Restoration has been picked into pieces in Skyrim. It's quite worthless compared to how it was in Oblivion or Morrowind, not to mention you can get the same effects and more from Alchemy and a big gripe of mine is that Restoration can't even cure diseases anymore.

Its only redeeming factor is that it can heal others but even then you can't heal undead, atronachs or machines (I can understand this last one though). So using it with Conjuration doesn't work that well. And when it comes to healing companions it's still possible to load them with healing potions.

Potions do heal instantly, means you can heal yourself in 0 seconds for unlimited HP as long as you have potions. 36 points per second is damage better bandit does with warhamer on you. One of the biggest advantage of potions is that it in fact cost no time to heal using them.


I have no problem making potions which heal 60 HP on alchemy level 30. You just need to take perks. As for ingredients, they are plentiful, especially those you need for healing potions. They are literally everywhere.


Problem with restoration is precisely that it is NOT instant, it takes time to heal while enemies are not sitting and waiting while you do so. And while it is free it is not infinite as it last only as long as your magicka does. If you are not playing mage character, you are not going to invest much in to magicka.


So you can with magicka.

Bye the way, does somebody know if companions use healing potions? Seems they do but I am not 100% sure.

I humbly disagree with you. While you make some good points you failed to mention the undead spells it carries which are really good. Also the ward spells, and perks such as ward absorb and necromage are very good.

I like using everything, just having the right perks for enchant and alchemy is good enough.
I also like restoration for the extra mana regain
pick pocket +100 carry
alteration +30% magic resist

For the most part I use robes if I want to use magic. Typically have hp regain over time if using armor and have absorb stamina if I want to use melee. Often soul trap if I want to make coin with soul gems.

Just to make a few corrections:



1. You can also use healing potions on your follower, just like you can use restoration. Put it into his inventory. Of course, this can't be done during the battle but the question is why would you want to? Followers are immortal unless you shoot them, I feel like cheating when I fight with them.

2. You don't need to bother picking ingredients for alchemy, ever. The game is entirely broken. Just visit a merchant, buy ALL the ingredients, always. Sell him the most expensive potions back (it's the most useless one as well, you will find out which one it is). Endless potions and endless profit.

3. Leveling Alchemy is trivial. It's the skill I leveled the fastest. And, it's the most fun skill to level as you're mixing potions you need (whether for profit or use) and discovering ingredients. You're not making a thousand iron daggers.
I don't know for sure, but unless you're exploiting level system by standing still and letting wolves repeatedly hit you, you're probably not going to level Restoration faster by playing normally and trying not to get hit in the first place.

4. You can discover ingredient effects very fast, early on. It does require a bit of thinking and knowing that greyed out ingredients are those you tried mixing already. Still, if you mix ingredients randomly you're not going to be as successful. There is a method that works pretty good, have fun.


And I don't know why people expect 10 Two Handed potions to give an increase of 500%. Of course they don't stack, it would be ridiculous if they did.



I am biased towards alchemy I admit that. Every time I try Restoration I end up being dissapointed. Last time I tried that Ward and it made things worse. Sure, I'm casting a ward and draining mana per second.. and then what? As alchemist, I can just drink Magic Resistance and elemental resistance potions and end up with huge magic resistance and then attack back instead of casting a ward. Whether this is different at lvl50 I don't know. I am more disappointed by the lack of "circle" spells though, and variety. There's anti-undead spell and healing spell and then what.. perks are decent but passive.

don't limit yourself. go both. just a tip. even if you don't really use them, work on everything.

If I could I would invest into both, but after ~70hours of game play I've figured out that planning your character is the key to not going crazy (that's just my play style, If I have 4 points put into something useless they stare at me and mock me). Which is why I made the thread. I've never been big into alchemy, I dabbled a little in Oblivion and wasn't impressed, but in Skyrim it seemed more polished.

On my other level 50 character his restoration is only like 30 and It was my SOLE health regen mechanic. But in reality I only wanted it to be at 50 for a few of the perks. The bottom line is even with the limited time I've invested into alchemy I find it enjoyable. Much more so that Restoration. I think Alchemy fits the lore of the Death Knight better than restoration (If they brought back absorb spells into Restoration however it wouldn't be a question, and no, I will not be a vampire). My fear is I'll end up investing points and then just get annoyed with it not comparing well. Running out of potions without a back up seems like a scary thing. I can always wait post-combat.

As long as Alchemy provides the same amount of survivability as Resto I'll take it.

If you need to heal every 10seconds then you should probably put some time into levelling your combat skills.. that is awful.

Alchemy is better though hands down. You can make poisons as well as potions, which mean you can increase your damage, damage resistance, strength (carryweight), health, stamina etc and still be able to paralyse enemies with a single hit from your sword.

From my experience I would have to say Alchemy. To me it just seems to be so much easier and rewarding to work with. One of the greatest things about alchemy is the fact that you can use healing potions on followers, which I find incredibly useful. Sure you can heal them with restoration to, but It seems to me that healing potions work better.

Another way to look at it would be: If you don't like to farm for ingredients or to clear out each alchemy shop like a maniac in every town, don't get alchemy? I don't know how many restore health potions you'll need though. Anyway i never liked alchemy; however one benefit of alchemy is that the restore health is instant, while with restoration you gotta do the hand movements.
which made me die quite a few times :sadvaultboy:

Whats nice about alchemy is

1. You dont need to invest in magic to use it / you dont need to use your current magic pool to use it

2. You can actually buy ALL ingredients that cost less than 60 gold and combine them to make a profit usually

3. Alchemy shops seem to always have paralyze ingredients and recipe on hand. Youll have no shortage of the poison, even at level 1 if you try.

I think of making potions and poisons as a minigame. Run around get ingredients, combine, save some and then sell the rest, usually for a profit. As well as searching for ingredients in the field.

Maybe I'm jaded from paralyzing ememies early in the game. But if you use both potions and poisons and invest some perks in alchemy I think youll be surprised at what you get out of it.

Alchemy is better by such a ridiculous margin it isn't even funny. The only drawback of alchemy is you have to prep for it, in other words if you don;t go to an alchemy labs and make a bunch of potions it does not help you. The thing is per pound potions are the most valuable thing in the game so loading your character down with them is not a problem.

Only real disadvantage of alchemy is that potions have weight and not little at that. Magic weight nothing.

Restoration is better if you have one hand free, my Khajiit is pretty much soley invested in One Handed and then Restoration, the Close Wounds spell heals me by about 250 points and takes just a few seconds to cast, plus the Avoid Death perk is incredible. It's quite frankly impossible for me to die.

I'd say Alchemy was better if you don't have a free hand though, since then you don't have to switch anything out to heal.

But yeah, go for both, see which works best for you.

Alchemy is more powerful but restoration is more convenient, with alchemy you need to continuously hunt out regents/ingredients to make your potions and once you run out of potions... yeah. Given how easy it is to fast travel around skyrim it does remove the difficulty but then you need the speech/gold to by all your ingredients which might not be at all plausible until at least level 20 for keeping yourself stocked up on health/magicka/stamina potions. Naturally alchemy is one of the best ways for raising speech skill tho to earn yourself better deals as you go along. The other consideration is that potions are not weightless and so all potions you carry around are encumbering you, in other words you can't walk around with infinite potions but you can still walk around with a heck of a lot, it's just a question of if you have enough or too many which you may not know until you hit which ever dungeon you're going too.

Restoration just relies on magicka, if you aren't using magicka on other things then you might as well use it on restoration, naturally your limitation is with magicka so when you run out you can no longer heal but for a tank or paladin build with the respite perk you generally recover your magicka before you need restoration again. For mages restoration can be a problem as you're already using your magicka on other things and so alchemy can help, more so since alchemy can make magicka potions which can be a life saver as a mage.

Stronger than 160 health instant. In fact, I've made stronger than 170 with my alchemy gear on.

Don't forget the fact that you can make poisons 26 over ten seconds, 70% resist elements, 20% resist magicka, 130% health / magicka / stamina regeneration for over 100 seconds, boost one-hand / two-hand / marksman by over 100%, etc.

The way I look at it is if you play a mage then yes alchemy can help with magika regeneration, but if you use destruction magic primarily then you want the necromage perk(good bye draugr, master vampires). Real question is how many perks are you willing to use if ya want both?

Alchemy is better imo. I hardly if ever find myself using Restoration spells, as they arent really good in the midst of battle, usually ends up a time waster and magicka drain. If you are actually resorting to healing in battle it means the enemy is hitting very hard, so trying to heal yourself is counter-productive, unless you are running away whilst healing yourself. Now if there was a heal-over-time spell it would be good. Because only being able to heal yourself while the enemy plows you even more is hardly of effec

Wards are good for dragon fire though. But everyone ups their magic resistance anyway.

So I gave Alchemy a try for a little bit and I have to say the biggest issues I ran into are as follows:

1. At early levels when I faced difficult enemies I would get hit and take INSANE amounts of damage, so much so I would have to use 2-3 potions to recover from that one hit (3 hits would kill me so using my potions was a must). When it took me awhile to kill the guy/dragon I would've gone through nearly 15 potions, leaving me with 3 left to continue my adventure. So what do I do? Travel back to town and try to travel to my destination again. Is this just how Alchemy is at low levels? Or should I expect this for the whole game? I mean, at the end of every dungeon is a "Boss" who hits like a truck, and FFS saber cats at level 6 are infuriating!

And that's it, that was my only real negative experience with Alchemy. If anyone who has invested time into Alchemy can identify with me and confirm that it gets better I'll stick with it.

Also, If I drink and Alchemy-up potion, then craft and Alchemy-up, that potion with be stronger then yes? Can I repeat this cycle with enough ingredients and end up with a, oh I don't know, +120% Alchemy bonus?

I'd choose alchemy as it levels more slowly and requires the effort of collecting ingredients and recipes or experimentation. Restoration is considerably more powerful though and easier to use.