Design: Kimberley Duval - Walmart

egin with, here's a list of what you get for increasing your skill level in Alchemy. Of course,
increasing your skill level will also make your potions more effective: they'll have bigger effects
that last longer, and so on and so forth.
Mastery Level Ability
Novice Sees only one alchemical properties of an ingredient.
Apprentice Sees only two alchemical properties of an ingredient.
Journeyman Sees only three alchemical properties of an ingredient.
Expert Sees all four alchemical properties of an ingredient.
Master Can make potions with only one ingredient.
Alchemy is essentially the art of taking ingredients and making them into potions of various
effects. In order to perform alchemy, you'll need, at a bare minimum, a mortar and pestle (which
counts as one item) and two ingredients which have the same alchemical effect. That'll net you a
potion, although it might not be a very good one. If you want to make better potions, you'll want
to add more equipment, including an alembic, a calcinator, and a retort. Although it's possible to
make a potion with any combination of these equipment pieces (the mortar and pestle is always
required, however), it's not too difficult to acquire all of them, and having them all while you make
your potions will definitely improve their quality. Unfortunately they can be cumbersome to lug
around, with a full set weighing around twenty pounds, so if you intend to partake of alchemical
goodness, you'll want to buy a house early on with a storage unit so you can store your
equipment there and use it when you've collected a bunch of ingredients.
Collecting Ingredients
Speaking of ingredients, there are a lot of them. A LOT of them. As you wander around Cyrodiil's
beautiful landscapes, you'll find plenty of plants and mushrooms lining the roads or located under
the trees. If you look at these ingredients, you'll see a hand icon indicating that you can interact
with them; if you do, you'll usually pick up some kind of ingredient from it. (Sometimes you'll be
told that you can't find anything when searching a plant; your chance at being successful depends
on the plant, apparently.) Ingredients grow back a few days after you search a plant, so you don't
have to worry about deforesting Cyrodiil and running out of ingredients.
Other sources for ingredients are creatures and shops. Many creatures will drop ingredients, such
as rat meat from rats, bonemeal from skeletons, and daedra hearts from dead Daedra. (Eww!)
Shops, such as The Finest Ingredient in the Imperial Market District, will also sell ingredients,
sometimes rare ones. You can also find huge amounts of normal food (which acts as a good lowlevel
ingredient for practicing alchemy), such as wheat, bread, fruit, and rice, throughout every
city and town in Cyrodiil, especially in storehouses and people's basements. Pick up all of this that
you can, make a bunch of potions to increase your Alchemy skill, then sell all of the potions; you
win in every way imaginable.
Tip: Note that you can increase your Alchemy skill by simply eating the ingredients that you pick
up. You'll gain whatever the first effect they have is, and obviously the item will be consumed.
This is a good way to make space in your bag if you're about to go overweight, but is less efficient