Alchemy turns cheap ingredients into powerful potions and deadly poisons — and, combined with Enchanting, into game-breaking gear. Two ingredients must share an effect to combine.
How It Works
- Eat an ingredient to learn its first effect; combine ingredients at an Alchemy Lab to discover the rest.
- Potions with matching beneficial effects become potions; matching harmful effects become poisons (apply to weapons).
- The Alchemist perk (up to +100% strength) and the Thief Stone speed up leveling.
Must-Know Recipes
| Goal | Ingredients | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Restore Health | Blue Mountain Flower + Wheat | Cheap, everywhere; great early healing |
| Fortify Smithing | Blisterwort + Glowing Mushroom / Sabre Cat Tooth + Spriggan Sap | Temper gear far beyond normal limits |
| Fortify Enchanting | Snowberries + Spriggan Sap + Blue Butterfly Wing | The core of the crafting loop |
| Damage Health (poison) | Deathbell + Nightshade / Falmer Ear | Melts bosses when applied to a bow or dagger |
| Paralysis (poison) | Canis Root + Imp Stool / Swamp Fungal Pod | Locks enemies in place — hugely powerful |
| Fortify Health (sell) | Giant's Toe + Wheat + Bear Claw / Creep Cluster | Sells for thousands — instant gold |
| Invisibility | Vampire Dust + Chaurus Eggs / Luna Moth Wing | Escape or set up sneak attacks |
The Giant's Toe trick
Giant's Toe + Wheat + Bear Claw makes an absurdly valuable Fortify Health potion. Farm giants, sell the potions to level Speech too. Combine with the Enchanting loop to fund top-tier gear.
Perks Worth Prioritizing
- Green Thumb doubles what you get from harvesting a plant, and it also works on things that aren't plants — bird nests, Nordic barnacle clusters and slaughterfish egg clumps. Nirnroot and Crimson Nirnroot are the exceptions; they never double.
- Poisoner makes every poison you brew 25% stronger, though it only touches the harmful effect itself, not a potion's negative side effects.
- Concentrated Poison (Alchemy 60) makes a poison applied to a weapon last for two hits instead of one, which roughly doubles its value in a fight.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 5 September 2026 against UESP-derived perk data (via Fextralife) and the Elder Scrolls Fandom wiki — which agree Green Thumb doubles most harvests, including non-plants like bird nests, Nordic barnacle clusters and slaughterfish egg clumps, but never Nirnroot or Crimson Nirnroot; that Poisoner is a flat 25% (one stray search result claimed a 50% patch change, but the live perk description both sources give still reads 25%, so this page keeps that figure); and that Concentrated Poison (Alchemy 60) makes an applied poison last two hits instead of one. What is still unverified is the only thing reading cannot settle — nobody here has played it.