Alchemy is one of the most important types of crafting in Skyrim, and it's been present in The Elder Scrolls franchise for decades. This skill allows you to craft powerful potions and potent poisons for defeating your enemies. Even though combat perks may seem more enticing when you first start out, you shouldn't downplay the importance of Alchemy, especially if you're playing as a melee or archer character.
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The perks in the Alchemy skill tree can benefit you in many different ways, including allowing you to gather double ingredients from plants and crafting potions with stronger effects. These are all of the Alchemy perks in Skyrim, ranked by their usefulness.
Poisoner
Although the Poisoner perk isn't the strongest perk in the Alchemy skill tree, it's still essential for stealth characters because it makes crafted potions 25 percent more potent. This means that you'll deal extra damage with any poison that you craft yourself; however, this perk is not useful for regular potions.
Regardless, you should consider the Poisoner perk if you're going to be crafting your own poisons, which is most important for archer builds.
Physician
Similar to the Poisoner perk, however useful for more builds, the Physician perk grants you 25 percent extra restoration for potions crafted that restore your base stats. These stats include health, stamina, and Magicka.
Every build can benefit from this perk, as long as you use alchemy, since health restoration is important regardless of if you rely on stamina or Magicka. Although there are better perks to spend your points on, the Physician perk is still worth considering for the master Alchemist.
Green Thumb
Plants come in a variety of forms, including food and alchemy ingredients. The Green Thumb perk doubles the number of ingredients you obtain after picking a plant, regardless of whether it's a berry bush in the wild or a cabbage farm in the valley.
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Although the Green Thumb perk can be useful for obtaining food, it's most useful for characters that craft many potions since alchemy plants are so common throughout Skyrim. You can also use this perk to pick ingredients and then sell the extra items for a profit, so it's even beneficial if you don't regularly use alchemy.
Snakeblood
Snakeblood is incredibly powerful for combat situations and is one of the best combat-centered Alchemy perks overall. This perk grants you a 50 percent reduction in damage from all types of poison.
Poison is a very common damage type in Skyrim, which means that you'll gain a lot of use out of this perk. Snakeblood is also helpful if you have potions with added negative effects since it downplays their poisonous power.
Benefactor
If you're going to be crafting a variety of useful potions, then the Benefactor perk is something that you should strongly consider. This perk's effect makes it so that you get a 25 percent bonus to potions that you craft with a positive effect, such as extra damage towards enemies.
Benefactor is a great perk because of how many different types of potions it applies to, and it should be unlocked as soon as possible if you're going to use the Alchemy table a lot. Although there are many perks that focus on specific types of potions in the Alchemy skill tree, this one is the best because it grants the most usefulness during the entirety of your playthrough.
Experimenter
The Experimenter perk gets progressively better as you unlock all three tiers. The final stage of this perk allows you to uncover all four effects of an alchemy ingredient by eating it a single time. Each tier of this perk is useful since they each allow you to uncover more effects quickly; however, it's worth unlocking all three tiers since it's so useful.
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Both potion and poison crafters can benefit greatly from this perk, which is why it's a must-unlock as soon as you start crafting.
Alchemist
The Alchemist perk has five levels in total, and each of them makes your potions and poisons stronger by a large amount. Unfortunately, this effect only applies to the mixtures that you have personally crafted, but this is still a powerful perk since it applies to most of the potions that an Alchemy master will use during their adventure.
There aren't many better perks in the Alchemy skill tree than this one, and that's because of how well this perk works for every type of playstyle. Furthermore, this perk is the first in the skill tree so you can unlock the first tier immediately.
Purity
Purity is one of the most important perks for a crafter in Skyrim. This perk removes negative effects from useful potions and positive effects from deadly poisons. This effect is only applied to potions and poisons that you craft at an alchemy table.
The biggest problem with alchemy is that you will sometimes craft a potion with a negative effect, but luckily the Purity perk is available to fix this annoying situation. The Purity perk is a must-have if you want to create the best potions possible since you don't want to trade a damage increase for less health during combat with an unfortunate potion mixture.
Concentrated Poison
The best poisons in Skyrim require many rare ingredients to craft, and although a regular adventurer may have saved up enough ingredients for occasional poison use, you may not have enough ingredients to use poison on your weapons during every combat experience.
That's where the Concentrated Poison perk comes into use. This perk applies poison to your powerful weapon for twice as many hits, which means that you'll use half the poison that you usually would need during combat. Although not every build benefits from the Concentrated Poison perk, most melee builds and archer characters can benefit immensely. If you want to unlock the best alchemy perks in Skyrim, then the Concentrated Poison perk should be on your list if you use physical weapons during your adventures.
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