Skyrim - How Do You Use Alchemy Recipes?

[Guest alan]

I have several alchemy recipes and I can't learn or use them. every time I click on them it just opens them up for me to read. my alchemy is 44. I have the restore magica recipe, resist frost and fire recipes and others but cannot use them. please help. also white items go in the optional slot?

 

thank you

[David]

Alchemy recipes don't actually need to be used or obtained in order to make the potions. They're just supposed to be a secondary means for the player to learn outcomes of ingredients. You can make any type of potion you want from there very beginning if you already have the correct ingredients and know their effects or the combination required for the potion you're trying to make.

 

Honestly, there's no reason to use recipes at all. Randomly using the ingredients together will allow your character to learn the effects of each ingredient (which is all you need to know to understand the final potion result).

 

I'm not really positive what you mean by "white items."

[Jake]

I'm not really positive what you mean by "white items."

I believe he means the optional third ingredient that you can put in a potion/poison.

 

This is just to allow you to add an extra effect onto a potion. Throw 2 ingredients with the same effect together to create a potion, then add another ingredient that matches one of the first or second ingredient's effects, and the effect will be added. Be careful, though, as this could lead to some potions that damage you, or poisons that heal the enemy!

[Unknown ProbLem]

The best way to learn potions, or what to use is to  (provided you have completed it) to possibly invest into alchemy enough that eating will teach you all four ingredients then *spoiler* to reset your perks in that tree to move somewhere else. after you have all your ingredients figured out, you can work from there. If you are looking for something in a very specific scope or range, you can always use a guide of some sort as hunting recipes may be a hassle. If you opt the "easy" way out and look for a guide, you can use the resources on this site (we have two guides dedicated to Alchemy) or the vast resources of Google's search engine.

 

As Jake said, be careful of using a third ingredient, sometimes it can barely affect the potion, or sometimes it can drastically change your smithing potion into a poison by accident.

 

Overall, if you completely wing it, just harvest a bunch of ingredients (and i mean a lot) and just sit at an alchemy table and have a field day. Sure you'll probably waste some money or ingredients but you'll learn some new potions you didn't know before.