I have never fully delved into Oblivion Alchemy and I guess that I wasn´t the only one. So I decided to change that and was surprised how different, powerful and fun Alchemy can be in Oblivion. So I decided to make this simple guide for people to understand the basics about Alchemy.
Skill - Alchemy in Oblivion is really dependant on your skill. At Novice, you are able to identify only one effect on any ingredient, with leveling to Expert unlocks all four effects you can work with. Master Alchemist is able to create potion from a single ingredient, which means that whatever effect the ingredient has listed as first, you can make potion with that effect. Also, your skill in Alchemy directly influences magnitude and duration of your potions.
Ingredients - I talked about effects of ingredients in Skill, so the only important thing to note here is that if you are harvesting ingredients, you will not always be succesful. Sometimes there will be a message “You have not found anything useful” which means you haven´t harvested anything from that plant. This is mostly chance based and your Alchemy skill or Luck does not affect this chance. Truth is, there is nothing that affects this chance.
Potions Stacking - When you make your own potions, you might be surprised that those potions are rather weak. Like Restore Health potion with 3 Health every sec for 13 seconds. That is not very powerful, right? Well, but you can drink up to 4 potions at once and their effects stack! With the same potion that means 12 Health every sec for 13 seconds. Also note that potions with % don´t stack!
Poisons - There isn´t that much to talk about poisons, just few things. Poisons can stack indefinitely. There isn´t only Damage Health Effect, but also Fire, Shock and Frost damage from poisons and most of these can be combined to create quite deadly poisons. Also, there are enemies in game with Immunity to poison, but if you know a spell (or you have scroll) of Weakness to Poison, it will make it possible to apply poisons even on enemies like Undead or Argonians.
Potions Weight - You might think that weight isn´t that important, but it actually is in Oblivion. Trust me, you don´t want to have inventory full of potions that weigh 2 or 3. Weight of the potions is calculated as average weight of ingredients combined. So if you make a Restore Health potion from a Venison (wieght of 2) and a Daedra Heart (weight of 2) the weight of the potion will be 2. If you make same potion from Venison (2) and Ham (1) weight will be 1.5. Got it?
Equipment
First and foremost, you must have tools to practice alchemy, right? And you can “cook” anywhere you want, no alchemy tables. So let´s take a look on the tools and what they do.
Mortar and Pestle
The most important tool, because without this one, you can´t mix anything. You must have this in your inventory everytime you want to do anything alchemical. One of the effects of Mortar and Pestle is that it adds to your Alchemy skill - From 2.5 (Novice MaP) to 25 (Master MaP). The other effect is that it affects the weight and price of the potions slighly. So, with a better MaP you will have lighter and more expensive potions.
Retort
Retorts increase the duration and magnitude of your potions (potions! Retort has no effect on poisons you make or on negative effects of your potions.)
Magnitude: 5% Novice - 50% Master
Duration: 10% Novice - 100% Master
Calcinator
Calcinators increase magnitude and duration of all effects. That means both positive and negative, potions and poisons. Both duration and magnitude should be increased by 3.5% (Novice) to 35% (Master)
Alembic
Alembics are supposed to decrease duration and magnitude of negative effects on your potions. Which means if you have a Potion with Restore Health and Damage Health, Alembic will reduce the effect of Damage Health. In reality, Novice Alembic can increase these negative effects by 15% but only Novice Alembic for some reason, so you might get rid of that as soon as possible. Apprentice and better work as they are supposed to. Alembics will never decrease the negative effects of a potion below 1 for both magnitude and duration.
So now that you have become Journeyman Alchemist, I would like to speak about some specific effects I myself found useful playing any character, altough I would say that rogues profit the most from this skill. Every character can profit from using alchemy, even mages. When they are low on magicka, potions can replace most spells effects. But let´s take a look at all these effects.
Alchemy in Practice
Alchemy can replace all magic skills for any type of character. You are swapping 5 Skills (5 because there are no conjuration effects in Alchemy) for just 1 with the (arguably) best effects from each school of magic. I will list every possible effect for each school so you can see just how well it can replace magic.
Restoration
Restore Health, Fatigue, Magicka, Attributes - Classic healing and rejevunating potions, what is there to talk about? Well, Restore Attributes. Oblivion has lots of enemies with enchanted weapons which Damage your attributes. Permanently. The only way to get them healed is through a spell, shrine or alchemy. And I guess not every character is religious or skilled in magecraft. A lot of Restore Attribute potions can be made just by having Novice or Apprentice Skill.
Resist Fire, Frost, Shock, Poison, Paralysis - Having at least one or two potions from this category is really worth it. Resist Elements comes in handy in dealing with Necromancers and Conjurers. Resist Poison is a potion that I have never used, because frankly, you can´t see if enemies use poisons. Goblins do sometimes, but that´s all I know. Same goes for Resist Paralysis.
Cure Disease, Poison, Paralysis - These ones are definitely better options than Resist Poison and Paralysis. When you are affected by it, cure it. A thing to note is: When you get Paralyzed, you can´t control your character but you can drink potions! It would really suck if you couldn´t drink Cure Paralysis while you were lying motionless on the ground, right? Well, you can, so that´s good. Also, Cure Disease is another good option if you donˇt have access to magic or you´re not so fond of praying.
Fortify Health, Fatigue, Magicka, Attributes - Alright, these ones can make you really powerful. You remember what I said about stacking potions? Try to imagine drinking 5 potions of Fortify Health (40 mag, 30 dur) at once. That is 200 more Health for 30 seconds! Same with Acrobatics for example. You have Fortify Acrobatics that fortifies your skill by 10? It´s 50 now! How high do you think you can jump? Need more magicka for casting some ultimate spell? I think you understand now.
Destruction
Damage Health, Fatigue, Magicka, Attributes - Poisons that damage the stats of your enemies are always useful. Damage Health will kill them faster, Damage Fatigue can reduce Fatigue of your enemies to zero - that means their attacks won´t do much damage or everytime they hit 0 Fatigue, they will drop to the ground - and Damage Magicka will render mages harmless.
Damage Attributes is another story. If you reduce enemy Strength to zero, their attacks will be pathetically weak. Intelligence will drop their Magicka, Endurance will drop Health. So it has its uses, but you have to decide if its easier to brew these poisons than brewing simple Damage Stats.
Fire, Frost and Shock Damage - These poisons are what make Alchemy really powerful, especially when it is possibleto create poisons with three damaging effects. Mostly they are combined with Damage Health, so you will have poisons with Fire Damage, Frost and Health damage for example. That´s really deadly.
Drain Health - This effect is possible only through using Nirnroot, no other ingredient has Drain Health. Drain Health is the first effect of Nirnroot, so if you become a Master of Alchemy, you can create 1 potion from 1 Nirnroot. It´s up you to decide if it´s better to give Nirnroot to Sinderion or create really deadly poison from them.
Alteration
Shield - This effect comes in four variants. Simple Shield, Fire, Frost and Shock Shields. The main difference is that Elemental Shields add Resistance to each element, but they are not as strong as a simple Resist Element. Shield effects are usually described by a percentage, like Fire Shield 20%. That means it will raise your Armor by 20 and Resist to fire by 20%.
Burden - This effect makes the inventory of your enemies (or your own) heavier by certain ammount. While this effect is much more powerful when used in a spell, the infinite stacking of poisons can replace that. If you over-encumber your enemies, they will not be able to move. Ranged characters can profit the most from this effect, but poisons delivered by bow and arrow are really slow. The most useful tactic is by dagger to stop enemies from pursuing you.
Feather - The opposite of Burden, this effect lets you carry more. If your Strength gets damaged or Burdened so that you are over-encumbered, this can save your skin. It’s also useful when you get over-cumbered and you need to get to a vendor quickly to unload.
Waterwalking and Waterbreathing - While you are under water, enemies won´t usually detect you, but sneaking on the water surface is so cool. And Waterbreathing is useful for diving for some treasures.
Mysticism
Detect Life - One of the most useful spells in the game for sneaky characters. Be it a dungeon or the wilds, seeing your enemies before they see you is a huge advantage. Thanks to the Potions stacking, you can see your enemies from great distance.
Dispel - You get some nasty curse on you? Like Drain Health, Silence or something similar? This will remove the effects for good.
Reflect Spell and Damage - One of the most powerful effects in the game and for alchemy, one of the most rare ones. These work on a percentage system, so if you drink Reflect Damage 20%, everytime an enemy swings at you with his claymore, you´ll damage him by 20% of his attack without doing anything. This works the same way for Reflect Spell.
Illusion
Paralyze - One of the most useful Illusion effects. Even if the effect lasts for 1-2 seconds, it is effective for longer than that, because NPCs have to get up after they fall on the ground, and that takes 2-3 seconds.
Invisibility - A simple and powerful effect that doesn´t need much explaining. This effect works like +100% to your Sneak, which makes almost undetectable. A thing to note is that whenever you do an action (like opening doors, looting, attacking) Invisibility goes off.
Chameleon - Works similarly to Invisibility and yet differently. Chameleon uses a percentage system, which means that these percentages increase the chance that you will not be detected in Sneak. Also the difference between this and Invisibility is that you can do any action and the effect won´t disappear.
Light - Not a very useful effect in game because the game´s lighting is bright enough, but if you are looking for some hidden items in dungeons, it can prove useful. What it does is pretty simple. It will create hovering green light over your head for certain amount of time and magnitude here is Radius - how far the light will shine.
Night-eye - This effect is always better to chose over Light, because who wants hovering light revealing your position to enemies when you could use night vision?
Silence - This prevents enemies from using spells for a certain amount of time. You have to note that they can´t use only Spells. Scrolls and Staves are still available.
Congratulations! Now you have become Expert in Alchemy!
I have never fully delved into Oblivion Alchemy and I guess that I wasn´t the only one. So I decided to change that and was surprised how different, powerful and fun Alchemy can be in Oblivion. So I decided to make this simple guide for people to understand the basics about Alchemy.
Skill - Alchemy in Oblivion is really dependant on your skill. At Novice, you are able to identify only one effect on any ingredient, with leveling to Expert unlocks all four effects you can work with. Master Alchemist is able to create potion from a single ingredient, which means that whatever effect the ingredient has listed as first, you can make potion with that effect. Also, your skill in Alchemy directly influences magnitude and duration of your potions.
Ingredients - I talked about effects of ingredients in Skill, so the only important thing to note here is that if you are harvesting ingredients, you will not always be succesful. Sometimes there will be a message “You have not found anything useful” which means you haven´t harvested anything from that plant. This is mostly chance based and your Alchemy skill or Luck does not affect this chance. Truth is, there is nothing that affects this chance.
Potions Stacking - When you make your own potions, you might be surprised that those potions are rather weak. Like Restore Health potion with 3 Health every sec for 13 seconds. That is not very powerful, right? Well, but you can drink up to 4 potions at once and their effects stack! With the same potion that means 12 Health every sec for 13 seconds. Also note that potions with % don´t stack!
Poisons - There isn´t that much to talk about poisons, just few things. Poisons can stack indefinitely. There isn´t only Damage Health Effect, but also Fire, Shock and Frost damage from poisons and most of these can be combined to create quite deadly poisons. Also, there are enemies in game with Immunity to poison, but if you know a spell (or you have scroll) of Weakness to Poison, it will make it possible to apply poisons even on enemies like Undead or Argonians.
Potions Weight - You might think that weight isn´t that important, but it actually is in Oblivion. Trust me, you don´t want to have inventory full of potions that weigh 2 or 3. Weight of the potions is calculated as average weight of ingredients combined. So if you make a Restore Health potion from a Venison (wieght of 2) and a Daedra Heart (weight of 2) the weight of the potion will be 2. If you make same potion from Venison (2) and Ham (1) weight will be 1.5. Got it?
Equipment
First and foremost, you must have tools to practice alchemy, right? And you can “cook” anywhere you want, no alchemy tables. So let´s take a look on the tools and what they do.
Mortar and Pestle
The most important tool, because without this one, you can´t mix anything. You must have this in your inventory everytime you want to do anything alchemical. One of the effects of Mortar and Pestle is that it adds to your Alchemy skill - From 2.5 (Novice MaP) to 25 (Master MaP). The other effect is that it affects the weight and price of the potions slighly. So, with a better MaP you will have lighter and more expensive potions.
Retort
Retorts increase the duration and magnitude of your potions (potions! Retort has no effect on poisons you make or on negative effects of your potions.)
Magnitude: 5% Novice - 50% Master
Duration: 10% Novice - 100% Master
Calcinator
Calcinators increase magnitude and duration of all effects. That means both positive and negative, potions and poisons. Both duration and magnitude should be increased by 3.5% (Novice) to 35% (Master)
Alembic
Alembics are supposed to decrease duration and magnitude of negative effects on your potions. Which means if you have a Potion with Restore Health and Damage Health, Alembic will reduce the effect of Damage Health. In reality, Novice Alembic can increase these negative effects by 15% but only Novice Alembic for some reason, so you might get rid of that as soon as possible. Apprentice and better work as they are supposed to. Alembics will never decrease the negative effects of a potion below 1 for both magnitude and duration.
So now that you have become Journeyman Alchemist, I would like to speak about some specific effects I myself found useful playing any character, altough I would say that rogues profit the most from this skill. Every character can profit from using alchemy, even mages. When they are low on magicka, potions can replace most spells effects. But let´s take a look at all these effects.
Alchemy in Practice
Alchemy can replace all magic skills for any type of character. You are swapping 5 Skills (5 because there are no conjuration effects in Alchemy) for just 1 with the (arguably) best effects from each school of magic. I will list every possible effect for each school so you can see just how well it can replace magic.
Restoration
Restore Health, Fatigue, Magicka, Attributes - Classic healing and rejevunating potions, what is there to talk about? Well, Restore Attributes. Oblivion has lots of enemies with enchanted weapons which Damage your attributes. Permanently. The only way to get them healed is through a spell, shrine or alchemy. And I guess not every character is religious or skilled in magecraft. A lot of Restore Attribute potions can be made just by having Novice or Apprentice Skill.
Resist Fire, Frost, Shock, Poison, Paralysis - Having at least one or two potions from this category is really worth it. Resist Elements comes in handy in dealing with Necromancers and Conjurers. Resist Poison is a potion that I have never used, because frankly, you can´t see if enemies use poisons. Goblins do sometimes, but that´s all I know. Same goes for Resist Paralysis.
Cure Disease, Poison, Paralysis - These ones are definitely better options than Resist Poison and Paralysis. When you are affected by it, cure it. A thing to note is: When you get Paralyzed, you can´t control your character but you can drink potions! It would really suck if you couldn´t drink Cure Paralysis while you were lying motionless on the ground, right? Well, you can, so that´s good. Also, Cure Disease is another good option if you donˇt have access to magic or you´re not so fond of praying.
Fortify Health, Fatigue, Magicka, Attributes - Alright, these ones can make you really powerful. You remember what I said about stacking potions? Try to imagine drinking 5 potions of Fortify Health (40 mag, 30 dur) at once. That is 200 more Health for 30 seconds! Same with Acrobatics for example. You have Fortify Acrobatics that fortifies your skill by 10? It´s 50 now! How high do you think you can jump? Need more magicka for casting some ultimate spell? I think you understand now.
Destruction
Damage Health, Fatigue, Magicka, Attributes - Poisons that damage the stats of your enemies are always useful. Damage Health will kill them faster, Damage Fatigue can reduce Fatigue of your enemies to zero - that means their attacks won´t do much damage or everytime they hit 0 Fatigue, they will drop to the ground - and Damage Magicka will render mages harmless.
Damage Attributes is another story. If you reduce enemy Strength to zero, their attacks will be pathetically weak. Intelligence will drop their Magicka, Endurance will drop Health. So it has its uses, but you have to decide if its easier to brew these poisons than brewing simple Damage Stats.
Fire, Frost and Shock Damage - These poisons are what make Alchemy really powerful, especially when it is possibleto create poisons with three damaging effects. Mostly they are combined with Damage Health, so you will have poisons with Fire Damage, Frost and Health damage for example. That´s really deadly.
Drain Health - This effect is possible only through using Nirnroot, no other ingredient has Drain Health. Drain Health is the first effect of Nirnroot, so if you become a Master of Alchemy, you can create 1 potion from 1 Nirnroot. It´s up you to decide if it´s better to give Nirnroot to Sinderion or create really deadly poison from them.
Alteration
Shield - This effect comes in four variants. Simple Shield, Fire, Frost and Shock Shields. The main difference is that Elemental Shields add Resistance to each element, but they are not as strong as a simple Resist Element. Shield effects are usually described by a percentage, like Fire Shield 20%. That means it will raise your Armor by 20 and Resist to fire by 20%.
Burden - This effect makes the inventory of your enemies (or your own) heavier by certain ammount. While this effect is much more powerful when used in a spell, the infinite stacking of poisons can replace that. If you over-encumber your enemies, they will not be able to move. Ranged characters can profit the most from this effect, but poisons delivered by bow and arrow are really slow. The most useful tactic is by dagger to stop enemies from pursuing you.
Feather - The opposite of Burden, this effect lets you carry more. If your Strength gets damaged or Burdened so that you are over-encumbered, this can save your skin. It’s also useful when you get over-cumbered and you need to get to a vendor quickly to unload.
Waterwalking and Waterbreathing - While you are under water, enemies won´t usually detect you, but sneaking on the water surface is so cool. And Waterbreathing is useful for diving for some treasures.
Mysticism
Detect Life - One of the most useful spells in the game for sneaky characters. Be it a dungeon or the wilds, seeing your enemies before they see you is a huge advantage. Thanks to the Potions stacking, you can see your enemies from great distance.
Dispel - You get some nasty curse on you? Like Drain Health, Silence or something similar? This will remove the effects for good.
Reflect Spell and Damage - One of the most powerful effects in the game and for alchemy, one of the most rare ones. These work on a percentage system, so if you drink Reflect Damage 20%, everytime an enemy swings at you with his claymore, you´ll damage him by 20% of his attack without doing anything. This works the same way for Reflect Spell.
Illusion
Paralyze - One of the most useful Illusion effects. Even if the effect lasts for 1-2 seconds, it is effective for longer than that, because NPCs have to get up after they fall on the ground, and that takes 2-3 seconds.
Invisibility - A simple and powerful effect that doesn´t need much explaining. This effect works like +100% to your Sneak, which makes almost undetectable. A thing to note is that whenever you do an action (like opening doors, looting, attacking) Invisibility goes off.
Chameleon - Works similarly to Invisibility and yet differently. Chameleon uses a percentage system, which means that these percentages increase the chance that you will not be detected in Sneak. Also the difference between this and Invisibility is that you can do any action and the effect won´t disappear.
Light - Not a very useful effect in game because the game´s lighting is bright enough, but if you are looking for some hidden items in dungeons, it can prove useful. What it does is pretty simple. It will create hovering green light over your head for certain amount of time and magnitude here is Radius - how far the light will shine.
Night-eye - This effect is always better to chose over Light, because who wants hovering light revealing your position to enemies when you could use night vision?
Silence - This prevents enemies from using spells for a certain amount of time. You have to note that they can´t use only Spells. Scrolls and Staves are still available.
Congratulations! Now you have become Expert in Alchemy!
