Skyrim:Alchemy Effects

The following tables provide lists of all the alchemical effects and the ingredients with that effect. Details on the various effects can be found on the Magical Effects page.  Green effects are positive effects and are used to create drinkable potions.  Red effects are negative effects used to create poisons that can be applied to weapons.  Ingredients listed in bold have that effect as their first, meaning that eating a sample of that ingredient will provide a small version of that effect.

Potion Strengths
The last three columns of the following table provide the magnitude, duration, and cost (gold) of a standard potion if crafted at 100 Alchemy skill, without any perks.  These are not the maximum strengths of a potion: they can be increased if alchemy perks are unlocked and also by fortifying alchemy skill.  With 100% Fortify Alchemy (the maximum possible without custom enchantments) and all Alchemy perks, most potions and poisons will be five times stronger (6.25 times stronger for restoration potions).  Even larger enhancements are possible with custom enchantments.

Values in italics (for example, the duration of many potions) are values that are not visible in-game, and in most cases do not have an effect on gameplay.  However, those values are still relevant in determining the cost of the potion.

Non-Standard Ingredients
Several effects (most notably Damage Health) have ingredients that produce non-standard potion strengths.  Those ingredients are noted in the following table by including symbols summarizing how those ingredients alter the potion.  For example:
River Betty ( ×Magnitude): Damage Health potions that include River Betty will have a magnitude 2.5 times greater than a standard Damage Health potion (e.g., 30 magnitude at alchemy 100).  The gold cost of the potion is also affected, but the factor is not shown on this page (see Damage Health for details).
Nirnroot ( ×Value): Damage Health potions that include Nirnroot will have a gold cost 12.6 times larger than a standard potion, even though the magnitude of the potion is the same.  (The internal value for the duration of the potion has been changed, but that duration has no effect on game play other than through the gold cost of the potion).

When using non-standard ingredients, the effect properties are determined only by the highest priority ingredient for that effect, where the ingredient priority is believed to be the Cost for the effect, as listed for each item in the Creation Kit.  The ingredients in the following table are all listed in decreasing priority, so the top-most ingredient is always the one that determines the properties.  If River Betty and Nirnroot are combined, the potion will have the exact same properties as a potion made using River Betty and Deathbell or River Betty and Falmer Ear.  This also means that ingredients with weaker effect strengths, such as Ectoplasm and Nightshade for Fortify Destruction, are only relevant if combined with another weak ingredient.  Ectoplasm combined with any Fortify Destruction ingredient other than Nightshade yields a standard-strength Fortify Destruction potion.

Damage Health Gold cost Bug

There's a bug that affects gold calculation for most ingredients with Damage Health. Instead of calculating gold cost based on a 0-second duration (which is treated as 10 seconds), many Damage Health ingredients use a 1-second duration. The ingredients River Betty and Nirnroot are exceptions to this rule.

Strength Equations






For potions where the duration varies instead of magnitude, the same equation is applied to the duration, using   instead of  . Currently duration only varies for Invisibility, Paralysis, Slow, and Waterbreathing; for all other effects:  . The values used in these equations are:
  and   are the strengths for the single strongest ingredient being used in the potion.  In the game data, these base values are listed in the ingredient's EFIT field.  The standard base values used for each effect are listed on each effect page, as well as details about the base values for any non-standard ingredients.
  is your character's alchemy skill (15-100)
  is the sum of all active Fortify Alchemy enchantments
  is the enhancement from the Alchemist perk (0, 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100)
  is the enhancement from the Physician perk (0 or 25).  This value is only set to 25 if your character has unlocked the perk and it is being applied to a Restore Health, Restore Magicka, or Restore Stamina effect
  is the enhancement from the Benefactor perk (0 or 25).  This value is only set to 25 if your character has unlocked the perk and it is being applied to a beneficial effect in a potion.
  is the enhancement from the Poisoner perk (0 or 25).  This value is only set to 25 if your character has unlocked the perk and it is being applied to a negative effect in a poison.
(Only one of   or   is ever non-zero).
  is the enhancement from the Seeker of Shadows ability (0 or 10) from Dragonborn that adds +10% to potion magnitude.

The gold cost of a potion is calculated from:
  Gold_cost = floor( Base_Cost * max(Magnitude^1.1,1) * ((Duration/10)^1.1 if Duration else 1) )
If the magnitude or duration is zero, the corresponding term disappears from the equation, i.e.:
  Gold_cost (When Magnitude = 0) = floor( Base_Cost * max((Duration/10)^1.1,1) )
  Gold_cost (When Duration = 0)  = floor( Base_Cost * (Magnitude^1.1) )
  Gold_cost (When Duration = 0 and Magnitude = 0, which is never true in vanilla)  = floor( Base_Cost )
If the magnitude or duration is not displayed in game, that does not necessarily mean that the value is zero.  The game still has an internal value for each parameter (based on the ingredient's   and  ) which is used in this calculation.  A clear-cut example of these hidden values at work is the Cure Disease potion, which has a higher monetary value when brewed to a higher "magnitude", despite having both a fixed effect and a fixed duration in practice.  These internal values are listed in the following table.

Multiple-Effect Potions
If a potion has multiple effects, the magnitude, duration, and gold cost of each effect is separately determined according to the above equations.  The total gold cost of the potion is the sum of the costs of the individual effects.

The effect with the largest individual gold cost is the effect that controls the overall properties of the mixture.  That effect is used for naming, and it determines whether the result is considered to be a potion or a poison.  The determination of the strongest effect is actually done before the perks are factored into the gold cost (i.e., having the Benefactor and/or Poisoner perk does not alter whether a mixture is a poison or a potion).

Additional adjustments that are made include:
The Benefactor perk only applies to effects in potions — beneficial side-effects of a poison are not enhanced.
The Poisoner perk only applies to effects in poisons — negative side-effects of a potion are not enhanced.
If the Purity perk has been unlocked, the properties of all negative effects in a potion will be set to zero (and positive effects in a poison will be set to zero).  This means that the gold cost of the potion will be reduced.

Effect List
Except where otherwise noted by having a red background in the magnitude cell, any effect with a magnitude of 0 has a fixed magnitude that does not vary with level, perks, enchantments, etc, but an effect with a non-zero magnitude does vary; the mark will typically be present for magnitude 0 effects, as a reminder.  However, because most potions have a fixed duration, except where otherwise noted by having a green background, potions have a fixed duration, regardless of whether or not their duration is 0.  These typically go hand in hand - a potion has a variable magnitude or a variable duration, but never both or neither.  Note that Cure Disease does have a variable magnitude, which has no impact when you drink it, where its magnitude is always "all diseases", but does impact the gold value of the potion.  Note also that Damage Magicka and the three Ravage effects have non-zero durations which likewise have no impact when applied to the target - the first is instantaneous and the latter three are permanent until cured - but do impact the gold value of the potion.
 

 

Notes
Alchemy effects stack with enchanting effects, but not with one another—only the strongest effect will be active.