ESO Alchemy Guide

The Best Alchemy Guide for ESO! Alchemy is one of the seven Crafting Professions in The Elder Scrolls Online. With Alchemy, players can create powerful Potions and Poisons, that will help them in PVE and PVP activities. Potions and Poisons made with Alchemy can have various effects. From boosting your DPS to Weakening your enemies. Using the right Potion or Poison at the right time can save your life or help you deal faster with a tough target.

Specific Potions are essential in high-end PVE and certain Poisons will make any PVP encounter easier. You can buy them from other players but it is wiser to have the ability to craft them yourself. Like this you can cover your needs or even sell the Potions you are making in order to make some gold. Alchemy is one of the best ways to make gold with crafting in ESO after all!

Ingredients – ESO Alchemy

In order to create a Potion or a Poison you have to combine a Solvent with two or three Reagents.

Solvents in ESO Alchemy

There are two types of Solvents, Potion Solvent that create Potions or Essences and Poison Solvents that create Poisons. Depending on the Alchemy Passives you know, you can make up to four Potions or sixteen Poisons with one Solvent and the appropriate Reagents. Potion Solvents come mostly from harvesting water nodes while Poison Solvents drop from defeated enemies. You can always buy Solvents from other players.

Reagents in ESO Alchemy

Reagents are mostly herbs and plants that you can harvest from almost every zone in Tamriel. Every Reagent has four Traits, which determine the type of Potion or Poison they can create. To become an efficient Potion Maker you must first discover all Traits for every available Reagent. You can do this by simply combining Solvents and Reagents randomly until you discover all Traits. The first Trait for every Reagent can also be found by simply consuming that reagent.

To level up Alchemy fast, use a two-reagent cheap combination to make potions. Once you get more levels, invest points to Passives that will allow you to use better solvents and keep creating Potions with the same reagents. For more details on Alchemy and the other Crafting Professions you can read my Ultimate Crafting Guide.

How to Make Potions and Poisons with Alchemy in ESO

To start creating Potions or Poisons you need to combine at least two Reagents with the same Trait. Bugloss and Butterfly Wings for example have both the “Restore Health” Trait. When you combine them with a Lorkhan’s Tears( Top Rank Potion Solvent ) they will give you an Essence of Health result. If the Reagents have more Traits in common the result will be a Potion with multiple effects. Bugloss and Columbine for example have both the “Restore Health” and “Restore Magicka” Traits. The result will now be an Essence of Health that restores both Health and Magicka.

If you combine Reagents with opposing Traits you will not get the result you are after. For example Bugloss has the “Restore Health” Trait while Corn Flower the “Ravage Health” Trait. These two Traits negate each other so you will never get an Essence of Health from this combination. By using an Alkahest(Top Rank Poison Solvent), instead of a Lorkhan’s Tears, you can create a Poison with the same Reagents.

Poison Solvents reverse Reagents’ Traits, in order to create a negative effect. Corn Flower combined with Columbine will give you an Essence of Magicka if you use a Potion Solvent, since they both have the “Restore Magicka” Trait. With a Poison Solvent this same combination will give you a Drain Magicka Poison. By using three Reagents you can create more complex Potions and Poisons with multiple effects, that are more effective and of course more valuable to sell