Anyone else find alchemy ingredients an absolute nightmare to manage? It is impossible to carry them all with you, yet it is an equal nightmare to store them near your alchemy labs. Most of the labs in your homes don't have a place to store them near the lab itself, and if you do store them, you need to pull out only the ingredients you know you need, or pull everything and spend 20 minutes putting it all back.

If we could carry one or more apothecary bags, we could put our ingredients in those. Let alchemy look in those bags for ingredients, and allow us to put those bags in our homes, in chests, and so on.

Let us store our apothecary bag "inside" our alchemy lab. It will appear on top of it, just like in Breezehome, but the alchemy lab will recognize it as a place to find ingredients.

Anyone else have the issue I have, and think this would be a nice solution?

I usually, well always, forego the Conj school and get Dead Thrall. Even with specialized builds, I have perks left over. I try to find bodies that don't reset and use them as containers to separate items.

Also some way to see recipes without having to be at the station itself. This would really help when out in gathering ingredients as I often forget what goes together. Maybe a recipe book that added new recipes every time you found one, or a list of all the ingredients you have found and their discovered effects. When you click on an ingredient it would list below everything that can go with it, with the ones you have with you now being highlighted.

I actually look up what ingredients do and only pick potions I will actually use for my build and collect only those ingredients that way it's easier to carry as much as you need and store the rest in the chest near the lab in the whiterun house. Just make sure to use a notebook for notes well actually it's good to use a note book for the game in general.

My house in Whiterun, and my house in Markarth, both have apothocary satchels right near the alchemy lab - the one in Whiterun sits on the lab table, the one in Markarth is in the same room.

A system like Two Worlds II, was easy to work with. You actually had recipies that you could name and keep or delete. You could reference them for quick access and recreate potions directly from them.

in Whiterun house there is a chest directly accross from the Alchemy lab. I keep my ~500 pounds of ingredients in that chest - grab them all when going to brew up some stuff. Only takes about 1 minute to put everything back into chest (on the pc)

It is a good idea I think. Myself I just grab everything then put what's left back afterwards.

What annoys me is that when you have two ingredients already selected, you then can't see what the properties of the third ingredient are because the display changes. This means you have to remember what ingredients have a lot of "unknowns" when you are testing stuff out, and when there are dozens of ingredients and your memory ain't so good, it's difficult. You can select the "unknown" first but that is also tricky when you are doing a lot of testing while making a bunch of a certain potion.

I have a system of keeping all my ingredients and potion-making at home. The only things I take with me are the potions I need for my adventure, maybe some extra ingredients in case I run out, and leaving the rest at home.

I know what you're saying, I'm a compulsive ingredient hound.
But by now I'm used to putting everything in the barrel next to the lab in the Arch Mage quarters, I like it better than the alch/enchant of Riften.
When I'm doing some cooking I have the lab wizard open, it saved my life.

It seems more "real" to me the way it is, though .... it reminds me of going food shopping, and coming home and putting everything away!

btw, I think it was while out and about in the northeast somewhere, in an unpopulated area grassy under some trees at the foot of a rocky hill, there were all the different kinds of mushrooms (including Blisterwort) growing in this big circle!
One of those great random things. (I hope it was random & not quest-related, I picked them all)

a) I await a PC mod with a great storage place near a lab.

I WAS using the table in the ragged flagon next to alchemy lab...til my [censored] disappeared!!! so now I walk slow from a guild chest, then walk back to chest and redeposit.

I pick a cabinet and store all my alchemy ingredients in it, then transfer them all for a potion session. It's not that much trouble to walk encumbered just the short distance to your alchemy table. It would definitely have been nice to have storage near them.

In the whiterun house there's a satchel on the table itself! You can store as much as you want in that bag.

It is fairly simple. Have a script on the satchel to "store all ingredients". Then you can just take them all out, mix your potions, and store them all.

YESSS! That would be ideal. Plus an easier way to put ALL ingredients back into a container.

Another reason why I hope to see a mod or DLC that gives the player a book he/she can actually write in.

I appreciate the comments in this thread, though I must say that I know all about various workarounds. It just seems to me that a more elegant solution would be allowing us to actually pick up, carry, and use ingredients directly out of an apothecary satchel.

Additionally, while Whiterun and Markath have satchels right near the labs, you still need to take out what you need to use them, which can be a bit of a pain, especially when you are experimenting. The other houses don't have any storage at all near the labs. Proudspire has a couple of barrels in a far corner, and and Hjelm doesn't have any storage at all in the secret room with the lab. Neither does the Riften house.

Really makes me wish I didn't have the XBOX version; making changes like this are fun on the PC, and I could fix my broken quests while I was at it. I just don't have the hardware to run the PC version properly.

I've collected thousands of ingredients on my current character. I haven't made any potions yet. I store only ingredients in the chest near the alchemy lab in Breezehome. It's only about 2 steps away. In fact, I think there is a pouch there on the alchemy lab!

I go on adventures, I come home, stuff them in the chest.

You can store things in drawers and cabinets as well. I seperate things, like ingredients, food, smithing, enchanting stuff, in different storage areas.

The reason I don't make potions is because I have no need for them. There are way too many potions just sitting around in the game and looted. I suppose, then, that leveling alchemy will just make me weaker, with no benefit. I had originally planned to level it later.

I already have a huge surplus in a cabinet, of potions that I found, so I don't have to carry too much.

There needs to be higher difficulty levels, honestly. Nevermind, back on topic...

Hopefully there is information in there that helps you manage your inventory. Skyrim is overwhelming at first.

Oh, and for the record, I have never payed attention to what makes what. I never experiment. I taste each ingredient when its new. When I'm mixing potions, I just spam the button as fast as I can. Healing potions first, then use up whatever. Sell all the unwanteds for major profit. But that's just me. I have more fun playing the game, so I don't get into it.

I was also thinking a recipe book would be good to store the recipes I buy as well as discover.

Agree with the Virus.

In all my houses I have everything neatly tucked away in specific chests (took me a full gaming session to re-organise it all, but worth it): Ingredients, Potions, Food, Miscellaneous Cr*p, Soul Gems, Magic Weapons and Armour, Non-Magic Weapons and Armour, Books/Scrolls/Recipes, Jewels/Gold/Jewlery.

That way, in the White run house if I want to fiddle at the lab, just empty the chest into my inventory, go make some moonshine, then dump the leftover ingredients back into the chest and the potions in the next one.

As Beth saw fit not to give us the ability to separate the items in containers into their different types, as you could in F3 and FNV, my system made things a bit easier for me.

Did any of you actually read what Caver said in the OP post and post #17, and not just blert out irrelevant gibberish about dumping stuff in random containers.

Alchemy currently has 94 ingredients listed on the UESP wiki, each of those ingredients has upto 4 effects so just with two alchemy ingredients combined we are now upto 376 combinations for a potion.

To those of you that can memorize all 94 ingredients and all 4 attributes of each I appologise ..... but most of us can't and also the memory of what alchemy ingredients have been discovered when playing an individual charater will become blurred. Factor in adding a third ingredient to enhance the potion you want to make and I'm sorry it's a mess.

Either you pen and ink the information / look it up on the interweb.
Recall the info and have a flat mind set of which are the best potions to use and choose from a select few.
Or spend hours replacing 94 ingredients into a storage item each time you muck about with alchemy.

I think what is needed that known potions combinations are displayed but just greyed out if you don't have the ingredients when using an alchemy table, or better yet as Cevar put it, combine the alchemy satchel and your inventory when making potions.

Hopefully this is mod material and will come soon enough, half the code for doing this seemed to be there when you look at the cooking / smithing usage as to what ingredients you need to make an item but dont have all the required items. But again Beth no comment

Unlikely, but I am not offended in the slightest. I take it as a hint that I should be more clear in my explanations. Glad you got the point I was trying to make. If they can't make a satchel you can carry around, which the game extracts ingredients from automatically, they at least need to have one on each alchemy table with the aforementioned functionality.

I agree. It would be nice to have something to that nature, even just a "sort by effect" in the inventory would help.

FYI: It helps to lead off with the idea, and put the reasoning after. Attention spans are short around here.

There is a solution: BE TIDY, DAMNIT.

I only pick up or purchase roughly a dozen types I need for potions.
- Fortify Health, Magicka & Destruction.
- Restore Health, Stamina & Magicka.
- Resist Frost, Shock, Fire & Magic.

I never use alchemy I'm too busy hitting things with my weapon and killing Empire/Thalmor scum.