How do you alchemists keep track of your experiments?

[vorius]

Alchemy is damned fun, I love gathering ingredients and testing their combinations to try and discover all their effects. Alchemy is also very lucrative for coin, as you can buy cheap ingredients and create a potion you can sell for great profit, unlike smithing where you are guaranteed to lose money if you buy material off a vendor, produce something with it, and try to sell it back.

 

But keeping track of all the ingredient combinations I am testing is becoming a problem. I thought the game is keeping track of this for me by greying out ingredients I already sampled when I am choosing them in the alchemy lab. But upon closer inspection it appears the greying out is for some other reason - I think it is greying out ingredients which definitely do not combine to create a potion with what you have selected.

 

so I have resorted to writing combos down on paper (really tedious) then trying to use a Excel spreadsheet (not too bad but rough after doing a few hundred samples) and now finally I am working on a custom C# program to do it.

 

Was thinking maybe when I am done some other players might be interested, would you?

[gblouin86]

As far as I can tell, any combination that will fail is greyed out (once you've discovered that of course). At this point I'm just working my through as many combinations as possible, trying to unlock the properties for everything. If you want to make a specific kind of potion, you pick from the list on the left of attributes and it will show you only the ingredients that will produce that effect. If you've already made a potion with two ingredients, when selecting them it will show what the end result will be before you make it.

[natelovesyou]

I would be interested. I'm having a hard time finding compatible ingredients, so, I'm just eating one of every ingredient and then creating potions to see if any two ingredients have more than one effect in common...

[lukertin]

Are you aware that first off, after you eat every ingredient to figure out its effects, you can select what potion to make by the effects you've discovered. The lab will auto select the ingredients with the intended effect and let you choose what to use to make those potions

 

If you know this already I'm not really sure what you're asking. -- The ability to track formulae for stacking multiple effects on top of each other for the same potion/poison?

Edited November 15, 2011 by lukertin

[vorius]

Are you aware that first off, after you eat every ingredient to figure out its effects, you can select what potion to make by the effects you've discovered. The lab will auto select the ingredients with the intended effect and let you choose what to use to make those potions

 

If you know this already I'm not really sure what you're asking. -- The ability to track formulae for stacking multiple effects on top of each other for the same potion/poison?

 

Here's an example of what I am talking about.

 

Let's say you have Vampire Dust. You can eat it to find out first effect. Then you can start combining it with other ingredients in attempts at uncovering what it's other 3 effects are. So you combine it with Snowberries - not result? So means it shares nothing with snowberries. Next try Garlic, no result? Try Salt - oh ok uncovered a new effect! This leaves two more unknown effects. So you keep doing this but it's easy to lose track of what you already tried. Did you already try combining it with Garlic? Yes, No? I dont remember!? Thats what I am referring to.... And I dont want to use a cheat to ruin the fun :) I just need an easy way to keep track of what I have already tried....

[lukertin]

Try doing it alphabetically? :P

If you already tried a combination of X and Y you could easily determine that you did by looking at their effects, no?

[kitsuneshoujo]

Get yourself a notepad and a pen - for real not in game. Do it like a real alchemist would have done! :D

[Kodiak412]

Make two lists with each ingredient. One list is the successful list and one list is the fail list. Pen and paper is your friend.

 

When you try a combo make sure you note it on your lists. For instance you mix Salt and Wheat and it fails. Now make sure you write it down in both items. Salt does not work with Wheat and Wheat does not work with Salt.

[THEbloodymary777]

you actually dont even need pen and paper if youre potion fails and nothing is created and you select the 2 ingedients again it will be in black signyfying those 2 do not work....simple as that select another 2 you havnt tried to combo and it will be white....

[PsYchotic666Joker]

Skyrim Alchemy Assistant And Recipes