Alchemy loop—how far is too far before it breaks the game?

[RiftenWanderer]

I'm on my third playthrough and finally decided to actually engage with alchemy instead of just selling random potions. Got into the whole crafting loop thing (fortify enchanting potions, enchant gear better, craft stronger potions, repeat) and honestly it's wild how fast your damage numbers climb. But I'm only level 22 and already one-shotting stuff that should be a challenge.

Is there a point where you're supposed to stop, or do most people just accept that alchemy trivializes everything if you actually commit to it? Playing vanilla on Switch, no mods to rein it in. Should I just... not do this, or is there a way to keep using alchemy without turning the whole game into a joke by level 30?

 

[WhiterunModder]

The alchemy loop is genuinely broken, yeah. You're not imagining it. The fortify enchanting / fortify alchemy cycle scales so hard that by level 30 you're basically playing a different game than everyone else at that level.

On vanilla Switch though, you're kind of stuck with it if you want to use alchemy at all. There's no way to "nerf" it without mods. PC players can grab stuff like Ordinator or Vokrii which rebalance the whole perk trees and cap things way more sensibly, but you don't have that option.

Honestly? I'd just accept it and move on. Skyrim's balance is already pretty loose - if you don't want to trivialize combat, you just... don't engage with certain systems. Some people skip crafting entirely, some people skip alchemy, some people just never use the broken potions. It's not a failure on your part. The game lets you break it if you want to, and that's kind of a Bethesda thing.

If you really hate that you're one-shotting everything, you could always just not drink the mega-potions you craft. Make them, sell them for the gold, but stick to normal gear and normal potion buffs instead. Or bump up the difficulty slider - Legendary difficulty at least makes enemies tankier even if your damage is absurd.

But yeah, if you're on Switch and want to keep playing alchemy without feeling like you're cheating, the honest answer is you probably can't without basically self-imposing rules. Which some people do, and that's fine.