So Alchemy in oblivion i didn't really like because you couldn't just get some ingredients and make like a weak magicka potion or health you would get a potion that would be similar. I mean I like the fact you can make your own potion that increases your strength and agility or something along the lines, but i would just like to be able to make a plain out magicka potion to. So if i mixed 2 ingredients together that gave magicka back i would assume it would be a magicka potion. Not a big deal just a thought.

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I don't understand

I think he is referring to how the potions were like 10 health for 30 seconds versus 50 instant points. Which is something I wondered myself. The only potions that gave you instant health or magicka were ones that you bought from an NPC or was pre made, but any potion or poison you made through alchemy was like a HoT or DoT.

I always assumed that this was a deliberate nerf. Considering how easy it is to make potions, and the fact that time stops when you drink potions, having instant health (or magicka) potions would be insanely overpowered--as long as you had enough potions (and, thanks to the glitch in how potion weights were calculated, you could have an infinite number of zero weight potions for a number of effects), you would essentially be unkillable. This is why there's a four-potion limit--since you can only have four potions active at any given time, there is a limit to how much health (or magicka) you can restore, or at least how fast you can restore it.

That was the way I always thought of it, at least. It made sense in terms of game balance. (And alchemy was still overpowered.)

Ingredients weight should be summed into the full product. Or at the very least averaged over the number of effects.

I Loved Oblivion alchemy with a passion, and recall many weeks of playtime spent just exploring the wilderness throughout the land gathering reagents and making ever stronger potions and interesting concoctions.

I do admit that at high level the Alchemy became over-powered because we could quaff so many potions in such a short time, but it was one of my favorite things to do (it got me outdoors ).

I would like to see the next evolution, but more than anything I would hope that Bethesda takes inspiration from the Harvest Flora mod. With that installed, when you picked a plant in the wild, it actually changed appearance (some cases the flower would vanish, other cases the whole plant, depending on what it was). It was great because you could See where you had been before and got a visual indication that I had harvested the plant (or not). I think this would be a great addition to Skyrim.

I think a more convenient way of organizing the reagents when making potions would be great too - and would fall in-line with the UI changes that Todd is shooting for (getting away from long, scrolling lists). Any way to make the lists shorter yet just as deep would be great.

Miax