I've now tried all three crafting trees and I must say, I don't really see the point of alchemy over the other two, save for lore. As I see, alchemy has a few shortcomings
- Takes ages to level, unless powerleveling it (which to me is a bit of an immersion sink).
- Doesn't give that extra kick crafted and enhanced/enchanted weapons and armor do
- Poisons have to be applied constantly which brakes the flow
- It's hard to know if the applied poison will make a difference or not. You might oneshot a mob without poison and in that case it's a waste of charge.
- More often than not, poisons are resisted, like the draugr.
- You can buy pretty much anything you need from an alchemy shop. Even as a non-alchemist I was basically drip feeding myself with potions.
- While not exactly boring, enchanted weapons still allow for more versitality and interesting combinations.
All in all, I don't really get what all the hype about the alchemy tree is. I've read that it's quite overpowered but so far I haven't seen it. To me it's functional but uninteresting. I don't really see why I would pick alchemy over the other three. Could it be that I'm missing anything?
Best Answer
One aspect of Alchemy that is often considered overpowered are the looping exploits in conjunction with smithing and enchantment that can be performed to create ever stronger equipment.
The most basic of these is basically to:
With each iteration you can craft stronger potions until a certain threshold (I can't quite remember at this point). But ultimately once you reach that threshold then you can craft some fortify smithing and enchantment potion drink that and make extremely strong equipment.
I'm sure with some googlefu you can dig up other alchemy exploits which are more efficient/better yields.