POTIONS AND RECIPES

Potions are drinkable items that imbue the user with certain spell effects. Standard potion effects are very similar to the purchased version of the spell of the same name. Since most spell effects are based on level, you'll get greater benefit from potions at higher levels. You can find potions as treasure, occasionally you can buy them in the higher quality stores or you can make them yourself if you have access to a potion maker.

Potion makers are available to all temple members (except Julianos and Kynareth) and members of the Dark Brotherhood once a certain rank in the guild is achieved. For the Dark Brotherhood it's rank 3. For the temples, it varies between ranks 4 and 6.

To create a potion, the player must access the potion-maker. Once you get access, just click on "Create Potions" to open the screen. All items in inventory under “Ingredients” will be displayed on the left hand side of the screen. Please note that items on your wagon will not appear. Select the ingredients you want to mix by clicking on them and then click the “Mix” button. If you can't remember what ingredients go into a potion, clicking on "Recipes" will bring up a list of all recipes you have found. Clicking the recipe will move the ingredients into the mixer or tell you that you don't have all of the ingredients you need.

What follows is a list of known potions and their recipes. There are effects that are not listed here. Since there are many ingredients that can be combined in several different ways, the player can experiment with different ingredients and see what comes out (save the game before making the potion to conserve ingredients and before drinking the potion to conserve your character).

Recipes in BLACK are recipes that I have verified by finding and trying the recipe in the game. Recipes marked in ITALICS with a question mark (?) are alternative recipes given by other players, but which I have not tested. The change in ingredients may result in a stronger or weaker potion with the same effects as the original. Both "Restore Power" recipes are correct, but your game version determines which one is the right one for you.

In my (not-so) humble opinion, Bethesda goofed (big time) with the potion maker. Because you can mix ingredients in any combination you want, you can come up with some very non-standard potions with some very standard effects. However, you cannot NAME a potion. All non-standard potions are named "Potion of Unknown Powers" or somesuch. This is one of the things that makes the potion maker a major headache (and a major reason why I don't like it). Unless you want to remember each potion's position within your inventory (and it reverses each time you reload a game), you must either stick with one potion or take your chances on grabbing the right potion.

Ingredients

The following is based on the official hint book. It lists the various ingredients and their individual effects.

Potion Recipes

SPELLS AND EFFECTS

Magic and Spells are the heart and soul of "Daggerfall". I doubt that there is anyone who hasn't fantasized about being able to obliterate a boss/teacher/local bully/lawyer with a blast of supernatural energy or transform themselves into a superhero. The magic system of "Daggerfall" brings those fantasies to (virtual) reality and the spell is the focus through which those energies take form.

All "canned" classes in "Daggerfall" have at least limited magical ability. The standard ability is 0.5 times the character's Intelligence. Class benefits can (and do) increase this ability up to 3 times the character's Intelligence (or more with the addition of enchanted items). There are no spell components in "Daggerfall". All spell effects are generated from the character's innate magica.

Spells have six parts:

Effect: What the spell does and who it does it to;

Duration: How long the effect lasts;

Chance: The odds of a successful effect (usually a percentage);

Magnitude: How well the effect works;

Casting Cost: How much magica is required to generate the effect;

School: Which of the six magical skills are used to generate the effect.

For most characters, the casting cost will be the limiting factor. It is very difficult to cast a powerful spell with only a limited supply of magica. The way around this problem is to develop the skill/school required by the spell. As your skills in these schools increase, the casting cost decreases. Once your skill reaches 105% (achievable only through the use of enchanted items), the casting cost for all spells requiring that skill/school drops to 5 points.

What follows is a description of the spells that you can buy from the Mages Guild. These are the spells that are pre-made, not spells created in a spell-maker. The effects of these spells should be the same as spells which you can embed in an item by using the item-maker and/or make in a potion-maker. The icon for the spell will be different for items and potions, but the effects and duration should be the same. I have taken the liberty of highlighting those spells that I have found most useful in blue and those spells that I consider to be a must-have in red.

Spells and Effects (Table)

As used in the table, "School" is the school(s) of magic the spell uses as per the manual (D=Destruction, M=Mysticism, I=Illusion, R=Restoration, A=Alteration, T=Thaumaturgy), "Range" is the area of effect of the spell (T=Touch; C=Caster; AC=Area Around Caster; TR=Single Target at Range; AR=Area at Range), "Duration" is how long the effect will last (in rounds), "Magnitude" is how well it does what it's supposed to do, and "Chance" is the chance of successfully creating the effect. "Effect" is what the spell does and is more or less equivalent to what you'll select if you use the spell-maker to duplicate the effect of the spell.

Please note that Duration, Magnitude and Chance are functions of the level of the caster. Each spell has a base number plus an additional number per level of the caster. For example, Fenrick's Door Jam has a base duration of 1 round plus 1 round for each 25 levels of the caster and a base chance of success of 6% plus 1% per 10 levels of the caster. These are abbreviated as 1 + 1/25 and 6 + 1/10, respectively. Thus, a 25th level caster would have a duration of 2 rounds and a 8.5% chance of success in casting the spell.

Some spells, especially Destruction spells, give duration for the spell. This duration is probably not accurate unless “Continuous Damage” is one of the effects. Most of these spells are one-shot damage spells and do not inflict continuous damage. For continuous damage, the effect (at least in the spell-maker) is listed as "Continuous Damage", not "Damage" and the effect doesn't seem to work very well, anyway.

"Flare" is a spell listed in the manual, but I've never found it and am told it doesn't work anyway.

The following spells are listed in the manual, but I haven't come across them yet (doesn't mean they're not out there, just means I haven't come across them, but then again I haven't looked real hard). They can be duplicated in a spell-maker:

Acidic Field (Destruction), set area of effect to Area Around Caster, select Poison as the elemental field, and make it medium damage to health.

Ghost Form (Illusion/Thaumaturgy), set area of effect to Caster; choose effects of Invisibility and Levitation

Hand of Sleep (Destruction/Alteration), set area of effect to Touch and duplicate the Sleep spell

Harbour Air (Destruction), set area of effect to Area Around Caster, select damage health as the effect, select Frost as the elemental field, and make the amount of damage equivalent to Fire Storm or Toxic Cloud

Remedy (Restoration), duplicate the Cure Disease spell, but make the chance of success a little lower

Sanctuary (Illusion), duplicate the Invisibility spell, but select Invisibility True as the effect

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1063