Skyrim Alchemy Guide

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Arron Kluz

Arron is a featured team writer and lifelong Elder Scrolls fan. He started with Morrowind on his Dad's old PC and quickly worked his way back through the series before playing Skyrim and now keeping up with Elder Scrolls Online. Outside of the Elder Scrolls, he plays just about everything else and has written professionally about games for just over a year. He also enjoys running his own Dungeons & Dragons campaign, watching movies, playing anything on top of a table other than Monopoly, and writing fiction.

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Skyrim players have many options of how to make their Dragonborn stronger as they play. They can focus on enchanting gear, striking from the shadows, or running into battle with a raised shield and plate mail. However, one of the most universally powerful ways to make your character stronger in Skyrim is brewing potions and poisons to use in battle through the Alchemy skill.

These concoctions can have various effects, whether it’s paralyzing an enemy, allowing you to breathe underwater, or helping you get better prices when you sell all of your loot from the last dungeon. So, here is everything you need to know about alchemy in Skyrim.

Key Info Up Front

Alchemy allows players to gather reagents from their surroundings as they explore the province that can augment their build with various potions and poisons. This makes it not only a universal crafting skill but also a relatively cheap one to level, as you’ll always be able to grab reagents to use as you run through the wilderness.

Alchemy Overview

Alchemy begins with gathering reagents, from fish to plants, and materials from animals. Each reagent has four effects that can be brought out from it that have to be discovered. There are a few different ways to do so, but the easiest is simply eating them. This always reveals their first effect, while you can unlock perks that will eventually allow you to learn about all four.

You’ll want to be careful when mass-consuming new reagents, though, as whatever effects you discover immediately apply to you, no matter if that fire resistance or being paralyzed. They can also be found by mixing the reagents with another with the same effect as one of its hidden ones.

However, most reagents have both positive and negative aspects, making creating potions and poisons a balancing act of not giving enemies too many buffs or yourself too much pain.

Step-by-Step Alchemy Guide

Step One: Gathering Reagents

Most reagents in Skyrim can easily be found in the wild as you travel between quest markers. Most of them are seen as plants among the grasses and foliage of the province and can be picked up as you run past them.

Others take some more work, like killing a monster and looting its corpse or taking the time to grab fish from a lake, or going fishing if you have the fishing creation installed.

Step Two: Locate an Alchemy Table

Once you have your reagents collected, you’ll have to find yourself an alchemy table to do anything with them. The most accessible places to find alchemy tables are at any homesteads that you’ve built with Skyrim’s Hearthfire expansion, as all three can have both an alchemy table made in its main hall as well as an alchemy table as one of its wings.

However, you may not always want to travel all the way home or might want to start brewing things before you’ve built a manor. Thankfully, there is plenty of alchemy tables scattered throughout the game, in cities and the wilderness alike:

Step Three: Brewing

Now that you have an alchemy table sitting before you, you’re ready to start brewing your potions and poisons. Before you start, however, you’ll want to equip any gear you have with the Fortify Alchemy enchantment to help make your creations even more powerful. From here, there are a few different ways to go about making your concoctions. The first is to choose any options listed when you interact with the alchemy table.

From the reagents in your inventory, Skyrim will automatically match any with the same aspects identified. This allows you to scroll through your options, select, for example, Invisibility, and pick up to three reagents that you wish to use to brew the potion. However, this can be difficult at first, as you won’t have very many aspects of each reagent discovered just yet.

The second option you have is the recipes you can find here and there throughout the game. It is possible to find recipes for loot creations or specific areas that list possible reagents for particular creations that you can then follow.

However, you’ll have to read it in your inventory before brewing or remember what it says, as its contents do not appear in the menu when using the alchemy table.

The final option is to select individual ingredients yourself. The top of the menu has an option that allows you to select up to three reagents from all of the ones in your inventory to mix. This can help you discover similar properties between them but will also lead to plenty of wasted materials if you combine random things.

However, you can always look up the reagents that work for whatever you wish to brew to see what reagents will work ahead of time. All of the possible potion effects in Skyrim are:

• Cure Disease
• Fortify Alteration
• Fortify Barter
• Fortify Block
• Fortify Carry Weight
• Fortify Conjuration
• Fortify Destruction
• Fortify Enchanting
• Fortify Health
• Fortify Heavy Armor
• Fortify Illusion
• Fortify Light Armor
• Fortify Lockpicking
• Fortify Magicka
• Fortify Marksman
• Fortify One-Handed
• Fortify Pickpocket
• Fortify Restoration
• Fortify Smithing
• Fortify Sneak
• Fortify Stamina
• Fortify Two-Handed
• Invisibility
• Regenerate Health
• Regenerate Magicka
• Regenerate Stamina
• Resist Fire
• Resist Frost
• Resist Magic
• Resist Poison
• Resist Shock
• Restore Health
• Restore Magicka
• Restore Stamina
• Water breathing

If instead, you want to use your abilities to harm, the available poison effects are:

• Damage Health
• Damage Magicka
• Damage Magicka Regen
• Damage Stamina
• Damage Stamina Regen
• Fear
• Frenzy
• Lingering Damage Health
• Lingering Damage Magicka
• Lingering Damage Stamina
• Paralysis
• Ravage Health
• Ravage Magicka
• Ravage Stamina
• Slow
• Weakness to Fire
• Weakness to Frost
• Weakness to Magic
• Weakness to Poison
• Weakness to Shock

Once you have your poison equipped, you have to use it from your inventory or quick menu to apply it to your weapon and affect the next target you hit.

Alchemy Perks

As you eat reagents and get to brewing, you will accumulate Alchemy experience that will eventually level up your skill. This will allow you to unlock more perks in the skill’s tree when you level up to buff your creations and help you specialize in either potions or poisons.

If you want to level up the skill quickly, getting the Thief Standing Stone will increase your XP gain for the skill, while there are also a handful of trainers that can be purchased throughout cities. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for the following skill books that will give you a free level:

• De Rerum Dirennis
• A Game at Dinner
• Herbalist’s Guide to Skyrim
• Mannimarco, King of Worms
• Song of the Alchemists

Some quests will also reward you with Alchemy skill points when you complete them. These include:

• Dungeon Delving from Frida
• Finn’s Lute
• Discerning the Transmundane (if you choose it)

Once you get your Alchemy skill up, you’ll likely want to start investing in its perks to ensure your creations are both as powerful as they can be and so that they sell for as much profit as possible. The skill tree’s perks are:

Reagents

There are a lot of different reagents available in Skyrim, and deciding which ones to use can be tricky until you get the Purity perk since a health potion isn’t nearly as valuable when it also paralyzes you in the middle of combat. Below are all of the reagents in the game, what effects they have in order, and where you can find them:

FAQs

Skyrim Alchemy Guide: Conclusion

Alchemy is an extensive skill that can give powerful bonuses to every type of build. This makes it worth leveling up and exploring, even if you don’t end up investing skill points in its tree so that you can use them elsewhere. Even without investing heavily into the Alchemy skill tree, you can get plenty out of its skill. Having some fortify and healing potions is always helpful, especially if you’re playing a magic-focused build.