Worst Alchemy Ingredient?

[Snake Tortoise]

I've sometimes wondered what other people here think. For me red mountain flower, giant lichen and scathecraw have to be right at the bottom of the list. None of them make even moderately valuable potions for leveling and selling, and the effects are fairly lame.

Red Mountain Flower

Oooh, mountain flower! *hovers over A button to collect* Oh... it's red

By the time your alchemy ability is good enough to make useful restore magica or damage health potions, you probably don't need those potions any more.

Giant Lichen

For leveling and selling the best use I can think of is mixing with hagraven feathers for weakness to shock, but for its relative scarcity and weight (0.3) I think this ingredient is barely worth the effort of picking up or spending a couple of septims on.

Scathecraw

I gathered heaps and heaps of this when I first got the expansions, only to later find I couldn't make anything valuable enough to be worth the 0.5 weight of a potion in my inventory. It's good for poisons but my issue with that is you can't make truly effective poisons when you actually need them (early in the game) and later in the game the time it takes to apply a poison to a weapon could be better spent actually attacking the enemy or using something better like paralysis

Thoughts? Are there any ingredients you don't bother buying or gathering, or do you just buy/gather and make potions out of everything?

Honourary mentions to lavender, white cap, torchbug thorax and hagraven feathers, but at least they're all better than the above.

 

[T. Rakinson]

Dont know abour worst ingredients, but no mushroom combo ever seems to work.... I just eat them instead.
Does anyone else get their character hooked on Netch Jelly? Love that stuff, even if it does cause seizures. Closing thing Solstheim has to Jam.

 

[Dabiene Caristiana]

Try this:

http://rp.eliteskills.com/skyrim.html

It's an Alchemy calculator. Type out any ingredient(s) and put in various factors and it will list what you can do with that item. Also comes with a tutorial.

 

[Snake Tortoise]

Try this:

http://rp.eliteskills.com/skyrim.html

It's an Alchemy calculator. Type out any ingredient(s) and put in various factors and it will list what you can do with that item. Also comes with a tutorial.

Interesting

Well the most profitable two ingredient potions for the three I posted (excluding jarrin root and Berit's ashes):

Giant lichen 56
Red Mountain Flower 104
Scathecraw -

Ah, it doesn't include the DLC ingredients

I might have a play around with that site later.

As far as red mountain flower goes, you might be able to make 104 profit if mixed with river betty, but river betty and all of the subsequent most profitable ingredients to mix with red mountain flower are all ingredients you'd make much more money with by mixing with other, better ingredients.

 

[Wildroses]

I love Red Mountain Flowers. They damage health and restore magic, two of the most common potions I use myself.

I don't ever worry about making money with potions. I just make six million potions with blue butterfly wings and blue flowers and when I run out of them, I just sell one of my six billion potions of resist frost and fire. What with the commonness of purple mountain flowers, snowberries, thistles and dragons tongues I always end up with a bunch of them.

I think my least favourite is troll fat. Resist Poison and Fortify Two Handed are two of the most useless effects for all my playstyles. Frenzy Potions area always useless once you hit level 7. Sure Damage Health is one I use a lot, but Troll Fat weights an entire 1 unit. I have a mod that ups animal loot, so I always get 3 units which is a huge deal for a hoarder like me.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

Salmon meat. . .

I know it's not an ingredient. But surely I can't be the only one who ends up with a stack of them when trying to grab the different fish for their ingredients. . .

 

[Harkin]

I love Red Mountain Flowers. They damage health and restore magic, two of the most common potions I use myself.

I don't ever worry about making money with potions. I just make six million potions with blue butterfly wings and blue flowers and when I run out of them, I just sell one of my six billion potions of resist frost and fire. What with the commonness of purple mountain flowers, snowberries, thistles and dragons tongues I always end up with a bunch of them.

I think my least favourite is troll fat. Resist Poison and Fortify Two Handed are two of the most useless effects for all my playstyles. Frenzy Potions area always useless once you hit level 7. Sure Damage Health is one I use a lot, but Troll Fat weights an entire 1 unit. I have a mod that ups animal loot, so I always get 3 units which is a huge deal for a hoarder like me.

Since you're a hoarder like me, I've got a nifty trick, but you might know it, anyway

Disenchant any
Fortify Carrying capacity ítem

Resto loop and make an OP Fortify Enchant potion

Drink Enchant pot
Craft an OP NEW Fortify Carry Capacity item

Digits past 1'000 makes the numerics smaller and screws up the hud bars, 800-1000 should suffice for Extreme loot runs minimizing the need to Store between quests.

 

[Snake Tortoise]

I love Red Mountain Flowers. They damage health and restore magic, two of the most common potions I use myself.

I don't ever worry about making money with potions. I just make six million potions with blue butterfly wings and blue flowers and when I run out of them, I just sell one of my six billion potions of resist frost and fire. What with the commonness of purple mountain flowers, snowberries, thistles and dragons tongues I always end up with a bunch of them.

I think my least favourite is troll fat. Resist Poison and Fortify Two Handed are two of the most useless effects for all my playstyles. Frenzy Potions area always useless once you hit level 7. Sure Damage Health is one I use a lot, but Troll Fat weights an entire 1 unit. I have a mod that ups animal loot, so I always get 3 units which is a huge deal for a hoarder like me.

When you reach 100 alchemy do you still make lots of potions?

I ask because I usually just race up to 100 alchemy, continue collecting and hording away ingredients then when I've got a huge stash, make it legendary and bring it back to 100 in one session. I don't actually use potions much. Fortify smithing and enchanting of course, but mostly I make potions to level alchemy and so stuff like damage health and restore magica aren't worth the time.

 

[Wildroses]

I make a stack of potions when I reach 100. With a high alchemy skill every health/magic/stamina potion you make is way better than the majority of stuff found in dungeons and merchants, as are poisons. Your own paralyzer potions are the longest ones I've ever found and your own lingering health damage potions are as well. I once went through the Thalmor embassy with about 30 paraylzer/lingering health damage potions and some iron arrows. One was all I needed. They all keeled over and died a few seconds later. I also have Frostfall installed, so I use a fair bit of Resist Frost potions.

 

[Daelon DuLac]

Worst - any mountain flower or mushroom - cheap potions, little value

Best Low Level - luna moth wings and vampire dust - great payback

 

[Gregor Moon Fang]

I wouldn't say all the mushrooms are useless profit wise. If you mix Namira's Rot with a Luna Moth Wing you get a pretty good valued Health Regenerate potion.

As for worst ingredient I'd say the Torchbug Thorax. None of the effects it gives are useful for my playstyles and the potions you make are worthless in value.

 

[Snake Tortoise]

Blue and purple mountain flower are both great, blue being one of the higher tier ingredients in the game.

Purple makes two average value potions, fortify sneak and resist frost, but you can make tons of resist frost potions with snowberries, purple mountain flower and thistle (not all together)

All of the mushrooms are good except white cap, which is meh. You can make okay-ish potions with it at best but if I'm nearing my carry limit I won't bother collecting it

Imp stool- paralysis
Namira's rot- regenerate health
Fly amanita- regenerate stamina. Also does a few average value potions like fortify two handed, frenzy and resist fire. A great ingredient to help clear out lots of bad ingredients that tend to build up
Glowing mushroom- fortify smithing, resist shock, fortify health, fortify destrution

Mushrooms are great alchemy ingredients!

I wouldn't say all the mushrooms are useless profit wise. If you mix Namira's Rot with a Luna Moth Wing you get a pretty good valued Health Regenerate potion.

As for worst ingredient I'd say the Torchbug Thorax. None of the effects it gives are useful for my playstyles and the potions you make are worthless in value.

Torchbug thorax is pretty bad. I usually mix it with the ubiquitous but limited value lavender for fortify stamina potions. Not particularly valuable but as far as I know it's about as good as you can do with it for leveling, and clears two useless ingredients that tend to build up and waste space

 

[Daelon DuLac]

Frankly, once I've got the Banish enchantment and am enchanting daggers, I don't really bother to "collect" ingredients any longer. I just loot them off the bodies, take them if they're laying about or purchase them and up my alchemy that way

Since I never really use any potion but a healing potion or the occasional invisibility potion, alchemy is nothing more than a money-maker for me.

I don't think I've yet to use a healing potion I've made myself after level 5 or so since they are simply EVERYWHERE! The same goes for magicka and stamina potions.

On my current playthrough, while I carry 5 Ultimate Healing and Magicka potions each and 2 Ultimate Stamina, I've yet to use them (I use resto), but I have an inventory at Hljerkin (sic) Hall of about 100 of each. All found. I never buy potions (okay, I lie, I do buy Smithing and Enchanting potions since I can't break 45% on those without perking Alchemy or using a cheat).

 

[medievalmama]

Thanks for the Alchemy Calculator. My xBox died and took all my game saves with it. I couldn't bear to start over until now. This calculator will help me remember what to pick up and how to make stuff. I usually use a lot of restore energy and stamina potions, and sometimes poisons.

 

[Lady Redpool the Unlifer]

Salmon Roe

 

[JimmyS1985]

Worst - any mountain flower or mushroom - cheap potions, little value

Best Low Level - luna moth wings and vampire dust - great payback

ANY Mountain flower? I'm sorry but those Blue Mountain Flowers, I snatch every one up I come across. Blue Mountain Flower, Hanging Moss, and Monarch Butterfly Wing makes a very very very valuable potion given how common the ingredients are.

Edit: Upon reading the title of the thread, the first thing that came across my mind was Red Mountain Flower. I only pick up Blue Mountain Flowers, nothing else matters otherwise.

 

[General Charles Xander]

Worst ingredient? I thought you would all know....
Jarrin Root. Duh.

 

[Manmangler]

Worst - any mountain flower or mushroom - cheap potions, little value

Best Low Level - luna moth wings and vampire dust - great payback

ANY Mountain flower? I'm sorry but those Blue Mountain Flowers, I snatch every one up I come across. Blue Mountain Flower, Hanging Moss, and Monarch Butterfly Wing makes a very very very valuable potion given how common the ingredients are.

Try Blue Butterflywing, Blue Mountain Flower and Giant toe. Some reason I hunt Giants near to extinction.

 

[-The Ice Queen-]

Salmon meat. . .

I know it's not an ingredient. But surely I can't be the only one who ends up with a stack of them when trying to grab the different fish for their ingredients. . .

...But they taste yummy!

Worst ingredient? I thought you would all know....
Jarrin Root. Duh.

Dang, you beat me to it.

 

[DrunkenMage]

Red Mountain flower is very useful for Mages, since it is one of the few that contains both restore magicka and fortify magicka. It can also be used in a potion to restore/fortify/regenerate magicka.

Every alchemy ingredient has it's usefulness depending on the situation.