Alchemy is secretly the most broken skill and nobody realizes it

[RiftenWanderer]

I'm on my 4th playthrough right now and I just hit level 40 alchemy by accident. Like, I wasn't even trying to level it. Just been looting ingredients and making potions to sell for gold. And now I'm realizing I can literally craft paralysis potions that sell for like 500 gold each, or invisibility potions that trivialize entire dungeons.

The weird part is that nobody ever talks about alchemy the way they talk about stealth archer or Necromage vampires. But honestly? A high-level alchemist can break the game just as hard. You can make poisons that do more damage than your actual weapons. Potions that boost your damage so high you one-shot dragons. And the perk that makes potions more effective stacks with literally everything.

I think alchemy flies under the radar because it's not flashy. You're not casting spells or sneaking around. You're just... making stuff in a mortar and pestle. But it's genuinely one of the most efficient ways to scale your character's power if you actually invest in it.

Am I late to this or does alchemy actually deserve way more respect than it gets?

 

[ScrollsOfTamriel]

You're not late to it, but I'd push back a little on the "secretly broken" angle - alchemy's power is pretty well-known among people who actually engage with it. The difference is that stealth archer and Necromage vampires are passive - you set them up once and they carry you forever. Alchemy requires actual inventory management, crafting time, and you have to remember to use the stuff you made.

That said, yeah, once you start stacking perks and actually paying attention to ingredient effects, it gets ridiculous fast. The perk that boosts potion potency is obviously busted, but what really breaks it is combining that with the perk that lets you make multiple potions per ingredient - suddenly you're churning out 5 paralysis potions from a handful of ingredients. And invisibility potions trivializing dungeons is kind of the whole point; they're supposed to be strong.

The gold generation angle is real though. Selling paralysis and damage potions is genuinely better early-game income than anything else if you know what you're doing. But I wouldn't say it's more broken than Necromage - that's still a passive damage multiplier that affects everything you do forever. Alchemy is more flexible and arguably more fun to engage with, which might be why people don't complain about it as much.

What perks are you running right now? Are you going all-in on the potency tree or mixing in the ingredient efficiency stuff?