XP.
If you have any items that enhance alchemy skill, wear them while you use the alchemy lab, because that further enhances the potency of the products (and hence value).
If you have the chance and your enchanting skill is good enough to make it worth the bother / cost, make some "fortify enchanting" potions and use them to enchant up "fortify alchemy" gear for the slots (neck, finger, head, hand/wrist) you can't find gear for, to max out the bonus you can get from enchanted items.

That'll pretty much get you as good as you can do, barring exploits.

The best way to approach alchemy, if you have no clue what you are doing, is to think about it like you would a meal in the real world. If you want to make something, you don't put a bunch of similar ingredients together. For example, to make a sandwich you will need some bread, meat, and cheese. So you can think of those as your three ingredients.

I like to start with salt pile. I have a lot of those so it's a good one to use when experimenting. So, what do you add to salt (a spice)? Perhaps you add some fish (river betty) and something hard (antlers) and then you need a final touch.. Deathbell (I like the smell). Once you mix it all up you have yourself some a Potion of Slow. It's one of the most expensive single effect potions in the game.

Yes, unless you wanna discover recipes for yourself you need to hit the net and find some It took me a good 200 hours to figure out how to make an invisibility potion lol

I find it incredibly cumbersome and pointless. Just my opinion. I shouldn't have to go to UESP to try and figure out what I'm doing with Alchemy, but I just feel that they tried to do WAAAAYYYY too much with it.

This is good advice.

Also generally the potions that cost the most,give the most experience,are the ones that have conflicting results such as Drain magicka regen+fortify conjuration.

I found it a little over whelming at first also.
But with patiance and a little experimenting it started to come along nicely.
Now I can't seem to do without it.

@Morgan 23
Same effects where possible. Use cheaper ingredients to find common effects. Really the best way to go is an alchemy calculator, however.
Why on EARTH would he do that? He's only interested at this stage in leveling Alchemy. So it would be much more beneficial for him to use the Thief Stone from the beginning of the game for a 20% alchemy skill increase bonus. He doesn't even need to add the rested bonus (+5%, for 25% faster), well rested bonus (+10%, for 30% faster) or the lover's comfort bonus (+15%, for 35% faster) to make it better than the lovers stone. As far as I am aware, the lovers stone makes it impossible to get the lovers' comfort bonus as well.

I see your point. But, you don't have to go to the web to find your answers. You just need to experiment. After all the first perk you get in the alchemy tree is called "experimenter".

Here's what I do.. I collect all ingredients that are "on the way" to wherever I am going. If it's quick and easy to get I will pick it up. It weighs practically nothing and takes practically no time. and at the end of the day when I return home to Honeyside I store all my ingredients in a dark, dry place. Later, when I have a ridiculously large amount of stuff and I'm looking for something to occupy my time I go thru my alchemy barrel and grab everything and go to my table and make everything I can. At first I did this somewhat hap-hazzardly but after a while you get the feel for what will work together and what won't. And once you get to that point you can see exactly why Beth did this the way they did. It makes total sense. And because it makes sense I have more ingredients than I can use and I also have more potions and poisons than one could ever hope to realistically carry. (I can strip naked and carry only potions and a few quest items and I will have well over 2000 carry weight).

But if you have no time for alchemy then it's understandable that it would seem like a complicated mess. If you spend an hour or two experimenting with ingredients then it quickly becomes clear how it all fits together.

some real nice advice here guys, its much appreciated, gonna bookmark this cuz it seems peeps have diifernt ways they do things, and tbh it makes me a bit more confused but, i get confused and overwhelmed easily lolol, oh and by the way theivingblacksmith, luv your way haha, sounds the most fun and realistic, also i have decent enchanment so i can make some better alchemy gear. k so i should get the theives stone, that would be easier for me, its nearer

yeah i know ill get there, ill fully get it once ive experimented alot and understant it, and i know ill love it, theres nothing more rewarding than not having a clue and them mastering something

Well, here's a simple suggestion without resorting to exploits or worrying about categorizing ingredients too much.

Basically, there are two types of ingredient sources: infinite spawns and limited finds. Obviously, the best choice for experimenting is to use infinite spawns because you will never, ever run out of ingredients. There are about 12 infinite spawn ingredients, give or take a few (I never bother to count precisely). Examples are anything that spawns every time you zone into an area: butterly wings, bees, moths, fish in rivers (not slaughterfish, but normal fish), etc. Since these ingredients offer infinite supplies, mix'n'match to your heart's content with no worries.

Limited finds are ingredients that are found in the environment, purchased, or found in storage containers. These either never respawn or take a very long time (default game respawn = 30 days). Some of these items are quite rare, too.

There is one particular combination of three ingredients that are quite common finds/infinite spawns (a bit of each type) that create a mixed potion/poison that is very high value, and thus very good for simply leveling the skill (plus financing yourself due to the gold from selling the mixed result). I won't spoil your sense of discovery by stating the specific items, though.

No, the first perk you pick up (at 20%) is Alchemist. If you get that, you can also buy Physician at 20%. Then you can get Benefactor at 30%. If you buy those three AND get your skill up to 50%, THEN you can buy ONE LEVEL of experimenter, which gives you half of the effects for an ingredient, assuming its not something super rare you'd rather not just eat. The next two levels come at 70% and 90%.

It is (in simple mathematical terms) exceedingly unlikely you will discover all ingredient effects through experimentation alone, and fairly silly to spend multiple perks to learn them at a point where you have likely made hundreds of potions.

Even knowing all the effects already, and just trying to have my character "demonstrate" them so they show up in my list when he's using an alchemy lab, is fairly hard.

My number one request for a game mod would be the ability to have your character acquire knowledge of ingredient effects by some new method. Maybe every time you train, you'd be told one (hopefully one you don't know) at random. Maybe you could buy / find books which list of all the effects for a specific ingredient. Maybe it would just be a flat out cheat. Whatever - anything would be better than the "eat and mix" thing they have going now.

Why? Because in game alchemy should be about figuring out decent potions to make and then doing so and raising you skill, not about puzzling together hidden information. Or at least, there should be the OPTION of skipping right to the good part, as the other crafting skills allow.

Imagine if with smithing, you had to "invent new weapons" by randomly wasting ingots and leather until you produced something useful. Or if you couldn't disenchant anything, and just had to throw away soul gems at random until you figured out how to produce an effect. Yuck. So why with alchemy?

The thieves stone gives you 20% faster leveling for the stealth skills,alchemy is a stealth skill.
The lover stone gives 15% faster leveling to all skills.
I'm a stealth player so I use the thieves stone.
If you are are into useing alot of different skills the lover stone might be better for you overall.
Once you start learning wich potions give you the most experience your alchemy skill will level fast enough with either stone.

i dont know AItensh1l im now worried im gonna waste rare ingrediants, youve really gone and pissed all over my goin nuts alchemy party, lol, do i need to be carefull of wasting rare ones, what i mean is it would be wastefull to mix a rare ingrediants with something crap would it not? i think ill start using the lover stone when im level 50 and have leveled all the skills i use alot, and am looking to get to max level

giants toe and wheat plus fortify enchant on as many peices as you can put on your character it levels quick

this is exactly how i feel at the moment

This is what I do too. It is fun to experiment and learn new potions. Once I discover two ingredients that make a potion, I add in a third ingredient with unknown effects to see if it interacts with either of the other ingredinets. By combining two known ingredients with a third unknown, you cut down on the number of wasted ingredients, since you are guaranteed a potion. Also, the game keeps track of bad combinations that don't make anything by making the text for that option dark instead of bright, so it is pretty easy to experiment if you have put in some time collecting a bunch of ingredients.

If all else fails there are the experimentor perks and the UESP/online sources, but I find experimenting on my own to be fun and rewarding. Alchemy is one of the few things in Skyrim that requires a little effort to figure out and I like it that way.