The alchemist book is a book you can open from the ingrediant tab that shows you EVERY ingredient where you know 1 effect from. You can organize it based on different factors like what effects, etc. I think this will be a great edition so you can see what ingredients you need for potions, then you can find out where to go to get them...

Also, there should be some "Note" section, where basically if you've picked 20 or more of this ingredient, notes start appearing which tell you where the ingredient usually is(like for nirnroot near water), and every 5 picks is one extra note.

Hi there A useless shovel! May this sunday prove to be a great day.

While nice, your suggestion will become obsolete once we get some sorting capabilities. I have found it interesting to note no patch this far has addressed the issue of the sortless inventory. One can only hope. Also, you suggestion regarding notes appearing after you pick X number of items seens too formulaic and detached from real life to me. I would much prefer a quest driven reward system. You complete a quest, you get a perk, learn a new effect, etc.

It could work as an expansion on the recipes you can buy. Collecting all the recipes you bought in said book and adding those you found yourself or new ones added (possibly to be acquired through quests).

Apart from that, the ingredients section could be given:

• a 'heat map' based on where you found them in the past
  
• an appreciation of how rare it is, based on how many you've collected
  
• a note section where the player can make his own notes

Extra info could be added through talking to people / quests, but the idea is that the main input is the player himself. So if he has never come across a mountain flower before, he'll think it's rare. If he goes to collect his dragon's tongue in the oddest places, he'll think those are the locations where they grow.

This is probably modding territory though.

What gets me, is that you cannot rename your potions and poisons at creation. That alone would solve sorting problems with them.

Wouldnt want you labelling poison as skooma now, would we?

I'm sorry?...

I personaly am for the book idea, i think it sounds cool and might make alchemy less annoying.