Skyrim Special Edition

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Simon Magus DeltaRider and Oreo

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SimonMagus

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About this mod

Apothecary is a complete overhaul of Skyrim’s alchemy system designed to balance existing options while adding powerful new effects to the game.

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Changelogs
Apothecary - An Alchemy Overhaul 

Apothecary is a complete overhaul of Skyrim’s alchemy system designed to balance existing potions and poisons while adding powerful new effects to the game. The mod normalizes the magnitude of all alchemical ingredients in order to eliminate the gameplay loop of checking UESP to see which effects have slightly higher potencies, or chasing Salmon Roe to level up. It also significantly reduces the gold value of both player-created potions and generic potions while ensuring that the player still levels at a faster rate than Vanilla. In addition, the mod rebalances generic potions so that their strongest and weakest variants match the potency of player-created potions. Finally, Apothecary removes several useless or poorly implemented effects in order to make room for more interesting new effects without adding new ingredients. 

Apothecary does not require my other mods, but it is designed to be consistent with them. For instance, Apothecary adds poisons for each of the new Illusion archetypes and several of the new Alteration archetypes added by Mysticism - A Magic Overhaul.

Potions

The magnitudes in the following list reflect the strength of a potion created by a character with 100 Alchemy and all of the Vanilla perks. Generic potions have been reworked to be consistent with player-created potions at all levels.

Spoiler:  
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Restore Health - Restores 30 Health per second for 10 seconds.
Restore Magicka - Restores 30 Magicka per second for 10 seconds.
Restore Stamina - Restores 30 Stamina per second for 10 seconds.

Fortify Health - Your Health is increased by 100 for 300 seconds.
Fortify Magicka - Your Magicka is increased by 100 for 300 seconds.
Fortify Stamina - Your Stamina is increased by 100 for 300 seconds.

Fortify Health Regeneration - Your Health Regeneration is increased by 100% for 300 seconds.
Fortify Magicka Regeneration - Your Magicka Regeneration is increased by 100% for 300 seconds.
Fortify Stamina Regeneration - Your Stamina Regeneration is increased by 100% for 300 seconds.

Fortify One-handed - You deal 50% extra damage with One-handed weapons for 60 seconds.
Fortify Two-handed - You deal 50% extra damage with Two-handed weapons for 60 seconds.
Fortify Archery - You deal 50% extra damage with bows for 60 seconds.
Fortify Block - You are 50% more effective at blocking and bashing.

Fortify Alteration Power - Your Alteration spells last 100% longer for 60 seconds.
Fortify Conjuration Power - Your Conjuration spells last 100% longer for 60 seconds.
Fortify Destruction Power - Your Destruction spells are 50% stronger for 60 seconds. 
Fortify Illusion Power - Your Illusion spells are 50% stronger for 60 seconds.
Fortify Restoration Power - Your Restoration spells are 50% stronger for 60 seconds. 

Fortify Sneak Attacks -
You deal 50% extra damage with sneak attacks and spells for 60 seconds.
Fortify Power Attacks - You deal 50% extra damage with power attacks for 60 seconds.
Fortify Shouts - You deal 50% extra damage with Shouts for 60 seconds.
Fortify Unarmed - You deal 50% extra unarmed damage for 60 seconds.
Reflect Damage - You reflect 100% of incoming melee damage back at your attacker for 60 seconds.

Fortify Lockpicking - You are 50% better at lockpicking for 60 seconds. 
Fortify Pickpocket - You are 50% better at pickpocketing for 60 seconds.
Fortify Sneak - You are 50% harder to detect while sneaking for 60 seconds.

Resist Fire - Your Fire Resistance is increased by 50% for 60 seconds.
Resist Frost - Your Frost Resistance is increased by 50% for 60 seconds.
Resist Shock - Your Shock Resistance is increased by 50% for 60 seconds.
Resist Poison - Your Poison Resistance is increased by 50% for 60 seconds.

Resist Magic - Your Magic Resistance is increased by 25% for 300 seconds.

Fortify Armor Rating -
Your Armor Rating is increased by 100 for 300 seconds 
Fortify Carry Weight - Your Carry Weight is increased by 100 for 300 seconds
Fortify Barter - Your receive 20% better prices for 300 seconds

Fortify Speed - You move 20% faster for 60 seconds.

Waterbreathing -
You can breathe underwater for 60 seconds 
Waterwalking - You can walk on water for 60 seconds 

Muffle -
 You move silently for 60 seconds.
Invisibility - You become invisible for 60 seconds. 
Become Ethereal - You become ethereal for 60 seconds

Cure Disease - it just cures diseases lol idk what to write here

Notes 

  • Restore Health, Magicka, or Stamina Potions work over 10 seconds. They do not stack, but they are affected by abilities that increase potion duration.
  • Potions such as Fortify One-handed and Resist Fire have high potencies (50%) and short (60s) durations.
  • Potions such as Fortify Health, Fortify Magicka Regeneration, and Fortify Armor Rating have lower effective potencies and extended durations.
  • New utility potions allow the player to experiment with effects that were much rarer in the Vanilla game, such as Become Ethereal and Waterwalking.

Poisons

The magnitudes in the following list reflect the strength of a poison created by a character with 100 Alchemy and all of the Vanilla perks. Generic poisons have been reworked to be consistent with player-created poisons at all levels.

Spoiler:  
Show
Damage Health - Deals 10 Poison damage per second for 10 seconds 
Damage Magicka - Deals 20 Magicka damage per second for 10 seconds 
Damage Stamina - Deals 20 Stamina damage per second for 10 seconds

Lingering Damage Health - Deals 6 Poison damage per second for 30 seconds
Lingering Damage Magicka - Deals 12 Magicka damage per second for 30 seconds
Lingering Damage Stamina - Deals 12 Stamina damage per second for 30 seconds

Calm - Targets up to level 40 won’t fight for 30 seconds 
Frenzy - Targets up to level 40 will attack anyone nearby for 30 seconds
Silence - Targets up to level 40 are silenced for 30 seconds
Fear - Targets up to level 40 flee from combat for 30 seconds
Paralysis - Targets up to level 40 are paralyzed for 10 seconds
Command - Targets up to level 40 are placed under your command for 30 seconds 

Burden - Reduces enemy Movement and Attack Speed by 50% for 60 seconds
Damage Weapon - Reduces enemy weapon damage by 50% for 60 seconds 
Damage Armor - Reduces enemy armor rating by 300 for 60 seconds

Weakness to Fire - Reduces enemy Fire Resistance by 100% for 60 seconds.
Weakness to Frost - Reduce enemy Frost Resistance by 100% for 60 seconds.
Weakness to Shock - Reduces enemy Shock Resistance 100% for 60 seconds.
Weakness to Poison - Reduces enemy Poison Resistance by 100% for 60 seconds.

Notes


  • Damage Health, Magicka, and Stamina poisons deal (stacking) damage over time.
  • Lingering damage poisons are still clearly differentiated from other poisons.
  • Poisons replicate all of Illusion’s influence effects, including new archetypes added by Mysticism, allowing poison-focused characters to manipulate the battlefield. 
  • Poisons replicate all the new debuff effects added to Alteration by Mysticism, with higher potencies to compensate for their one-time-use nature.
  • All Poisons benefit from Weakness to Poison, allowing you to increase the strength of poisons such as Damage Armor, Fear, and Weakness to Magic.

Scrambled Bugs - Poison Resistance Patch 


In Skyrim, all poisons are automatically resisted by Poison Resistance, no matter what value is placed in the "Resisted By" field in their Magic Effects. This means that poisons such as Burden and Weakness to Fire are weaker against targets with high Poison Resistance, and stronger against targets with low Poison Resistance. It also means that Poisons of Weakness to Poison can be stacked infinitely, leading to ridiculous effects. Because of this, in earlier versions of Apothecary, debuff poisons were quite weak, because we had to assume the player was using Weakness to Poison effects to buff their strength considerably. 

However, Scrambled Bugs now comes with a "Poison Resistance" patch that allows us to create poisons that aren't resisted by Poison Resistance. This allows us to balance debuff poisons such as Damage Armor and Weakness to Frost in much the same way that we balance similar spells in Mysticism. It also allows the Weakness to Poison effect to exist without stacking with itself infinitely.

We strongly recommend that you download Scrambled Bugs and turn the "Poison Resistance" patch on. With the patch activated, poisons of Burden, Damage Weapon, Damage Armor, Weakness to Fire, Weakness to Frost, and Weakness to Shock will be fully resisted by an enemy with 100% Poison Resistance, since they are considered "immune" to Poisons. However, once you reduce an enemy's Poison Resistance to any value below 100%, debuff poisons will produce their full effect (this is similar to how Mysticism balances debuff spells). In addition, poisons of Weakness to Poison will work on targets even with 100% Poison Resistance, allowing alchemists to affect highly resistant enemies without resorting to other skills such as Enchanting or Alteration. This also solves the problem where poisons of Weakness to Poison are ineffective on the very enemies you'd most like to use them on.

With the Poison Resistance patch activated, Poisons of Damage Health, Damage Magicka, Damage Stamina, Lingering Damage Health, Lingering Damage Magicka, Lingering Damage Stamina, Calm, Frenzy, Silence, Fear, Paralysis, and Command continue to scale on Poison Resistance, meaning these poisons will be less effective against an enemy with high Poison Resistance and more effective against an enemy with low Poison Resistance.

General Changes and Removed Effects

Apothecary removes several potion effects from the game. Sometimes, these potion effects were removed for balance reasons (Fortify Smithing and Fortify Enchanting); sometimes, they were only removed because they were redundant with a new or existing effect (Damage Magicka Regeneration, Fortify Light Armor). Removing these effects allowed us to add our new effects with minimizing changes to existing recipes, so most of the combinations you remember will still work fine. However, in a few places, we did make changes to existing effects, and we do welcome feedback as to whether some effects feel rarer than they should be. We also changed the rarity of a few ingredients. Now that we’ve normalized the magnitude of all potion archetypes, it simply doesn’t make sense for items like Salmon Roe to be as rare as they are. Finally, we tweaked Sinderion's Serendipity (it's called Sinderion's Legacy now) to be a little more desirable and to work better with perk overhauls.

A list of removed effects can be found below.

Spoiler:  
Show
Fortify Smithing
Fortify Enchanting
Fortify Heavy Armor
Fortify Light Armor
Ravage Health
Ravage Magicka
Ravage Stamina
Damage Magicka Regeneration
Damage Stamina Regeneration


Compatibility

Apothecary is not compatible with other alchemy overhauls. You will need a patch for any mod that adds new ingredients, in order to adjust their magnitudes, durations, and gold values to be in line with Apothecary. Apothecary may also have some minor compatibility issues with mods that add new player-crafted enchantments. This is because both alchemy and enchanting mods need to make use of the same “Unused Actor Values” to implement their effects. The incompatibility should be limited to specific enchantments that use the same actor values as Apothecary.

The Simonrim Team 

Simon Magus (Nexus / Patreon) 
DeltaRider (Nexus / Patreon)
Oreo (Nexus / Patreon)
Colinswrath (Nexus / Patreon)

The Simonrim Suite

Aetherius - A Race Overhaul
Mundus - A Standing Stone Overhaul
Mysticism - A Magic Overhaul
Adamant - A Perk Overhaul
Hand to Hand - An Adamant Addon
Blade and Blunt - A Combat Overhaul
Arena - An Encounter Zone Overhaul
Scion - A Vampire Overhaul
Manbeast - A Werewolf Overhaul
Stormcrown - A Shout Overhaul
Pilgrim - A Religion Overhaul
Thaumaturgy - An Enchanting Overhaul
Artificer - An Artifact Overhaul
Sorcerer - A Staff and Scroll Overhaul
Apothecary - An Alchemy Overhaul
Gourmet - A Cooking Overhaul
Journeyman - A Fast Travel Overhaul
Candlehearth - An Inn Overhaul
Starfrost - A Survival Overhaul