Skyrim Alchemy Guide

Skill Tips, Ingredients List, and Making Potions

Skyrim's Alchemy skill allows your Dragonborn to create potions and poisons that have a variety of effects. This guide to Alchemy will teach you how to make potions, the benefits of the various Alchemy Perks, skill mechanics, trainer locations, and tips to make the most of your Alchemist's skills.

Making Potions and Poisons in Skyrim

Potions are produced by mixing two or three ingredients at an Alchemy Lab. If the ingredients share one or more magical properties, a potion or poison is created. With nothing in common, the mixture will fail. A successful product will have one or more effects, depending on how many of the ingredients' various magical properties match up. Potions (red in color) are drank, effects felt instantly by the player. Poisons (green) are applied to weapons and their effects used up through charges. Striking an enemy removes a charge.

The strength of your potions and poisons are determined by your current alchemy level (with Fortify helping appropriately) and the perks you've learned from the Alchemy perk tree. To learn

How to Learn Ingredient Effects

First, though they exist in the game, you do not need recipes to create potions. All herbs and food ingredients have set effects. If they match, you will unlock knowledge of that property. Eating a raw ingredient by using it in the menu will reveal the first property of an item. Later, with the Experimenter Perk, you can reveal the second, third, and fourth effects of items. You'll always unlock the top left property first, top right second and so on. So, you have two choices for unlocking the properties of ingredients - either eat it, or use foreknowledge of properties or trial and error to combine potions to find matching effects.

Powerleveling Alchemy

The experience you gain from a potion is based on the final value. Since Fortify Alchemy and Alchemy Perks both help the power of effects, they also produce more expensive potions - thus more skill XP. Some effects are more valuable than others. For example, Paralyze is an expensive effect while Restore Stamina is not. A potion's value goes up based on the sum of all its effects, positive and negative, no matter how much sense they make (a Fortify Restoration + Damage Magicka potion, for example).

In general, Alchemy is one of the easiest skills in Skyrim to level, especially with perks and gear enchanted with Fortify Alchemy. You can buy out all the ingredients from an Alchemy ingredient vendor, craft all your potions, then sell those back for a profit. In fact, you can even afford to do training and still turn a profit in some cases as vendors won't often have enough money to buy all the potions you create.

Alchemy Trainers

There are two good trainers for Alchemy in Skyrim. The easiest to access is Arcadia, an Expert Alchemist in Whiterun. Members of the Dark Brotherhood can train with Babette, a Master level trainer. She also sells the Daedra Heart alchemy ingredient from time to time.

Alchemy Skill Perks

It takes fifteen perk points to master Alchemy, though it is unlikely you will want everything.

Alchemist (5 Ranks +20% Each)
(level 0/20/40/60/80 Alchemy Skill required)
Increases the strength or duration of potions by 20% per rank. Take all five points if your Dovahkiin is going to use Alchemy for survival, profit, or both.

Physician
(level 20 Alchemy Skill required)
Boosts Health, Magicka, and Stamina potions by 25% in power. This perk will pay off with higher potion values, whether you use the potions to heal or not.

Poisoner
(level 30 Alchemy Skill required)
Gives poisons +25% more power. Again, this could pay off with higher potion yields at the shop whether you're using poisons on weapons or not.

Concentrated Poison
(level 60 Alchemy Skill required)
Poisons applied to weapons last for twice as many hits. This Perk's usefulness really depends on your build. I'm not aware that this boosts the value of potions.

Green Thumb
(level 70 Alchemy Skill required)
Two ingredients are gathered from plants. Absolutely take this perk if you've got the prerequisites! Some rather rare herbs can be found in pairs, which is a great boost to you in terms of supplies and finances.

Benefactor
(level 30 Alchemy Skill required)
Potions you mix with beneficial effects have 25% greater magnitude. So, Fortify Enchanting potions will have a bigger kick, helping you to Enchant and produce better potions. Better take this perk if you're going that route.

Experimenter (3 Ranks, reveals 2/3/4 effects on eating an ingredient)
(level 50/70/90 Alchemy Skill required)
This perk isn't necessary if you use an Alchemy ingredients list, which I have in a table below.

Snakeblood
(level 80 Alchemy Skill required)
Gives you 50% resistance to all poisons - a slightly helpful defensive Perk.

Purity
(level 100 Alchemy Skill required)
This is a perk that will impact your potions' final values, but ultimately helps from a gameplay perspective. All positives will be removed from poisons you create, but more importantly, all negatives are removed from potions, allowing for some better custom combinations.

Alchemy Ingredients

The following table will aid your potion-making efforts in Skyrim. Many effects are not challenging to find, as they are found on various ingredients. There is one ingredient in particular that is tough to find: the Daedra Heart. These are used to craft Daedric armor and weapons with the Smithing skill. A guaranteed way to be able to farm Daedra Hearts is to get to level 20 and do the Pieces of the Past quest. Toward the end are a few Dremora who, after the quest's completion, will respawn once every few days. The trouble is, there aren't many of this enemy type in Skyrim other than those. What few hearts are out there are scattered around the world. As the expensive option, Daedra Hearts can be bought from Enthir as well as Babette of the Dark Brotherhood. Otherwise, most alchemist merchants have a chance to sell them once in a while, though they are expensive.

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Share Tips and FAQs (3)

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The alchemist says...

Okay if you want a really expensive potion you should mix garlic, nordic banacle (witch can be found underwater or bought from an alchemy shop) And salmon roe. It gives you Regenerate health (health regenerates 22% faster for 300 seconds), Regenerate magicka (magicka regenerates 22% faster for 300 seconds), and finaly water breathing ( you can breathe under water for 268 seconds. The base value is 1369 and this is without any perk and/or fortify. Happy mixing :-)

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7th August 2014 3:42am

Michael says...

Salmon roe is not sold by alchemists, but if you go to a waterfall where salmon are jumping, you can harvest it. It takes a bit of practice, but you can catch the jumping fish, and each fish caught provides a sample of salmon roe.

And since the salmon re-spawn (heh) in just a couple of days' time, you can easily accumulate quite a bit of salmon roe. The Kyne's Peace shout kills fish, allowing you quickly and easily harvest large amounts of salmon roe if used near a waterfall with jumping fish. The problem is that fish killed this way don't re-spawn, apparently.)

Anyway, take some salmon roe and combine it with histcarp (which can be found in just-about any body of water) and you get a *ridiculously* powerful "waterbreathing" potion that can be sold for ridiculous amounts of money. Even a rank beginner alchemist can use these two ingredients to craft a potion that can be sold for more money than any merchant in the game possesses. And since it's so powerful and expensive, crafting this potion levels your Alchemy skill very rapidly.

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27th May 2014 2:23pm

Vingdel says...

In the "Slaughterfish Scales" the Effect 4 is Fortify Block instead Fortify Stamina. It needs to be corrected.

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4th February 2014 10:49am

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