All told, the Skyrim alchemy system and all of the game’s official add-ons contain 73 different potions and poisons. So, out of that alchemical plethora, what do we think are the 10 most useful Skyrim alchemy recipes? Note that this Skyrim alchemy guide doesn’t cover the most powerful potions, but rather those which are the most likely to be useful during your travels around Skyrim.
Skyrim Alchemy Guide: The Top 10 Most Useful Potions and Poisons in Skyrim
1. Fortify Health + Restore Health
Ingredients: Blue Mountain Flower + Wheat or Blue Mountain Flower + Giant’s Toe + Wheat or Blue Mountain Flower + Giant’s Toe + Imp Stool.
Simple and easy to craft, there are several versions of this potion and they are all useful. In all likelihood, the most commonly used potion for every player are healing potions. Not only do these potions heal you, but they fortify your health on top of that, making you even tougher.
2. Fortify Magicka + Regenerate Magicka + Restore Magicka
Ingredients: Jazbay Grapes + Moon Sugar + Red Mountain Flower.
More effective than a standard magicka potion; although this concoction is a bit tougher to make, it hits you with three beneficial effects all at once. It restores your magicka, speeds up your magicka regen, and fortifies your magicka amount. If you’re playing a mage and need a boost to your magicka reserves for a tough fight, this is a great potion to have on hand.
3. Regenerate Health + Invisibility
Ingredients: Luna Moth Wing + Vampire Dust.
Another relatively simple potion; this potion is excellent for getting out of a tough spot. Surrounded by enemies and on low health? Drink one of these and you can invisibly flee to safety all while your health regenerates ready for you to return to the fight.
4. Fortify Archery
Ingredients: Canis Root or Elves Ear or Juniper Berries or Spider Egg.
This simple fortification potion improves the damage of any bows or crossbows you use. While it’s obviously useful for archer builds, it might actually be of greater use to builds that don’t rely on bows. There are always times in Skyrim when you find yourself having to engage enemies at a distance and pulling out the bow you keep in your inventory just in case, even though your Archery skill is low. In such cases, try drinking one of these potions to make up for that low skill rank as much as possible.
5. Fortify Barter
Ingredients: Butterfly Wing or Dragon’s Tongue or Hagraven Claw or Tundra Cotton.
This single-effect potion is extremely useful for practically any build in Skyrim. Drink one of these every time you visit a city to sell off your loot and you’re guaranteed to get better sale prices, without needing to have a high rank in the Speech skill.
6. Fortify Carry Weight
Ingredients: Creep Cluster or Giant’s Toe or Hawk Beak or Netch Jelly or Poison Bloom or River Betty or Scaly Pholia or Trama Root or Wisp Wrappings.
Every Skyrim player knows the feeling of going over the carry limit as they rifle through a dungeon’s chests. Normally, it means either a slow and tiresome trudge back out or having to leave things behind. Or you could drink a potion of Fortify Carry Weight and bring all that excess loot out with you.
7. Fortify Smithing
Ingredients: Blisterwort or Glowing Mushroom or Sabre Cat Tooth or Spriggan Sap.
Harder to come across than the ingredients for a Fortify Barter Potion, the ingredients for this concoction are certainly worth tracking down if you plan on crafting your own equipment. This potion is especially useful at low-to-mid levels when you are still training your Smithing skill; drink one of these, and you can get even better results from using Workbenches and Grindstones, as well as improving your Smithing overall.
8. Fortify Two-Handed + Regenerate Stamina
Ingredients: Bee + Fly Amanita + Troll Fat.
This potion is perfect for dealing with dragons and other monsters who won’t go down in just a couple of swings. Not only does it boost your Two-Handed skill, but it causes your Stamina to regenerate faster, letting you make more heavy attacks than usual. This makes it one of the best Skyrim alchemy recipes for heavy close combat builds.
9. Damage Magicka + Damage Magicka Regen
Ingredients: Glow Dust + Hanging Moss.
Some mages and monsters in Skyrim can be particularly troublesome to deal with thanks to their powerful destruction spells. Hagravens, for example, are often capable of bombarding you with high-power fireballs and other blasts which can quickly eat through your health. This poison is ideal for such scenarios. Hit the frustrating mage in question with a few poisoned arrows and you should find their spell output drop considerably; making it easier for you to find an opening to leap out of cover and attack.
10. Ravage Magicka + Ravage Stamina + Ravage Health
Ingredients: Jazbay Grapes + Scathecraw + Spawn Ash.
I couldn’t leave this ruthless poison out of our Skyrim alchemy guide. It can only be created in the Dragonborn add-on, as some of the alchemy ingredients don’t appear in the base game. However, it is well worth the extra journey to Solstheim. The poison causes immediate damage to Health, Magicka, and Stamina, and is especially useful against enemies who rely on more than one.
So that wraps up our Skyrim alchemy guide! I hope that you find these Skyrim alchemy recipes useful to you on your travels. Don’t forget to save some perks to give your potions a boost when you level up your skill.