Alchemy:

-you have to set up an apparatus on a table, and use that
- you can buy a table for your apparatus for your home.
-You have to crush certain ingredients (mortar and pestle)
-You have to mix the ingredients with a liquid to make a potion
-you have to heat the liquid sometimes (before or after mixture)
--sometimes you keep what is left in the heated liquid
--and sometimes you take the condensed liquid from the steam (if you have a Retort, or an Alembic)
-you have to have bottles to fill if you want to make potions
-you don't have to make potions, (for instance, you can make food with good, or poisonous qualities)
-you make more than 1 potion per batch.

^basically i just want something more like this. more hands on. I for one never carried around Alchemy items except a mortar because they were simply too heavy, not because i didn't like alchemy. I would much rather have a more immersive alchemy "station", than a menu.

I have hopes bethesda did this, as they said they didn't like the "spreadsheet" feel of spellmaking, and i felt the old alchemy system was the same

EDIT: I just had another idea, and since nobody has really posted on this thread i thought I'd add it to the poll and OP.

Past Elder Scrolls games just had a list of effects, that you could see the effect of the ingredient when you looked at it. The higher you're alchemy level, the more effects you could see on the item.

What I would rather have is Potion books which would basically be cookbooks for potions. Leveling up in Alchemy Would increase success at creating potions, and the strength of the potion only. Creating more complex mixtures, such as some of the ones found in what would be very advanced potion books, would be very hard do successfully with a low alchemy skill.

Perhaps there could be both... (sigh), but I would rather not have it the way it was before though. the act of mixing ingredients seemed so shallow to me. it was just "search for two items that had the same effect, and put them together"... it was soooo boring and even if i had a ? for the effect when making a potion, I would just make it anyway. It didn't matter if i knew what it was or not, sorta making that function of alchemy useless for me.


^I've absorbed this into my opinion of how alchemy should be as well.

I barely ever touched Alchemy in past games until fairly recently because I didn't care to learn about all the ingredients and how they mix and all that. If it became more complicated in the ways you're suggesting, I would, again, never touch Alchemy. I imagine most new players would do the same.

I'm all for a little more hands-on approach, with being required to do something instead of just opening a simple menu, but I doubt I'd ever bother to learn all that is required.

I would like to see some depth added to alchemy rather than add ingredient x to ingredient y and get potion z. But I'm not really sure about having it stationary. Other than that great ideas, it'd be really cool if these were implemented.

I never really used alchemy only when i played the game with the slider all the way up if they make it hands on thats fine for realism but i can do without it to.

I said other because I want to be able to carry it around but also maybe have an alchemy table you can purchase for your humble abode.

I just added to the poll. Something about spellbooks. It's all in the OP.

I think its been stated there's no more mortar and pestle that you can use anywhere and anytime you want. It will work like the workbenches in Fallout.

link please? (not trying to be an ass, I would just like the link)

I'll see what I can find.

You know I actually stood away from alchemy because it wasn't complex enough, but when I found out that it's a great way to make money and it;s easy to raise in skill, I started using it.

I'm actually hoping for Alchemy to get much more complex in Skyrim. I feel like Oblivion, the only you could do with alchemy was throw ingredients together till you found a winning combination. There was no complexity to it unless you wanted to learn all the ingredients properties and even then still kinda whatever.

I can't find a link. I might be mistaken, but I thought I read it some where along the way.

Yeah i agree. I put that in the OP.

I voted yes for staionary ach setups. I think that carrying around all yor ach equipment and just busting it out anywhere and mixing potions is kinda unreal. But it doesnt really bother me the way it has been. I just leave them in my house anyways to free up inventory.

No: its balanced enough that aparatuses were mobile but they wieghed you down so you did not take them with you all the time

other: would like the none morter n' pestile aparatus's to have more impact on potion combinations

Other: don't know.

but what kind of alchemist takes a full apparatus around with him? why not just have it a stationary thing at your house, and at places like mages guilds, instead of having to carry around unreasonable weights to make a good potion. I really just went home, put em all in my inventory, made potions, and put them back... it was very boring. If they had them stationary, they could do so much more, instead of alchemy alll in a window, it could be on a table.

I LOVE IT!!

Seriously! My first playthrough I never used it, except for spamming potions for money. My second playthrough I tookthe time to actually use it.

Creating a potion that added +health +magic +fatigue was great. And then stacking similar potions together meant a constant regen effect too. Also playing a marksman with poison tipped arrows that dealt -health -fatigue fire damage etc, and then stacking those = watch them drop dead. I used to love to have bandits chase me only to collapse! Too funny "arghh". Ha!


Anyways, my suggestions: Have it like oblivion for the most part, but have a Potion Book. Everytime you create a new potion it gets jotted down in your book, and lists the name ingredients and effects. Whenever you bring up the alchemy screen you can click on your book and then scroll through. Anything you have ingredients for will be bold, and you just have to click the potions name to create it. You should also be able to delete lesser potions you don't plan on making anymore, or have the book separated into different levels of potions.

Beyond this, I liked how oblivion did it for the most part. I would always leave me set and ingredients in the same chest, and go back home to make potions. As long as they don't do the stupid workbenches everywhere(which was stupid I thought in new Vegas) I'll be happy. Also I hated the Witcher's potions needing a base, so I'd rather keep it simple.

An alchemist with feathering potions.

Also... me...

-you have to set up an apparatus on a table, and use that
Yes and no. Add a Bonus when making them at a stationary table, IMO

- you can buy a table for your apparatus for your home.
Sure

-You have to crush certain ingredients (mortar and pestle)
-You have to mix the ingredients with a liquid to make a potion
-you have to heat the liquid sometimes (before or after mixture)
--sometimes you keep what is left in the heated liquid
--and sometimes you take the condensed liquid from the steam (if you have a Retort, or an Alembic)
-you have to have bottles to fill if you want to make potions
These might make the process overwhelming to new players (And maybe some old ones too.)

-you don't have to make potions, (for instance, you can make food with good, or poisonous qualities)
I heard there will be cooking, maybe you will be able to add potions/poisons to the food once it is prepared?

-you make more than 1 potion per batch.
I agree, the higher your skill, the bigger the chance of getting more potions per mixture.

Just my two Coppers (Cents)

Well I imagined it so it eased you into the process. simple potions would just be like...

put ingredient in mortar, crush, add water, and stir, and you got yourself a restore fatigue potions.

later more advanced potions would be like:

put it in mortar, crush, add water, stir, heat in alembic, collect liquid collected from alembic, put other ingredient in mortar, crush, put crushed ingredient in liquid, stir, you got yourself [insert awesome powerful potion here]

This is not an idea that would be fun in practice, people who are for this are thinking about how cool and realistic/immersive it would be. But that immersive/cool factor wears off fast, after making your 100th heal potion you will just want to skip all the steps and animations and get the damn potion already. Instead of go from step 1 to 2 to 3 to 4,etc and next I need a magic potion, step 1, step 2, step 3(waiting while animation plays out for each of these remember), step 4,etc,etc.

Making potions is a task you would do over and over again In a very short period of time. Instead of easily making my self 10 heal potions, and a couple x,y and z potions in a minute or two at most. Would take much longer. I think even you would who are proposing the idea after playing the game for dozens of hours would start to get very annoyed about the time it takes to make a potion. Again animations are ideas that sound good, but play bad, no one likes load times and that is what they amount to after playing for a while. Some people have more tolerare than other for load times, but TES games are very big games and people play them longer than almost any other single player game I can think. So keeping things as efficient as possible is best.

Bashing in proper thread complete

I'm a svcker for intricacy and complexity so I voted yes (apart for the spellbook option). It would actually have been great in the past games to have various ways of preparing stuff, like a potion requiring a tincture/alcohol or a twig requiring scissors. Heh, I am one of "Those" players....

to me it's like Carriages/fast travel. some people just want to get there, so they're like "why the hell would i use a carriage when i can use fast travel, I'm just trying to get there." while other people are like "I want something more intricate/realistic even it it's not as convenient for me I'd rather use that." some people even want to ride in carriages in real-time. It all depends on whta kind of player you are. I think there are a lot of people who play Elder Scrolls who would enjoy this.

and thanks for bashing the proper thread. I just didn't want to get too off-topic in that other one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR_kgG-ROQo&feature=player_detailpage#t=3942s kinda had something like i imagine. It's way less streamlined then what i would imagine it being like in Skyrim, but it's mixing and mashing ingredients, and actually doing stuff to make the potion.

I think these are all great ideas. I like what "Liu Bei" had stated in the "OP", also adding "Tylerryan" suggestion paragraph and all similar thoughts. And I kind of agree with "Kefka", but I think the animations would be cool, but shouldn't be long. And like it has been stated, we all do play for hours, so for those who do Alchemy, collecting LOTS of ingredients on a single run SHOULDN'T be a problem and would shorten the animation replay and create larger batches.(multiple potions) <-----This reflecting on Alchemy level. Possibly Level 1-25 could make five or ten at a time. Or some what of a similar sequence.

"THE WRAP UP"

-Hands on Alchemy(OP), step by step but not too many.

-Potion book/list of what you made(or guessed) also bought/traded. Specifies along with Alchemy level.(Tylerryan's suggestion)

-Still being able to carry equipment, primarly the mortar and pestle, but won't be able to make strong potions, so heading back to the purgatory would be mandatory, which also helps with strategic planning.

-Animations would be cool though they can get redundant, and to "avoid" this repetition, possibly forcing you to go gather resources(still helping a bit to level up Alchemy) to make larger quantities.

A bit off topic.....Also doing this way could prolong your adventure. Your on a stroll picking ingredients and you encounter a beast of some sort, that there is accumulated Xp to "magic" or "melee" also the ingredient(to Alchemy), that's being defended for some odd reason.lol.

^I can agree with all of that. just as long as they can make it so setting up an alchemy station anywhere can work. I guess if you ARE strong enough to always carry these things around, you should be allowed to. I just thought it would be way easier to do some of the things i suggested if you can only do it in a stationary chemistry station.