I’ve read several interesting comments and ideas in various sources and blogs. I would like to share some of what I’ve found and offer my input on the subject. Alchemy is one of the most versatile and rewarding skills, but not without its flaws. Some suggestions for TES Gods:

Go ahead and make Alchemy a thief/rogue skill. Mages have magic and enchanting, and warriors have weapons and armor. Give the stealth class something to call its own. We know that arrows are going to be much rarer in Skyrim. I like and agree with the reasons for the change, but this places a severe limitation on one of the main weapons for the stealth class. A bow could just as easily be considered a warrior’s weapon anyway—and that leaves the dagger. While great in ambush, going toe-to-toe with virtually any alerted foe with a dagger is a recipe for pain.

Give players a choice to make a poison or a potion. With Shivering Isles I could readily make damage ‘x’ spells plus two elemental damages to make a triple poison worthy of most foes. However, so many times recipes or poisons were ruined by the fact that two of the four ingredients would have a beneficial effect—usually restore fatigue—and suddenly my poison with four potential effects becomes a potion with a few wicked side effects. Let us choose. Who cares if you restore an enemy’s fatigue while stripping his health at 20-30+ points a second for ‘x’ seconds.

Is it really necessary to carry 20+ pounds of gear to make potions on the spot? Mortars and pestles are easily as light as half a pound in real life. Collecting all the ingredients and synthesizing them at the lab where you store all your other ridiculously heavy gear and ingredients defeats the purpose of having ingredients in the wild. Currently we have to choose between no spontaneity and being saddled with 40+ pounds of stuff to make potions and poisons on the fly.

Fix the potion weight glitch. There are many very useful ingredients that I avoid unless necessary. Nothing is worse than making five or ten potions and realizing that you now must lug around five to thirty pounds of potions just because one of the ingredients was half a pound or three pounds. Anyone who ever made a five pound ‘pumpmelon’ restore fatigue will appreciate this. Is it really necessary to cram the whole melon into the little bottle? Also, many of you know that the first-off of any potion will determine its effective weight for each skill level achieved. This made me, particularly wary of ingredient choice each time I was close to advancing a level.

Grenades! Smoke bombs! Molotov cocktails, food/beverage poisons, oil slicks, acid, animal deterrents, animal lures, stuff that can be thrown into enemy’s eyes, etc.

A better menu to facilitate this process. Showing us the known effects while picking the ingredients would be helpful. Also, is there any reason in particular why the menu is just a small portion of the middle of the screen instead of utilizing the whole screen to allow for better control? Perhaps we could sort ingredients by effects as well as by name.

Multiple arrows or weapon blows per poison. We know arrows are going to be rare, so this won’t get too out of control. If an application lasted two or more hits that would be nice. This would be more realistic and prevent the need to enter the menu several times during a fight to accomplish the same thing. Subsequent arrows/hits with the same type of poison would likely have a diminishing return of effect with each injection. While a massive dose of venom will kill quicker than a small amount, both are still subject to the limitations of dispersion and uptake within the victim’s body. This would balance out the multiple arrow/hit advantage, but allow multiple foes to be taken on at once.

Perhaps weight could be a way to balance the sometimes-too-strong effects of poisons and potions. Each effect in a recipe could add .1 pound to the overall weight. Also, as alchemists advance in skill they learn more efficient ways to extract the best parts of the ingredient. Where a novice would use a whole mushroom a master might know to just use the cap and skirt and toss out the stem. More advanced alchemists would make lighter potions as well as stronger potions.

Perhaps as alchemists advance, they learn to make potions with more than four ingredients.

Some additional cinematic effect for affected enemies would be a bonus.

More ingredients. More effects.

I never minded too much taking the time to collect ingredients, but nothing is as aggravating as taking the time to go out of your way to collect something only to have harvest failure. If it shows up as an object, let us collect it. At least let the harvest skill rise with the skill level of the alchemist.

Possible poison multipliers for sneak attacks. A well placed arrow or dagger to the throat or heart, would likely have much more effect than one placed into a well-armored extremity.

I have more ideas I can’t think of now that I decided to get this into print and I’ve read other great ideas that escape me now. Please tell me what you think and offer your suggestions or improvements for my ideas or for Skyrim.

wow those are all really great ideas that would be easy to implement
except the thrown things (smoke bombs etc)
thatd just be way more animations to do for the programmers, so they just left them out and removed some skills and whatnot
i think thats why spears, throwing weapons, and crossbows didnt make it to oblivion and probably wont make it to skyrim
sad to say it because the grenade items would definitely make it more realistic playin as a hunter or a thief

I love you. Lol but I really do like these ideas. Alchemy has so much potential, but it has been made quite svckish in oblivion. As an expert or master of alchemy, I would like to be able to select only the effects of an ingredient that I want to appear in a potion/poison, as well as determining whether it will be a poison or a potion. Having the choice would make a good perk, or could be earned by becoming a journeyman of alchemy. I say journeyman because it really isn't that difficult to take a potion and dip an arrow into it.

Great ideas there in the OP, nice job. I do believe that Beth has cooked up something good with the new Alchemy system. Hopefully E3 brings some info on this.

I thought it was rather boring in Oblivion.

Some really good ideas I had some thoughts to add.

You should just poison all the arrows you have equipped when you poison your bow. Who would only poison one arrow and why would it take an entire bottle to do so? I mean maybe if you were an assassin or something but even so it would make more sense to have more than one arrow ready. The other thing that made no sense was the size of the potions and where the bottle they were kept in came from. Wouldn't you either be able to reuse a large bottle or just make smaller doses, in which case the potions shouldn't weigh so much. I dunno after reading the OP I had a couple things jump to mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zesHZze8s7M
I think there is too much peoples who think thats devs limited in skills and game developing experience or in resources.
I will say it again
Return of throwing weapons will be great and many of us will agree with, there is some Pro for returning throwing into game and if there is some Cons I'd like to hear them.

dont remember saying i claimed to have game developer knowledge?

Cairn bolette + ectoplasm + imp gall + steel blue entoloma (All in vanilla game). Fire + shock + dmg health. There are a handful specific recipes like that, what's the problem? If you randomly throw ingredients into the bowl no wonder the result svcks.


It's a nice limitation that makes you actually manage your inventory instead of carrying tons of junk around (Potion weight included). Besides, if you lvl up effectively (+5 pts) you will never have problems with STR and carry weight even as a mage. Buy cheap clubs/knives and whack summoned creatures. By level 20 you'll be able to carry around 500 pounds.

Bottom line - use mods, those fix everything.

One of the main reasons for removing classes is that there is no penalty for mixing up skills from the traditional warrior, mage and stealth sets. Daggers will still fit under the 'one handed' skill so a thief that is good with a dagger has an equal opportunity of using swords etc. just as effectively in a fight despite the dagger being considered a 'stealth weapon'. The whole beauty of the no-class system is that a warrior can be skilled in marksmanship, a mage can easily use a blade and the stealth classes can dabble in illusion etc. because there are no penalties for choosing things that in Oblivion were considered a 'stealth/warrior/mage' skill or for skills that came under a certain attribute that the player was not strong in. And then on top of that you've got the perk system which is totally under the players control which will allow you to do the specialising that you want to do... This is why the removal of the classes/attributes and the addition of perks isn't a simplification of the series, just something that will offer a heightened and more enjoyable role playing experience.

In an actual response to your quote, arrows will do more damage now and will likely be much more deadly so this at leas alleviates the 'limitation' of the scarceness of arrows. Anyway, it felt rather odd carrying around about 500 arrows in my inventory so in a way the rarity of arrows is just a more realistic move.

EDIT: some good ideas there as well...