Alchemy is a versatile profession because it allows the player to craft the same potion in multiple different ways. This is mostly visible for alchemy potions with two alchemy reagents.

Once you take advantage of the Laboratory Use passive and start mixing potions using three alchemy reagents, you start getting very interesting results, and there’s only so many ways to craft a single, highly useful potion.

Here’s a list of the most useful ESO alchemy potions in each category, and also an overview of alchemy reagents; which are useful, which are not.

The following potions were discovered using our Alchemy Simulator, and they all take advantage of the Laboratory Use passive, meaning they’ve been created with three alchemy reagents.

There’s plenty of more useful potions out there, but these are probably the best potions you can have. Thanks to Tajin for providing us with a list for many of the potions in the comments!

Restoration Potions

These potions restore Health, Magicka and Stamina in a single sip. Very handy to have all around.

Potion Effects Alchemy Reagents Used Restore Health (increased duration)

Restore Magicka

Restore Stamina Bugloss

Columbine

Mountain Flower Restore Health

Restore Magicka

Restore Stamina Columbine

Lady’s Smock

Mountain Flower Restore Health

Restore Magicka

Restore Stamina Bugloss

Columbine

Dragonthorn

Bugloss, Columbine and Mountain Flower are your best friends if you’re looking for restoration potions.

Spell Damage and Spell Crit Potions

These potions focus on Spell Damage and Spell Crit, as well as Restore Magicka and Restore Health.

Great potions to have for almost anyone.

Potion Effects Alchemy Reagents Used Restore Magicka

Increase Spell Damage

Increase Spell Crit Cornflower

Lady’s Smock

Namira’s Rot Restore Magicka

Increase Spell Damage

Increase Spell Crit Cornflower

Lady’s Smock

Water Hyacinth Restore Health

Restore Magicka

Increase Spell Crit Columbine

Lady’s Smock

Water Hyacinth Restore Health

Restore Magicka

Increase Spell Crit Bugloss

Lady’s Smock

Water Hyacinth

Lady’s Smock and Water Hyacinth are both the most common reagents for spell potions.

Weapon Damage and Weapon Crit Potions

Weapon Damage and Weapon Crit potions also restore Stamina and/or Health.

These are very useful, but even more so for those who prefer physical weapon skills.

Potion Effects Alchemy Reagents Used Restore Stamina

Increase Weapon Damage

Increase Movement Speed Blessed Thistle

Dragonthorn

Namira’s Rot Restore Stamina

Increase Weapon Damage

Increase Weapon Crit (increased duration) Blessed Thistle

Dragonthorn

Water Hyacinth Restore Stamina

Increase Weapon Damage

Increase Weapon Crit (increased duration) Blessed Thistle

Dragonthorn

Wormwood Restore Health

Restore Stamina

Increase Weapon Crit (increased duration) Columbine

Dragonthorn

Water Hyacinth Restore Health

Restore Stamina

Increase Weapon Crit (increased duration) Dragonthorn

Mountain Flower

Water Hyacinth

Dragonthorn appears in all of the physical weapon potions. Enough said.

Utility Potions

These potions are situational, and provide immunities against crowd control, increase your movement speed, enhance your stealth detection and give you invisibility.

Potion Effects Alchemy Reagents Used Restore Stamina

Increase Weapon Crit

Become Immune to knockback and disabling effects Columbine

Dragonthorn

Wormwood Restore Stamina

Increase Weapon Damage

Increase Movement Speed Blessed Thistle

Dragonthorn

Namira’s Rot Restore Health

Restore Stamina

Become Immune to knockback and disabling effects Columbine

Mountain Flower

Namira’s Rot Restore Health

Restore Stamina

Become Immune to knockback and disabling effects Columbine

Mountain Flower

Wormwood Restore Health

Restore Magicka

Become immune to knockback and disabling effects Bugloss

Columbine

Namira’s Rot Restore Health

Restore Magicka

Become immune to knockback and disabling effects Bugloss

Columbine

Wormwood Restore Magicka

Increase Spell Crit

Become immune to knockback and disabling effects Columbine

Lady’s Smock

Namira’s Rot Restore Magicka

Increase Spell Damage

Increase your Stealth Detection Cornflower

Lady’s Smock

Wormwood Restore Stamina

Become immune to knockback and disabling effects

Increase Movement Speed Blessed Thistle

Columbine

Namira’s Rot Restore Health

Become immune to knockback and disabling effects

Vanish Blue Entoloma

Columbine

Namira’s Rot Increase Movement Speed

Vanish Blessed Thistle

Blue Entoloma

Namira’s Rot

Useful Alchemy Reagents

Based on the above lists, you can draw some conclusions about the usefulness of the different herbs, plants and mushrooms in ESO. Here’s how many times each single alchemy reagent occured in the potions above:

Columbine: 14

Dragonthorn: 9

Namira’s Rot: 9

Lady’s Smock: 8

Blessed Thistle: 7

Water Hyacinth: 7

Bugloss: 6

Wormwood: 6

Mountain Flower: 5

Blue Entoloma: 2

Cornflower: 2

Now, slapping a value on a reagent based on the number of occurances on this list isn’t very accurate, but it does give you a rough idea of how many different potions you can craft with it, and because of that, it should be in high demand.

Needless to say, Columbine is a great alchemy reagent to have. It restores health, stamina, magicka and provides immunity against CC effects.

Dragonthorn is another awesome ingredient. It is the only alchemy reagent which increases both Weapon Damage and Weapon Crit, so if you need a potion which does this, you absolutely need Dragonthorn.

Lady’s Smock is basically the Spell Damage and Spell Crit version of Dragonthorn. If you want a potion with Spell Crit and Spell Damage, you need Lady’s Smock.

Namira’s Rot (Spell Crit, Invisibility, Speed, Unstoppable) is a very useful ingredient for utility potions.

Less Useful Alchemy Reagents

Now there’s a whole bunch of alchemy reagents which didn’t even appear on the list above. Does it mean they are bad? Not necessarily.

In order to create an invisibility potion, for example, your options are very limited. Only Blue Entoloma, Namira’s Rot and Nirnroot have the Vanish trait. Nirnroot can be combined with either of them to create a simple Vanish potion.

Movement Speed potions are even more difficult to create, because there’s only two alchemy ingredients with the Speed trait: Blessed Thistle and Namira’s Rot.

There are some reagents which are simply useless, though. Emetic Russula (Ravage Health, Ravage Stamina, Ravage Magicka, Stun) only has negative traits. For as long as ESO does not allow you to craft poisons, the negative traits should be avoided, and the reagents with negative traits are only useful for alchemy experience.