I'm working on stepping up my alchemy game in my new playthrough. I try to mix on the road and then sell what I don't need, but there are some ingredients I want to stockpile for specific potions. While dumping everything into a single container would probably discourage me from stockpiling too much, I'm also an organizational freak a little meticulous and like things to be orderly. The way I've organized ingredients in the past (into separate containers) is as follows:
These simple categories let me find what I need pretty quickly without scrolling through a huge list. (Hate that.) But it made me wonder about the other ways people had organized their supplies... either by potions used most often, primary effect, color(?!), etc.. So I thought I'd poll our community here and see if/how y'all like to organize your stash.
So lay it on me, fellow alchemists: do you organize your supplies? If so, what's your favorite way to do it?
My god, that is some serious organization. I'm sure that alone qualifies you to be diagnosed with something. Anyway, I...don't organize beyond what Skyrim does for me. If Skyrim had no auto-organization, then I would alphabetize. I don't mind scrolling through a long list if I know where exactly is it that I want. I generally know what ingredients make what potions too. It's also just a pain to have all of my alchemy ingredients spread out. Having them in one place just makes more sense to me. They all go in one barrel or the nearest container to the alchemy booth.
So I tried the one barrel approach first. Did not care for it. Too much scrolling for me. Plus I would find I would accidentally press "take all" out of habit (I blame burial urns), then have to put everything back. With it spread out, it's a relatively short list either way--putting in or taking out.
Fair point about taking all on accident. I've nearly crashed my games before by taking hundreds of items at once. If I did organize my ingredients separately, I imagine they would be organized by the potion yielded. Maybe one box for buffs, another for poison, and another for healing. Hard to say. If I get too spread out, I forget what is in what box and then I spend more time looking for the ingredients than I do mixing them.
Which is exactly why I can't organize by potion yielded. Plus if you have drastically different potions that use a common ingredient THEN where does it go...? The system I devised seemed to make the most sense to me, and I never wonder where things are.
Except ectoplasm. Because it comes from... ghosts? Which are (formerly) human? Or should they be mythical? I think I put them in human-derived. That's the only one I get tripped up on.
It's a third party app, but I find it really useful, especially when I want to create potions with multiple effects. It's simply called Alchemy in Skyrim by Alan Cave and it's on iPhone. I'm not sure about availability on Android. It was $1.99, but I'm forever getting iTunes gift cards somehow, so I didn't mind using my credits for it. There were free ones and ones with nicer looking interfaces, but this one had a five star average on 147 reviews, which was by far the most. Maybe there are better ones, but it suits my needs.
Haha, do you mean to say you give alchemy the boot? Or that you have your follower carry that stuff? I'm envisioning this RP:
Dovahkiin: "Hey you, pick that plant. While you're at it, eat it and tell me what it does."
Follower: *falls over dead*
xD
Really it's too bad there isn't a follower versed in alchemy that could tell you a property when you harvest something. That would be cool.