Alchemy is the profession of brewing Potions and Poisons, Potions offer a good variety of benefits, most commonly to restore health, magicka or stamina, but they can also offer speed increases, immunity to stuns, invisibility and more! While Poisons can be crafted, they currently cannot be applied, only consumed.

Now that I’ve summarized Alchemy, I’m going to talk about the Basics of Alchemy, how to skill I up quickly, and how to make a profit.
Basics of Alchemy
Alchemy uses plant ingredients found all across the Tamriel, typically in the wilderness — such as Dragonthorns, Nirnroots, Corn Flowers, and many other plants ingredients. Each ingredient has a total of 4 effects associated with it, that will be unknown to you until you experiment and discover each of their effects.

For example, to create a potion of health you must match two ingredients that have the “Restore Health” effect, when you first brew the potion, you will discover those effects.

You must also use a Solvent (water) to create a potion, which holds the mixed ingredients to be consumed, they are commonly found in small springs in water streams and along side of rivers. Ingredients are used by all levels of potions, however the solvents have specific levels and determine the power & level of the made potion.

Skilling Up in Alchemy
Skilling Up in Alchemy is one of the easier professions, similar to Provisioning — although Alchemy ingredients are a little harder to come by. As with cooking, ingredients do not have a level — and can be found almost anywhere while exploring.

Of course, you will want to collect every Alchemical Ingredient and Water Solvents you come across, and stock them in your inventory or bank slots. You may want to use an Alchemy App on your phone, or an ingredient guide to see the hidden effects, so you can discover all of the ingredient effects quicker.

Another good way to help skill up is to advertise in Zone/Guild chat that you’re buying specific Alchemy ingredients in bulk, and hopefully will get a good deal from them, and you can also sell potions in order to regain some of the gold spent.

Profiting from Alchemy
Alchemy is a good business, you can craft plenty of potions for yourself and also make batches for sell for good amounts. Simple Health/Magicka/Stamina potions only sell ‘okay’ at best, in order to make a lot of gold you must be creative, and find the more special types of potions to make.

Remember, an Elitist Player wants to be as good as they can at all times, and they typically have plenty of potions in their bags to help with this, so they give good business.

Some good selling Potions are as listed below:
Tri-Pots – Restores Health/Magicka/Stamina all at once, made by Columbine + Bugloss + Mountain Flower, probably the most popular potion in the game.

Damage/Crit – Damage or Crit, for either Weapons or Spells, mixed with any other effects are a good way of boosting total damage amounts, also a popular seller.

Unstoppable – Immunity to Stuns, Snares, Knockbacks etc. Popular for the PvP crowd, where stuns could easily turn the tides of the fight. This also prevents chain-stunning from multiple enemies.

Invisibility – Good back up for quick escapes, especially for non-nightblade characters.

Speed – Speed Boost, to either chase players down or to help evade them, saves the stamina cost of sprinting.

Remember to spend skill points in the ability to make multiple potions at once (up to 4) to increase profits greatly, and always sell in batches of at least 25 or 50, you can make a stack of 100 potions with 25 of each ingredient :)

While Faction Capitals are a good place to sell your potions, I would have to say Cyrodiil would be the best (especially for Tri-Pots), because there are a lot of Elitist Players who hardly leave Cyrodiil, and don’t want to take the time to go find sellers or craft them on their own. Say in Zone Chat “Potion Delivery! (list Potions and Price) PST what you want and how many, I will COD to you.” and you should get some good attention, because of the convenience for them of buying :)

Always find ways of obtaining ingredients for cheap, or harvest them yourself. Buying cheap means higher profit for you — but only harvesting them means slower business, so keep an eye out for good deals and do not pass them up, Time is Money.