Very much! I love being able to harvest ingredients and mix them into potions when my character arrives home. I love exploring the various effects of different potions. And I love how useful each of the different potions can be.

In fact, I think my next character may be an alchemist ...

It was good in Oblivion. A couple of master level potions would turn you into Asterix.

Only because of the armor bonus.
Alchemy has potions that increase armor skill but those potions don't increase the armor rating very much.
Smithing increases your armor rating and not your armor skill.

As far as weapon damage you get a more powerfull weapon for 60 seconds with alchemy.
But with smithing your weapon damage is constant.
That is another reason I like alchemy so much,I don't want to be all powerful all the time.60 seconds is enough time to get you through most fights.

That is not so. Smithing cannot grant you improvements to other skills. And you cannot smith a Helm of Invisibility.

This.


The only reason I ever used in Oblivion was for easy level-ups.

Alchemy is incredible. The only real limit to it is the imagination of the user.

When folks say 'u can't make as strong as u buy' it's obvious that not much time has been put into the skill.

And the Dragonborn is like Obelix? He doesn't need a potion to knock people off of mountains!

This.

I do love alchemy as well. My only gripe is therr is no mortar and pestle, so we have to practice it at set stations.

I love alchemy, but you have to be a bit organized to take advantage of it. At some point, your potions become better than store bought potions, except for ultimate potions. But you can make something a bit stronger than extreme potions. Here are some potions I've been using as a mage lately. He doesn't use weapons so he doesn't use poisons.

Fortify Health +100 for 300 seconds: How would you like an amulet that gave you +100 health for the duration of battle except that it doesn't take up a slot?
Fortify Magicka: +100 for 60 seconds: Can you make a ring that gives you +100? Not in any normal way. Use it with Elsweyr Fondue. The effects stack for +200 magicka.
Regenerate Health/Regenerate Magicka +120% : Better than Morokei
Fortify Destruction +120%: Temporarily make you more than twice as powerful. Good for killing dragons. Good any time.
Fortify Alteration +100%: Doubles durations of my Dragonhide to 3 minutes. Good if you are in a long battle against strong archers.
Resist Fire/Frost/Shock/Magic: nice to have around when you are fighting mages.
Fortify Carry Weight: +90 for 300 seconds.

Potions are nice to carry around for peace of mind. Good security blanket. Knowing that I can add 30 levels worth of magicka and health, and become twice as powerful, is kinda nice.

I think some people get frustrated with alchemy because they want to make the strongest possible potion right away. In my experience, I found that playing alchemy is more pleasant if you don't force leveling and take your time improving your skill gradually. +30% potion is not as nice as +100% potion, but it's pretty damn good still.

I′ve so far used characters who run head first into battle, so used alchemy mostly to make health pots and leveling up a bit. With assassing I′d use poisons etc. Also resist magic pots are useful for all.

New ingredients to experiment with are the point of DLCs!!!!

I love methodically messing around with ingredient combinations, and I've made thousands of potions in Skyrim. I would have liked to have seen more complex Alchemy in Skyrim, but I get what I consider good use out of it.

I like Alchemy, but I wish there were more possibilities to discover the properties of the ingredients ingame than just try and error and a single alchemy book.
I hate to waste rare items like a daedra heart or a giant's toe in experiments. Maybe quests that yield new recipes?

I dislike Alchmey and only do it to level up my character. Having read the comments, I don't disagree there's a chance to make very powerful potions and poisons, but this comes at having to unlock perks. No offense to anyone who enjoys it, but I'm not going to level up to 70+ Alchemy just to get a 25% boost in potion power.

I don't use poisons in the game, because I find the battle's going fast enough I don't want to pause, add poison to the tip of my arrow, restart the battle, in the hopes I'm still targeting the enemy I want to deliver the poison to (worse when they side-step with that magical step and the shot hits another target).

I also dislike wasting so many ingredients trying to find a potion/poison, and some of them are hard to get.

I'm at level 41 right now, so I only make potions/poisons to sell. Gold hoarding > Alchemy.

I use alchemy more to make money and level up more than anything else. You can level up quickly and you can make quite a bit of money selling 100 potions at a time.

Oh! By the Nin...by the Eigh...by Sithis, yes!

I truly miss being able to take my stuff with me and make stuff on the fly.

Yes. I always get more money, valuable and powerful potions then selling or eating the ingridents alone.

Using the loop. Alchemy can pretty much become a sort of cheat.

Has anyone created the 100,000,000,000,000 damage Daedric Bow?

If you have 3 perks to spare, you can get experimenter perks. It will give you complete knowledge of every ingredient. I think it's well worth it. It's one of those perks that makes the game so much less of a hassle.

I would say Alchemy is the most boring, and possibly most useless, skill in the game, simply because potions are so easy to come by.

LOL.

You were not swayed at all on this statement by ANY of the other posts in this thread?

Love Alchemy. One of my character's main goals involve being the greatest healer alchemist. But things like resist magic potions are overpowered when I'm fighting dragons, especially with Evenstar (mod) that I made to do 60% resist frost and fire.

I love alchemy. I loved it in Morrowind, I loved it in Oblivion, and I love it in Skyrim. And if you say it isn't powerful, then you have obviously never one-shotted a certain black dragon just with a long bow and a Jarrin Root poison. Of course there's only one Jarrin Root and at best you can only get four uses out of it, but still you can get a poison that does at least 6,000 points of damage. And that's just nice to have as a trophy for your dedication to alchemy.

I've never been a fan of alchemy or the Mage class. Over the 2000+ hours I put into Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim i've never played a Mage or used alchemy...

It's extremely useful and can yield potions / poisons way more powerful than anything you can find. However, for me anyways, it's sooooo boring I don't care. I have tried numerous times since Morowind to get into it, and I really would like to get into it, but its so boring I just can't continue with it.

Some people just have thick skulls.
But I guess thats good if your head butting something