Alchemy

Alchemy is the art of mixing raw ingredients at an alchemy lab to brew potions that help you and poisons that hurt everyone else. Every ingredient carries four hidden effects, and two or more ingredients that share an effect produce a potion with it. It is one of Skyrim’s three crafting skills, alongside Smithing and Enchanting, and belongs to the Stealth group, so the Thief Stone speeds up its progress (as does the Lover Stone, which boosts every skill).

Why bother? A good alchemist never runs out of healing, can poison a dragon before the fight starts, and earns a steady stream of gold selling surplus brews. At higher levels, Fortify potions push your other crafting skills past what gear alone allows, which makes Alchemy the quiet engine behind many of the strongest characters in the game. Bosmer, Bretons, Khajiit and Dunmer start with a small bonus.

How Alchemy works

Ingredients and discovering effects

Each ingredient has four effects that start out as unknown. You reveal them in two ways: by eating the ingredient, which shows the first effect, or by combining it at a lab with something that shares an effect. Eating is almost always harmless, since raw ingredient effects are temporary; the notable exception is Jarrin Root, which can kill you. Recipes bought from alchemy merchants or found as loot point you to matching pairs, though a few are inaccurate.

Brewing at a lab

Alchemy labs sit in apothecaries such as Arcadia‘s shop in Whiterun, in court wizards’ quarters, some inns, and most player homes once furnished. The lab menu lists your known effects, and choosing one filters the list to the ingredients that carry it. A brewed potion is named after its strongest effect, regardless of how many it contains.

Potions, poisons and what earns experience

Potions act on you; poisons are applied to a weapon and hit the next target. Mixing helpful and harmful effects makes muddy brews, which the Purity perk eventually cleans up. Skill experience scales with the value of the finished potion, and value comes from the number of effects and their strength. That means rare, expensive effects such as Paralysis, Invisibility, Slow, Fortify Carry Weight and the Regenerate effects level you much faster than a plain Restore Health. Strength itself grows with your Alchemy level, your perks and any Fortify Alchemy gear you wear.

Alchemy perk tree

The Alchemy tree has 9 perks with 15 ranks in total. Required levels are the Alchemy skill level needed for each rank.

Perk guide

The Alchemy tree is short and forgiving. Put points into Alchemist as soon as each rank unlocks (levels 0, 20, 40, 60 and 80): it raises the strength of every potion and poison by 20% per rank, up to double at rank five, and everything else builds on it.

Physician (Alchemy 20) adds 25% to Restore Health, Magicka and Stamina potions and is mostly a gateway. Behind it the tree splits. Benefactor (30) gives beneficial potions another 25% magnitude, which is what you want for Fortify Smithing and Fortify Enchanting brews and for selling. Poisoner (30) makes your poisons 25% more effective and is the start of the assassin’s branch.

Experimenter (50/70/90) lets eating an ingredient reveal two, three and finally all four effects. It is convenient but optional: brewing reveals effects just as well, and many players skip it. On the poison side, Concentrated Poison (60) makes an applied poison last for twice as many hits, and Green Thumb (70) harvests two ingredients per plant instead of one, which quietly doubles your income from gathering.

Snakeblood (80) needs either Experimenter or Concentrated Poison and grants 50% poison resistance, which is handy against Falmer, spiders and Chaurus. It is the price of entry for Purity (100), arguably the best perk in the tree: negative effects vanish from your potions and positive ones from your poisons, so every brew is clean.

Suggested order for a crafter: Alchemist ranks, Physician, Benefactor, then Poisoner, Concentrated Poison and Green Thumb, then Snakeblood and Purity. Alchemy pairs naturally with Enchanting (Fortify Alchemy gear, Fortify Enchanting potions), Smithing (Fortify Smithing potions), Sneak and Archery for poisoned sneak attacks, and Speech for selling the results.

How to level Alchemy fast

• Brew for value, not usefulness. Experience follows potion value, so chase the expensive effects: Invisibility, Paralysis, Slow, Fortify Carry Weight and Regenerate Health, Magicka or Stamina.
• Use the heavy hitters. Giant’s Toe stretches duration effects and makes Fortify Health potions extremely valuable (pair it with Wheat or Blue Mountain Flower), while River Betty and Deathbell give unusually strong poisons.
• Early on, use cheap common plants. Blue Mountain Flower and Wheat (Fortify Health) or Blisterwort and Imp Stool grow almost everywhere and level the skill steadily before you can afford rare ingredients.
• Unlock free shelves. Helping alchemy merchants (delivering Frost Salts for Farengar, the Ring of Pure Mixtures for Frida in Dawnstar, or completing The White Phial) lets you take certain ingredients from their shops at no cost.
• Wear Fortify Alchemy gear. Stronger potions are worth more, and worth more means more experience per brew.
• Grow your own. With Hearthfire, homestead gardens and greenhouses such as Lakeview Manor produce a reliable crop of ingredients that regrows over time.
• Eat new ingredients. Discovering an effect by tasting gives a small bit of experience, which adds up early in the game.
• Train and read. Paid training from Lami, Arcadia or Babette is quick, and Finn’s Lute grants a level in every Stealth skill, Alchemy included.

Trainers

Each trainer can teach up to five levels per character level, and training costs more gold the higher your skill is.

Alchemy skill books

Reading each of these books for the first time raises Alchemy by one level:

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

Tips and notes

• Word of your talent spreads: city guards will occasionally ask whether, since you mix potions, you could brew them an ale.
• Completing A Return to Your Roots, which sends you collecting Crimson Nirnroot in Blackreach, grants Sinderion’s Serendipity: a 25% chance to brew an extra potion.
• Green Thumb works on far more than flowers. Hanging fish, egg clusters, fungi and Solstheim’s pearl oysters all yield double, though Nirnroot still gives just one.
• Some ingredients, including Honeycomb and Small Pearls, only show up in shop inventories once you have the Merchant perk in Speech.
• The Path of Shadow in the Oghma Infinium raises all Stealth skills, Alchemy included, by five.

Perk tree, required levels and trainer levels from the Skyrim LE 1.9 master files (AVIF AVAlchemy, PERK and CLAS records).