Trying to get the hang of alchemy i checked the wiki i just want to know some tips on when to use it and on what also what ingredients and potions will be most useful. Thanks!

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Ingredients

This is a list of ingredients and what effects they have. I would suggest grabbing everything you can as you wander around, anything that is an alchemy ingredient, snag it!

After you get a collection going you can use the link I gave to fill out all the effects, and then just make whatever potions you need.


Potions to stock up on

Health - Stamina - Magic
Fortify One Handed/Two Handed or Archery.

Resist frost, fire, shock

(Poison) Weakness to Fire, shock or frost based on what you use/what you have you weapon enchanted with

Damage Stamina and Magic over time, for warrior and mage type enemies ( Something like does 10 stamina damage over 10 seconds. )

Slow and Paralyze

Sneak or invisibility.

And fortify enchanting and smithing.



Alchemy can take some time but is very powerful, and dont forget you can poison arrows!

I use it a lot, collect everything I see and make every potion I can whenever I stop by my home to get alch skill up.
If you are melee based then make heaps of restore stam\health pots and elemental\magic resistance.
If you are mage based make heaps of restore health\mana
I am assassin\mage and like to carry a heap of restore health\mana, elemental resistance pots and a bunch of poisons which I throw on a weapon before every fight. Not sure how useful the poison aspect is but it's a nice flavour mechanic for me.
I have also seen people pickpoket an npc and by 'store'ing a poison or two on the npc they poison them and kill them - don't get your companion to carry poisons, it could kill them. I gave Lydia a heap of pots that I thought might be useful to her (enhance heavy armour etc) and some of these had a negative effect (damage magicka regen or something) and after I left the trade screen she made the *grunt* (I have just eaten something bad for me sound) ... so she may just drink everything you give her straight away - I don't remember seeing them on her when I next unloaded her.

AFAIK the only food-type ingredients used in alchemy are salt and wheat ... there may be some others.

Just a note: checking ingredients on wiki is cheating, you're supposed to find out that yourself by mixing and testing. I personally find it fun and wouldn't want it differently.

But if you want to cheat why bother checking ingredients on wiki, you can give yourself 9999 health or just add potion items themselves without bothering with ingredients.



As for Alchemy, this is my impression so far: fun, and very effective especially if you don't use Smiting and Conjuration - BUT.

There are some potions that are just not worth mixing. These are Illusion-like potions of Fear and Frenzy. Basically all potions that require enemy to be of certain level. The explanation is pretty simple: as lvl20 if you focus heavily on Alchemy, you will make lvl13 frenzy/fear potions (with 3 +alchemy items and perks in alchemy). This is completely useless as you will one-shot lvl13 enemies, while those enemies that require fear/frenzy in the first place won't be affected as they are around your level. This is on Masters, perhaps they are more viable on other difficulty settings.

Here's a big hint. Not all ingredients are created equal. For example, a Damage Health poison made using River Betty is far more powerful than other damage health poisons.

Based on that, I can only assume there are other super-ingredients to be found by the dedicated alchemist. I'd start a list, but River Betty is the only one I've identified.

If there's a super-ingredient for those frenzy/fear poisons, that may solve the problem Thulsan mentioned.