To make a potion or poison in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, combine ingredients that share at least one effect at an Alchemy Lab. Use the recipe index below to choose a target effect, or use the ingredient index to see what your inventory can make. These recipes are community-listed examples for the base game and official DLC ingredients; availability and usefulness can change with DLC, patches, and mods.
How alchemy recipes work in Skyrim
Bethesda’s Skyrim manual explains that ingredients must share an effect to brew successfully at an Alchemy Lab. The result is a potion when it grants a beneficial effect to your character, or a poison when it adds poison damage after you apply it to a weapon. If selected ingredients have no effect in common, the brew fails.
Each ingredient has four effects. Eating an ingredient reveals its first effect; experimentation can reveal additional effects, and Alchemy perks can reveal more when eating ingredients. Unknown effects may also be discovered by successfully brewing with an ingredient, but eating an unknown ingredient can be harmful. The manual also notes that a higher Alchemy skill produces stronger potions and poisons.
Recipes grouped by desired effect
The following combinations are listed in the Steam Community alchemy guide, updated October 17, 2023. They are practical examples, not a universal ranking: ingredient supply, installed DLC, patches, and mods affect which mix is most useful.
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- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Official Game Guide
| Desired effect | Ingredients | Useful note |
|---|---|---|
| Restore Health and Fortify Health | Blue Mountain Flower + Wheat | Produces healing with a Fortify Health bonus. |
| Restore Magicka | Creep Cluster + Red Mountain Flower | Combines the listed ingredients for a Magicka-restoring potion. |
| Restore Stamina | Purple Mountain Flower + Torchbug Thorax | Alternative: Purple Mountain Flower + Bee. |
| Cure Disease | Mudcrab Chitin + Hawk Feathers | Useful when you need the listed disease-curing effect. |
| Waterbreathing | Histcarp + Chicken’s Egg | Alternative: Nordic Barnacle + Histcarp. |
The guide lists these recipes without a claim that they are the strongest, cheapest, or easiest for every character. For example, whether an ingredient can be replenished or grown depends on where you play and what content is installed.
Ingredient effects: how to build a recipe from what you have
When you have ingredients on hand but no fixed target, look for a shared effect. The community-maintained Skyrim alchemy database organizes ingredient and effect data in a searchable structure. Its project notes that exceptional unique ingredients such as Jarrin Root may be omitted from ordinary recipe data, so it should not be treated as a complete inventory of every special case.
- Choose an effect you want, such as Restore Health, Restore Magicka, or Waterbreathing.
- Check which ingredients list that effect, then select two or three ingredients with an effect in common. The Steam guide describes combining two or three ingredients.
- Use the Alchemy Lab to brew the combination. A successful brew can reveal an unknown effect used in that recipe; a failed brew means the selected ingredients did not share an effect.
- Inspect the resulting effects before deciding whether to keep, use, or sell the potion or poison.
How to choose between recipes
“Best” depends on what you need from alchemy. A combat potion, a convenient cure, a skill-building craft, and a valuable sale item are different goals. The community guide notes that a potion’s sale value can reflect its effects even when those effects are not practically useful.
- For combat: prioritize the effect you need and any helpful secondary effect, rather than judging only by the number of effects.
- For convenience: favor ingredients you already carry or can reliably replenish.
- For homestead supply: check whether your Hearthfire setup supports growing or raising the ingredients you want; do not assume a renewable source without confirming the relevant feature.
- For value or leveling: do not treat a high-value recipe as universally optimal. The guide specifically warns that Salmon Roe’s unusually strong profit and leveling value is altered by unofficial patches.
- For a modded game: verify ingredient effects and recipe behavior against the mods you use; mods can change alchemy.
What changes with DLC, patches, and mods
The Steam Community guide covers vanilla and official DLC ingredients, but also discusses unofficial patches and mods. A recipe that depends on an ingredient or feature from a particular add-on may not be available in a base-game setup. Patches can also change the usefulness of an otherwise familiar combination. Check the ingredients and effects in your own game before relying on a recipe list, especially when using mods or an unofficial patch.
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For structured cross-checking, the community database at GitHub’s Skyrim alchemy project is a secondary reference rather than an official authority. Bethesda’s manual remains the primary reference for the core rules: shared effects determine whether a brew succeeds, and Alchemy skill affects potion and poison strength.
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