Personally, it's the focal point of my character. My alchemy is level 81 and it's completely legit. I've spent many hours gathering ingredients and I LOVE ALCHEMY. However, I wonder how many other people share my passion ...

Do you use Alchemy?
Are you satisfied with it's evolution from Oblivion to Skyrim?
What do you feel about the subject!?

I want to hear other peoples thoughts! I play on Expert and on countless occasions Alchemy was the only reason I lived to tell the tale. It's my favorite skill by far


For the record, even low level Alchemists can make a strong poison. There is one ingredient in particular that does more damage than any other ingredient I've discovered and that's RIVER BETTY. When you combine it with any other ingredient that damages health, it creates a poison far superior to anything you can usually make.

With my level 81, my regular poisions do about 38 damage. When I mix a River Betty and Nightshade it does 67! ...... 67!!!!!

A lot of times I'll simply swim through the Rivers of Skyrim in search of this semi-rare fish

Alchemy is not only very useful it is also very addictive. Sometimes I even stop right in the middle of combat to collect ingredients.

Not useful!? I have infinite restore health potions that I use constantly and my Potions are my number one source of income!

I should have seen this coming ... nobody loves alchemy ...

Don't panic.I love alchemy also.It matches my hoarding tendency perfectly.I wind up overloaded because I pick up every food and ingredient I come across.

Did you read disciple's post? It said 'not only very useful'...geesh. I love alchemy too but I just keep the health/magicka regen potions and sell the rest. Personally the health/magicka potions you can find adn buy are more powerful than those anyone can make though. I can't help myself when I see ingredients all over the place.

Its very useful I made +32% fortify enchanting elixers and +129% fortify smithing, I've only done those really don't care of anything else.

He said, "not only is it very useful", as in, he thinks it is. I like it, I live at honey side, so I have a garden with some prity useful stuff in it. But as an in-expierianced alchemist, its going kinda slow for me. My thief has not had time to delv into it yet, and thus far, I have only found one effective potion. Giants toe and wheat, it makes a crazy valuable restore health potion. This is the only thing that boosts my skill at a noticeable rate, other potions push the bar at a miniscule amount, and I dont even see it improve when I learn thier first effects. You being an expierianced alchemist, could you give me some better recipies that you've found? I want the best poisin(health), restore heath/magika/stamina, and fortify pickpocket recipes you have!

I actually love how they did alchemy this time around.

Initially I was like "So, how do i figure out the other reagents... do I level up? - need the perks?" - but once i mixed blue butterfly wing and wheat and I discovered a new property by accident. Then I was like "Oh god this is gonna take forever to find anything useful - how will I even keep track of what reagents I've tri- oh, hey it does it for me. Still..."



"Huh, I've run out of reagents... but I've discovered like 2/3 the properties... NEED MOAR REAGENTS, MUST FIND NEW RECIPES!"



....and now I love it xD

I only keep Damage/Restore Health and Invisibility. Even then I only keep three Inivisibility potions on me at a time. Those sell for like 350 a piece! The ingredients are relatively available too. Once upon a time I found a gigantic pile of Chaurus Eggs (which does invisibility) and I picked up all Sixty of them. Mix those with Luna Moth wings (which you can find in abundance at night time) and boom ... invisibilty potion ...

It's incredibly useful for those moments when you're about to get wrecked by something powerful or trying to sneak by a camp of mercenaries

I had 90+ alchemy last playthrough and my health potions only healed 50+ points

once you learn locations of certain plants it becomes better. I mean, just running inside Solitude on your way to the Blue Palace there's rows of plants for example. Blue mountain flower + Yellow butterfly wings = restore health. You start to memorize things like that.

using some of my old school favorites from oblivion. damage health/paralyze, slow/damage health, and best is my shock dagger with paralysis poison. when i sneak up from behind if the backstab doesn't kill them i just watch them lay on the floor twitching all over the place.

Interesting because I'm at Alchemy level 81 and mine restore 86

Paraylze poison + Fully perked archery skill tree = pwn. You already have a high chance at paralyzing targets with each arrow but to add a poison to that... haha.

Brutal.

I'm enjoying it on all of my characters. The experimental mini-game aspect of it is very cool. Sure, you can research potion combos online and get some hellacious effectiveness out of it very early, but you can also guess and dabble and have some fun trying combinations on your own. It's much less linear than the Oblivion version.

I also appreciate that they've differentiated foods from alchemical ingredients this time around... no more turning 200 pounds of bread and carrots into crazy juice.

I am a bit disappointed that some perks I'd consider obvious (make your potions weight less, make them last longer) aren't in the tree. And I don't see the sense in the "Experimenter" perks being so far up the tree... frankly, by the time you reach the skill levels needed to unlock those perks you should have a large number of effects already unlocked simply because of the hundreds and hundreds of potions you've already needed to brew.

In general, I'd call it a solid B+... fundamentally a very sound system that gives you a lot of good stuff, marred by some weird and short-sighted design in the perk tree.

now I would prefer bethesda to make cooking worth it. Heck, even make a perk tree for it. Right now cooking is garbage and useless

I'm currently leveling up with the idea of making high destruction potions. I've already maxxed destruction damage through the skill so this is the only remaining method.