Contemplating my first mage build after discovering the peculiarities of alchemy...

Female Orc, Specialty is Magic [I prefer races with NO racial bonuses in any of my major/minor skills, 25% magicka resist is nice]
Birthsign: Atronach [no hindrance for an Alchemist with a dozen sweet restore magicka potions]

Skills (in no particular order):
Sneak [opted for no illusion, need to get around quietly somehow, right?]
Alchemy [duh!]
Conjuration [conjure minions to fight for me, the occasional weapon in a tight pinch]
Mercantile [again, no illusion, need to buy/sell for my potions, right?]
Speechcraft [same as Mercantile]
Athletics [need to get good at huffing it around the countryside for ingredients and merchant selection]
Unarmored [no armor allowed. NONE. enchanted clothing, on the other hand...]
Acrobatics [again, like athletics, handy in a tight spot. great for no-levitation areas]
Alteration [no picks/probes allowed. for locks, shield, waterbreathing, jump/levitate when required, etc]
Mysticism [love me some intervention, mark/recall, absorb health]

Favored Attributes:
Luck [I try to max it out with all my chars, especially since I'd like to try 100 difficulty from the go]
Endurance [helps out life-per-level immensely, can easily multiply other attributes through major/minors]

This may be my first ever character that doesn't use those unique speedy boots... will required some discipline.

To keep with the mage build, I'd swap Sneak for Illusion. No need to sneak about with 100% chameleon. You might also want to work Enchant in there too - I'd swap out Mercantile since it's such a slow skill to develop.

on the other hand if you get the Amulet of Shadows then you won't need illusion for chameleon.

actually mercantile is not that hard to develop at all, you just have to make sure that you use often enough when you bargain with traders.

After some consideration, I think I'll swap Illusion for Speechcraft. Command Humanoid can be clutch... and Charm is a good-enough replacement... However, I think sneak is still pretty handy, as it works in tandem with Chameleon, not as a complete replacement. I find that mercantile levels very quickly as a major/minor, if you barter for every transaction and don't use Creeper/Mudcrab.

Sounds good. What's your policy towards potion stacking? (especially fortify intelligence)

fragonard makes a good point with that question.

i think potion stacking is good to achieve an end but taking it too far is something else and quickly gets boring, so in the case of stacking fortify int potions, my suggestion is to set yourself a limitation for the potions you end up making.

for example:

I only allow my fortify int potions to get to maybe 200 pts for xxxx seconds and anything after that gets sold to merchants for next to nothing to avoid getting too rich that way.

You also might consider using different level equipment such as a journeyman mortar&pestle, apprentice retort, journeyman alembic, and apprentice calcinator or a variety of different equipment to get different strengths with variable time limit.

Yes, this to me is one of the most vexing gameplay problems in Morrowind. There really isn't a total solution either; you just have to decide on a compromise. (or not use Alchemy except very casually)

For me, I allow myself one session at the beginning to get my intelligence to about 1500 to make a few utility enchantments and a starting collection of potions. Then, I limit myself to fortifying Alchemy by 100 points with an enchantment or spell, depending on the character. This limits your Alchemy to 200 max which is enough for good potions and, at least to me, seems to fit into the normal skill range of the game.

Keep in mind too, that as your alchemy skill goes up so does the magnitude as well as the time limit set on that potion usually by 1 point in magnitude and 1 second longer. ( this is under the assumption that you are not stacking fortify int potions to increase those values )

I also don't take my alchemy sets with me when i go do a job/quest. I bring maybe a few potions of a certain type depending of course on where my job takes me. generally i bring 5-10 restore health, restore fatigue, and restore magicka potions along with 1-3 of cure paralyzation, common disease, and blight disease potions.

Also when your skills get into the 60-100 range you can start eating the ingredients that have restore health and restore fatigue effects and get a noticable effect. So the benetfits are many from getting into alchemy.

Ironically, I just started my first ever mage character. I decided on not doing a custom build and use an out of the box build...Male High Elf born under the sign of the Mage. I understand your reasoning for wanting other skills, and I was tempted to do the same but I want to try and use all magic for everything....no weapons or security tools ever, even though short blade is a minor skill. Well maybe at higher levels but now just Destruction spells, Alchemy, Conjuration skills, Illusion, Mysticism, Enchanted items, Etc.

Sounds like a pretty good build you've got going for the reasons you outlined. Sounds fun.

I usually play a Nord, Redguard, Orc or a stealthy flower picking Bosmer archer. A mage should be really different for a change.

Well after some experimentation, I've got 4 custom potions I never leave home without now: covers health, fatigue & magicka maintenance, disease & blight, and paralysis. Each potion is only 0.10 weight... so no big deal carrying a couple dozen of each. Also... ALL ingredients are restocking and available in Balmora (my favorite town). Of course... I used my spreadsheet to work out the most efficient combinations....

Restore Health, Restore Fatigue, Cure Common Disease:
Saltrice, Wickwheat, Chokeweed, Muck
(ingredient cost 4)

Restore Magicka:
Comberry, Frost Salts
(ingredient cost 77)

Cure Paralysation, Restore Magicka, Frost Shield:
Comberry, Frost Salts, Corkbulb, Willow Anther
(ingredient cost 92)

Restore Health, Cure Blight Disease, Fortify Willpower:
Saltric, Wickwheat, Ash Salts, Scrib Jelly
(ingredient cost 37)

A little readme or instruction manual towards using the spreadsheet would be nice

The spreadsheet post has a brief overview:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1082631-alchemy-spreadsheet-in-case-youre-a-nerd-like-me/

but I'll give few more details (of the alchemy functions only) here:

"Alchemy" Tab:

Cells B3-B6: use the drop-down menu to select up to 4 ingredients for your potion. I left the ability to select the same ingredient more than once due to there being cursed and normal variants of some ingredients. Cell C7 shows the weight of the potion. Cell D7 shows the base cost of the ingredients. The table in cells E3-H6 will auto-populate with the potion affects as ingredients are selected, it doesn't matter where in the table the effect pops up, if it pops up, the potion will have it.

Cells E29-H29: use the drop-down boxes to select various effects, and the lists below each cell will populate with any ingredients that give that affect. These lists are just for reference

Cell E153: Select effect you want in your potion. The table in cells B156-J266 contains all ingredients, and only the ingredients that have the E153 effect will display the details. The list is sorted by weight (lightest first), then value (cheapest first), then alphabetically. So... the preferred ingredients to obtain the effect will appear at the top of the table. I say preferred, because the higher in the table the ingredient appears, the cheaper and lighter it is, resulting in inexpensive ingredients and a lighter potion.

"Restocking Locations" Tab:

Cells B1-E1: Use one or more of these drop-down autosort cells to narrow down your shopping trip. For example: Select "Comberry" in cell B1, and only merchants with restocking Comberries will be displayed. Next, choose "Balmora" in cell C1, and only Balmora merchants with restocking comberries will be displayed. Next, reset cell B1 to "All" (show all ingredients), and all restocking ingredients found in Balmora will be displayed.

[EDIT - spelling]

Don't for get too that if you ever do find yourself running low of ingredients in say Azura's Coast ( for those who take their alchemy sets with them ), that there is an abundance of Saltrice and Marshmerrow for restore health potions and mudcrab and saltrice for restore fatigue potions.

Also, interestingly.... with high intelligence, the potion weight seems to go down as the quality and duration go up. After buffing intelligence to ~700, a standard restore magicka potion (comberry and frost salts) made in grandmaster equipment is only 0.03 weight. weird. (I'm using MCP that allows weights out to the hundreds place.)

I proclaim thee the Godking of Excell. I will call thee Celxes

No, seriously. I'm REALLY impressed.

Cheers, mate. :foodndrink:

[boring story]
Sad as it is to admit it, a large degree of my professional success as a chemical engineer has been the ability to take a ludicrous idea and make an excell spreadsheet to accomplish it. For example, we had to use a really old simulator program to simulate the operation of a particular type of chemical reactor... but the software was so old it was basically a Windows-3.1-esque frontend GUI tacked onto a command-line executable. It could only simulate the chemical reactions on a once-through basis, at one temperature. I needed to run simulations at steady state (repeat the once-through again and again until the input equals the output) and at multiple temperatures simultaneously... so what did i do? I made a ridiculously complicated excel spreadsheet to act as a bandaid. Spent almost a year perfecting it, too. Used it on projects for 2 foreign clients. Got some reputation for myself and my company as being good at this type of simulation. And all because I can make Excell my bee-och. Oh, what a funny world...
[/boring story]

PS - I'm TOTALLY signing all my future spreadsheets as Celxes.

Fixed that for you. And BTW you got the joke right

Edit: And then I guess I'll have to thank your *Cough* cheap-ass *Cough* company for not upgrading their software. Hehehe.

D-11 - oh, if only it were that easy. My company is an engineering/architecture contractor, so we don't actually develop the simulator - we actually have to pay a license fee to the developing company to simply use the software in our design work. We pay on the order of $50,000 US for the license - PER YEAR - that is, until recently, when I compiled an extensive company-internal database of simulator inputs and outputs, so that we basically have a simulator of the simulator. It's like taking a photocopy of a photocopy... not a great idea... but better than paying $50,000 per year.

OK, back on subject:

After a few nights of playing my new alchemist, I find it to be much slower in regards to combat, but much more fun than all my past hack-n-slash stealthy types. I spent almost 10 levels of time and effort in Balmora honing my Alchemy skills, and selling the resulting potions to fund training in Med Armor, Heavy Armor, and Spear (I just can't pass up the Endurance multiplier if I have the funds and earned them legitimately). I then spent some time training my Unarmored with the fishies outside Seyda Neen, coupled with some Mercantile/Speechcraft practice to better my pathetic starting Personality of 25. When I finally decided to leave the beaten path and do some questing, boy was it an eye-opener...

Do to having no offensive spells in my arsenal, my first 4-5 kills were via a conjured spear. I quickly learned some basic summoning spells and later got Righteousness and Absorb Health. Before I got the absorb health spells, and just after buying my first conjuration spells, I tried to cross the bridge north of Moonmoth Fort, and there was an Ogrim waiting at the other end. Crickey. Well, I decided to go for it. I spent, literally, 10 minutes and about 20 homemade restore magicka potions in summoning the ~60-70 scamps, lesser bonewalkers, greater bonewalkers, skeletal minions, and ancestor ghosts required to bring that single Ogrim down. Sheesh. I plundered the bittersweet heart from that beast, and headed straight back to Balmora to find a Spell merchant with some good offensive Mystacism spells. Ever since, I've used a summoned greater bonewalker and absorb health to take out multiple Daedroths and some named NPCs for quests. Takes time, but soooo satisfying. I LOVE making and using my own potions. When I run low, I make a total of about 200 of the various restore health and restore magicka potions mentioned above, and I don't mind shopping, bartering, alchemy-ing, etc at all. It's a good time. Mage-tastic! But even with Unarmored at 100, it's still a scary thing to head out into the wilderness with difficulty at 100... still not wearing any armor. We'll see how she goes...

go to sadrith mora and see the priest at the imperial shrine, he's got alot of mysticism spells you will like as well as ingredients for fortify int potions.

i think that too. your mercantile skill goes not up, when you barter with the creeper? i did not know that. i usually have alch maxed out at level 10, trying not to exploit too much. but you need restore mana quite fast (i always play with atronach and levelled magicka).

kmelch,

How are you enjoying this character??

You commented in my discussion (and gave me the link to the spreadsheet also linked here). I found this discussion of your Alchemist build when I searched the forums today for "training speechcraft", trying to determine if I will choose Alteration or Speechcraft as my minor, given that I will have Illusion as a major. Still thinking, too ...

I'd go with Speechcraft anyway. Alteration can work without a high stat. And you could always train it; there are 22 trainers throughout the game (just checked on UESPWiki), most of them on spots easy to access, including the master trainer.

Eventually you should find or create some items to cover an area you're not that good at. Or you could stick with potions. You can't cover everything flawlessly with your skills at first, so, I suggest, if you cannot trust your misc. Alteration skill per se, you could grab potions for useful skills (which there aren't many IMO... levitation and possibly water walking... oh, and open).

I'm terribly sorry this went into the wrong topic. Damn blindly-reading-only-the-first-post-on-the-second-page effect. <_<

Frankly, I haven't played my alchemist character Flamelius (yes, after the Nicolas Flamel), in quite a few months. She conquered the Mages Guild and House Telvani... and sort of got comfy in her tower. I went on to create an alchemy/conjuration expert (now retired), and my current build is an Imperial Legionaire that wears nothing but Legion-sanctioned armor. He uses naught but a crummy Imperial Broadsword, enchanted with some absorb health. But he, as well, uses alchemy. Now that I play with the difficulty slider at 100 from level 1, I find it's almost a requirement to make my own potions with buffed intelligence. My current preferred brew is feather + restore fatigue + restore health. Carry anything, never get tired, replenish health in a fight. Yes, it's a panacea, but I've almost been killed more times than I can remember (and a few times the enemy succeeded - namely - Ascended Sleepers).

My play style definitely leans more towards Speechcraft than Alteration. Of all the ways I'm willing to take advantage of game mechanics, casting low-level low-cost spells in the safety of my house is not one of them. I like to arrange the text windows so that when I choose the "Persuasion" option, the persuasion window appears such that the "Admire" is located directly under my mouse. With high enough level, I can rapid click and get anyone to disposition of 100 in a few seconds. At low levels, it takes finesse (aka bribes, which also count as speechcraft).... or you make enemies quickly. Mid-levels are the most fun (risky) - never knowing if you can admire successfully enough to come out ahead.... Luckily, a few 10 dollar bribes goes a long way in Morrowind.... Compare that to casting a 1sec water-breathing spell 50 times while sitting on your bed - boring.... Also, I'd like to think my characters are likeable for their personalities, as opposed to being spell-weaving enchanters that deceive with black hearts. Speechcraft all the way.

Your recipe ... ??

:drool:

:angel:

Well, let me whip out my alchemy spreadsheet to refresh my memory... ah yes: Heather, Scuttle, Saltrice, Marshmerrow/Wickwheat. Total of 13 gold. Either Marshmerrow or Wickwheat will work in the 4th slot, just depends on what your favorite merchant has in stock. All the ingredients except for Heather are available in Balmora, and it's just a short Mages Guild guide to the Ald'ruhn Mages Guild downstairs alchemist for the Heather. In my experimentation, Grandmaster apparati and intelligence buffed up to ~10,000 yields potions with feather ~500pts for quite a few minutes, restore fatigue ~500pts/sec for quite a few minutes, and restore health ~100pts/sec for a few minutes (shorter than the other two effects). These durations and magnitudes are viewed as God-like by most, so you may want to ease off the intelligence buffing and make whatever just barely gets the job done for you. The best thing about these potions is... because of the feather effect, you can carry hundreds of them! Want to carry more - just drink more! Hee hee.

I also love that they allow you to jump 10 times per second up a steep cliff with no hit to fatigue - allows for quick mountain scaling without fearing the Cliff Racers (due to drained fatigue = no hits with weapon).