Skyrim Alchemy guide - Quick leveling walkthrough

Conjurers and Illusionists have it easy. They can just fling spells into empty space, willy-nilly, until they’ve maxed out their skills. Smug bastards. Alchemists, on the other hand, are the hard-working nerds of Skyrim. Like their reality-based counterparts, they have to do more work for less glory. Thankfully, we’ve put this guide together to help you increase your Alchemy skill as quickly as possible.

There are four ways to level your Alchemy Skill: Crafting potions (experience is granted based on the value of the potion you create), paying skill trainers, reading skill books, or completing specific miscellaneous quests.

Before you start intentionally boosting your Alchemy skill, however, you should at least seek out The Thief Stone, which is found among the Guardian Stones, southwest of Riverwood. Activating this stone makes leveling Alchemy (among other skills) 20% faster. You should also make sure you have the Well Rested buff for an additional 10% boost or the Lover’s Comfort buff (gained by sleeping with your spouse) for 15%.

Depending on how much you want to boost your skill, you may want to first increase your Enchanting skill as to create Alchemy-boosting gear. We have an Enchanter's Guide for those looking to quickly increase their Enchanting skill.

IMPORTANT: As you are boosting, make sure to add skill points to the following Alchemy perks to further increase your leveling speed: Alchemist, Physician, Benefactor, and Poisoner.

Table of Contents

Leveling Methods

Using Enchanting to Improve Alchemy

Alchemy Trainers, Book Locations and Quests

Using Giant’s Toes & Wheat

Above: Technically, Giant’s have 10 toes, but the other nine are gross

Giant’s Toes and Wheat. These are the keys to Alchemy leveling. Combining these two easily-obtainable ingredients yields one of the highest value potions and is quite possibly the quickest and easiest way to level up your Alchemy skill.

Giant’s Toes are especially valuable in the Alchemy process, so put aside your inner pacifist and slaughter every walking skyscraper you see during your travels. Giant camps are marked by Mammoth Skulls on your map. If you haven’t found any yet, there are two camps right next to each other in the valley between Whiterun and Windhelm, as seen below:

You can also sometimes find Giant’s Toes for sale at Alchemy shops.

Lots of wheat can be found at the Brandy Mug, Hlaalu, and Hollyfrost farms, all found immediately east-southeast of Windhelm, and all are very near each other. Harvesting wheat from these fields is not a crime, and in no time you’ll have more than you know what to do with.

Above: I don’t care that you need to feed your family. I need the boost

Adding a Creep Cluster to the mix gives you one of the most valuable mixtures in the game, though it’s only about 30% more valuable than the meat and potatoes mixture of, uh, wheat and gigan-toes, and obviously requires procuring a third ingredient. However, if you wish to do the extra legwork, Creep Clusters are quite abundant and can be found by starting at Windhelm and heading south by foot. You’ll find some on the rocks beside the round, near the geysers south of Bonestrewn Crest, around the Atronach Stone (directly south of Bonestrewn Crest), and around the Riverside Shack.

Above: Creep Clusters are abundant and easily visible

Note that because Wheat and Creep Clusters are so extremely abundant and easily obtained for free, you can forego the Giant’s Toes and just add these two ingredients. Granted, the resulting potion is not nearly as valuable as the above combinations, but hey, quantity over quality. Or something like that.

Buying Out Shops

Above: “Hello! I am completely oblivious to your profiteering!”

If you’re tired of tracking down Giant’s Toes, an alternative method to quick leveling is to find any Alchemist, buy out all of their stock, create potions like a mad scientist, then sell everything you’ve made back to the vendor to get your original gold back.

Bolstering Via Enchantment

You can disenchant gear that already has the Fortify Alchemy enchantment in order to learn such an enchanting skill and use it as you wish on headgear, necklaces, rings, and gloves. You can find pre-enchanted gear randomly at shops or in the wild, but if you wish to take chance out of the picture, accept the “Mourning Never Comes” quest (given by Astrid of the Dark Brotherhood) and complete the optional objective along with the rest of the quest to receive Muiri’s Ring. You can also get the Ring of Pure Mixtures from the Forsaken Cave as part of a quest given by Frida from Dawnstar, but if you give the ring to her, you’ll have to steal it back or loot it from her corpse in order to disenchant it.

Above: Muiri hangs out in The Hag’s Cure in Markarth

You can boost your Enchanting skill even more by drinking specific potions. This allows you to further increase the Fortify Alchemy enchantments, though the ingredients needed to make potions that increase your Enchanting skills may be harder to obtain than those used in the above “Trusty Method,” and such potions only increase the maximum effect given by a piece of gear from 25% to 29%. Remember that both your Smithing and Enchanting skills have to be maxed out to achieve such numbers, and this is no easy task.

Above: You’re sure to find plenty of Falmer in the depths of Mzinchaleft

For console players, we also recommend enchanting a Falmer’s Helmet and a Circlet and wearing both at the same time. This is an exploit. Falmers’ helmets can be found in Mzinchaleft (pictured above), just southwest of Dawnstar, or on random Falmer corpses. Doing this allows you to wear five pieces of enchanted apparel at once as opposed to the usual limit of four.

Alchemy Skill Trainer Locations

You can also pay coin to have your skill leveled up for you. There are three Alchemy trainers in Skyrim, each of whom also sells ingredients:

Lami

Lami runs Thaumaturgist’s Hut in Morthal. She is an Adept level trainer.

Arcadia

Arcadia runs Arcadia’s Cauldron in Whiterun. She is an Expert level trainer.

Babette

Babette can be found in the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary. She is a Master level trainer.

Alchemy Book Locations

Above: If only reading books taught you stuff in real life...

There are five books to be found throughout Skyrim that enhance your Alchemy skill upon reading. Below you’ll find the locations for said books, though you only get the boost upon your first read.

A Game at Dinner

• The second floor of New Gnisis Cornerclub in Windhelm, on a table
• On a bookshelf found behind an expert locked door in Harmugstahl, a dungeon in The Reach
• In the second floor bedroom of Honningbrew Meadery in Whiterun, on a table
• In the lower level of Forsaken Cave in The Pale, found near the White Phial during the “White Phial” quest
• Near a lever in Dead Crone Rock, found west of Markarth

Song of the Alchemists

• On a table in Anise’s Cabin in Falkreath
• On the counter to your right as you enter Bard’s College

De Rerum Dirennis

• On a tree stump in an alchemist’s camp just north of Evergreen Grove (northwest of Falkreath)
• In the corner of Grave Concoctions in Falkreath
• On the corpse of an alchemist at Clearpine Pond (found west of Solitude)
• In the lab in The Midden (a dungeon under the College of Winterhold)
• At Sinderion’s Field Laboratory (in Blackreach, southwest of Winterhold)

Herbalist’s Guide to Skyrim

• Just beyond the door next to the Alchemy Lab in Arcadia’s Cauldron of Whiterun
• On a shelf behind the counter of the Hag’s Cure in Markarth
• In a chest in Journeyman’s Nook, located southeast of Winterhold
• On a shelf in Boulderfall Cave, a location just west of Shor’s Stone (which is north of Riften)

Mannimarco, King of Worms

• On an altar at Evergreen Grove (northwest of Falkreath)
• On the Alchemy Lab in Nightcaller Temple (east of Dawnstar)
• On the Alchemy Lab found just east of Dragon Bridge (southwest of Solitude)
• In an apothecary’s satchel near the water east-southeast of Winterhold, next to two skeletons
• At an altar southeast of Winterhold, next to Rundi’s corpse

Alchemy Quests

There are a small number of quests that, upon completion, boost your Alchemy skill. They are as follows:

Discerning the Transmundane (+5 to Alchemy upon completion)

To begin this quest, seek out Septimus Signus in his outpost north of the College of Winterhold (pictured above). The quest is lengthy, but at the end, choose the ‘path of the thief’ for your stat boost.

Lami’s Misc. Quest (+1 to Alchemy upon completion)

Lami (she runs Thaumaturgist’s Hut in Morthal) is looking for a book called “Song of the Alchemists.” See the previous section for this book’s possible locations. Giving her the book, boost your stat, but don’t forget to read the book first for an additional alchemy boost!

Arcadia’s Misc. Quest (+1 to Alchemy upon completion)

Arcadia (she runs Arcadia’s Cauldron in Whiterun) is looking for some frost salts, which are dropped by Frost Antronachs.

Frida’s Misc Quest (+1 to Alchemy upon completion)

Frida (found at The Mortar and Pestle in Dawnstar) is looking for the Ring of Pure Mixtures. You can find it inside the Forsaken Cave (pictured above).

Inge Six Fingers’ Misc Quest (+1 to all stealth skills, including Alchemy)

Inge, who can be found at the Bards College, is looking for Finn’s Lute. You can accept the quest to find it from her directly, or find the lute first and present it to her. The Lute can be found in a chest inside Stony Creek Cave (location pictured above).