I just randomly combine 2 ingredients together, hoping for a potion.

Is there a more effective way to do this?

I'm barely leveling up in Alchemy, though.

Also, how the heck do you decided when/why/which ingredient to use as the 3rd ingredient? The whole thing just seems random to me.

You can eat each ingredient once and get their first active effect. You can taste them more than once, but you won't learn anymore effects.

Third ingredients will add multiple effects if one of it's effects matches any of the effects of the first 2...I think.

If you're trying to avoid spoilers then just keep asking questions here, but if you're not worried about spoilers check these because they'll probably be better written than anything with which we'll reply.

http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Ingredients_%28Skyrim%29
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Potions_%28Skyrim%29

Hopefully this guy will pop in here with a better answer than I gave, but if not, here's his site:
http://209.46.18.232/wiers.us/skyalc/workbench.php

Not sure what your asking here but other than eating to discover the first effect I just start mixing ingredients.
Generally I start with the ingredients that I have the most of and work my way down.
For the more rare ingredients I don't bother trying to learn them all.
Once I find the effects that I'm looking for I just make sure I have those ingredients around the house and stop worrying about it.

I'd suggest looking at one of the two major wikis, uesp or elderscrolls dot wikia. Otherwise, the best way to start is to "eat" ingredients to get their first effect, then play around with known combinations.
Also, you can buy recipe "books" that weigh nothing and have combinations on them.

As for the third, I'll give you an example, in spoilers.

Most of the time I use an alchemy calculator - you can get them on your phone for easy access. A good way to discover ingredient effects 'naturally' is to use two ingredients you already know make a potion and add a third unknown. If the combination works, you'll discover a new effect, if it doesn't you still get a potion and have wasted only one ingredient and your skill goes up too. Combinations that do not work are greyed out, so it makes it simpler. Also, a lot of the time ingredients you find near each other have properties in common, for example blue mountain flower and blue butterfly wing have two properties in common. Sometimes, you can also guess certain properties - vampire dust and ice wraith teeth having an invisibility effect or snowberries and frost salts having resist frost effect just makes sense.

For the discovery of alchemical effects, I usually combine 3 ingredients instead of just 2. That way, you should have 50% less waste.

Then, I classify the ingredients by their rarity and other usefulness.

For instance, I know that Daedra Hearts and Human Hearts are probably better kept for crafting than for alchemy. The Crafting Complete mod also makes Hargraven and Hawk Feathers more useful in crafting than in alchemy. Moonsugar might be better off for Elsweyr Fondue, too. So, these ingredients get put into a different cupboard at all.

Next, for the rest of the ingredients, you'll notice after a while that there are those of which you've piles upon piles (such as: snowberries, mountain flowers, salt, chaurus eggs), and others which are still after months of ingame ingredient collection in the single or double digits only (such as: wisp wrappings).

So, I take the extremely common materials for the initial testing. I combine them freely with each other until I have found all 4 of their effects. Once I have the 4 effects of one of these common ingredients, I only use them to test out ingredients which I haven't fully experimented with yet.

And finally I start working with the rare ingredients. I mix up one rare ingredient and two of the extremely common testing materials and so I usually can discover most of the rare one's effects after a few mixes.

If I want to be extremely careful or the ingredient is really absolutely astonishingly rare, I might start to combine it by using each tab for each alchemical effect ONCE. If for instance the wisp wrapping doesn't mix with the blue mountain flower, then the wisp wrapping doesn't need to be tested with any other ingredient that does Restore Health, Fortify Conjuration, Fortify Health or Damage Magicka Regen. This extremely careful testing only works if you've already discovered most if not all of the alchemical effects that exist and have samples for each effect available.



Wortcraft (eating the ingredient to discover the effects) is a waste of ingredients in my opinion - unless you've already figured out effects #2, #3 and #4 and just want to now effect #1. You get more experience by mixing and missing than by wortcraft.

Interesting responses. Lytha, I think the stuff you said makes a lot of sense, especially the reasoning between trying out 3 ingredients. Sandslice...great info, too, especially about the usefulness of the 3rd ingredient!

I had so many ingrediants the other day that I just scrolled and hit X lol. Came up with quite a few new potions actually and really spiked up my alchemy skill. I really only use health potions and store the rest anyways.

A small not often overlooked is that when trying out random recipes, after you click the first agent, any agents you have tested already but yielded no effect from will appear greyed out 9be careful as samples you tested and got a success will still appear in white, so check the potion doesn't have a known effect before mixing)