I just think it could have gone much farther in depth, have some kind of mystery. Like, finding long lost formulae hidden in drauger crypts, or learning the secrets of the cult of Vaermina. Also, I would have enjoyed certain ingredients to have effects such as elemental damage, or calming. It would also have been enjoyable if merchants, such as peddlers and Kahjiit caravans, sold a variety of ingredients from other provinces, making available many different potion and poison effects not available elswhere.

In short, it just doesn't feel like you can go above and beyond what the other alchemists have done.

Thoughts?

Morthal would've been a neat place for an Alchemist's guild. It would be more like the Bards College, so no huge questline or people dying.

I agree with everything - but that's why they provide the creation kit, isn't it? Beth can only do so much and then it's up to the community. I'm on the console so I have to be content with the vanilla game.

A guild and master quests would have been awesome, but to be fair, alchemy is probably the most developed craft in the game. You really don't discover anything for Smithing and you collect some stuff for enchanting/disenchanting, but if you really play alchemy only with in-game knowledge and eat everything to figure out effects, it's quite a long learning curve.

Even though I take notes and visit various web sites, I forget almost everything between alchemist characters so it's easy to start from scratch. That's a ton of fun; collecting, experimenting, planting samples and perking.

It should've been like the earlier games where you had your own mortar & pestle instead of looking for an alchemy table.

I thought alchemy tables made more sense then carrying an alchemy lab in your backpack. I thought alchemy was fine, "finding the secrets of Vaermina" doesn't sound like it would've been a good thing for gameplay, elemental damage makes sense but calming potions for what? Applying to weapons so you can make enemies stay calm while you whack them? That makes little sense.

The only improvement I'd say it needs was forging arrows and dipping them in poison otherwise alchemy was fine.

What about pickpocketing calm potions into bandits, like you can with poison? Then, if you have to deal with a bunch of baddies, you can even the odds a little. (I know, if you're that good at Sneaking, why not take them out, but you could be playing a no-kill thief).

I think the pickpocket poison perk is kinda silly in itself. How does the poison effect them? Did they go "Oh look a potion that wasn't there before, better drink it!" it's just all kinds of stupid.

On the surface of it, it would seem that way, but at the same time some things would have been very difficult to create in script. Consider the case of the Russian defector (or spy?) anyway who was apparently killed simply by being prodded with an umbrella. He never even knew he's been poisoned, hence it would qualify as a "pickpocket" thing. One might pick somebody's pocket to take a water or wine bottle, poison it, and put it back... or place a poisoned needle in a pocket... or coat some object in the pocket with one of those poisons that are absorbed through the skin.

I think this is one of those cases where it's expected that your imagination do the job that couldn't be done with scripting.

Oh, sure! Then there are protests over the use of skeevers as test subjects for new potions.

Well, it makes just as much sense as using a calm spell and then whaking them.

dont the spell effects wear off after you hit the npc a few times any way? I dont think you can just cast it once and they never attack if you keep hitting them. Also I find it weird that it can be cast on the same person over and over again it should be were it only works once on the same person.