Tripped on this today. Great post and I certainly wish I'd found it sooner!
Here is a somewhat different way of doing things that I came up with. My goal was not the least number of combines, but rather the most gold efficient means of accomplishing the goal of learning all effects up to and including dragon blood/bile on an untrained character. There are 32 combines total (though you'll have to do some filling combines between the two reagent and three reagent combines to get Alchemy Level to 15).
The Shopping List:
30-50 Ichor (this will vary by race, CP spending, and ESO Plus status, but 50 should be good even with no bonuses)
30-50 Slime
10 Gall
(none of these are very expensive so I've been a bit loose in the amounts as you'll likely have to buy in larger chunks if you don't have them on hand already)
Powdered Mother of Pearl 2
Clam Gall 2
Dragon's Blood 2
Corn Flower 2
Dragon's Bile 2
Torchbug Thorax 2
Columbine 2
Mudcrab Chitin 2
Beetle Scuttle 2
Blessed Thistle 2
Violet Coprinus 3
Scrib Jelly 3
Bugloss 2
Nirnroot 3
Namira's Rot 4
Lady's Smock 5
Water Hyacinth 2
Nightshade 3
Wormwood 3
Mountain Flower 3
Butterfly Wing 2
Dragonthorn 5
Spider Egg 4
Stinkhorn 3
Emetic Russula 4
Luminous Russula 3 (Get extra for filling the gap)
Imp Stool 3 (Get extra for filling the gap)
Blue Entoloma 2
White Cap 6
Fleshfly Larva 5 (Get extra for filling the gap)
(In September 2019 when I figured this out, this amounts to just over 26k gold according to TTC prices. It amounted to many k less than other popular methods I've seen.)
And the combines:
1) Beetle Scuttle / Mudcrab Chitin
2) Blessed Thistle / Emetic Russula
3) Bugloss / White Cap
4) Clam Gall / Fleshfly Larva
5) Corn Flower / Lady's Smock
6) Dragonthorn / Stinkhorn
7) Lady's Smock / Violet Coprinus
8) Violet Coprinus / White Cap
Level up to 15 and buy the Laboratory Use Skill to complete the remaining combines. (Fleshfly Larva with Emetic Luminous Russula or Imp Stool are cheapest.)
A quick note on how to do this the lazy way if you are on PC: Get the Potion Maker addon, and have all of the above-mentioned ingredients in your inventory/bank/craft bag. Then open the alchemy station, and make sure that nothing is highlighted, and hit Search. A list will pop up with a bunch of lock icons in the rightmost column. Click on each potion with a lock on it and hit R to craft, and it will unlock that potion recipe and tick off that usage for the ingredients. You can go down the list creating locked recipes and it will pop up the ones with ingredients you haven't mastered, and that will actually just present each ingredient to be unlocked as you go. As you master ingredients the locks go away so all you have to look for is that lock icon. I managed to get herbs and poisons finished in just a couple of minutes doing this, it was mindboggling. Great addon.
If you have already achieved Alchemy level 15 & have the Laboratory Use skill, then you can proceed with our fastest and cheapest method to learn all alchemical traits available, including those new with Greymoor!
What you need:
Spoiler
3 Beetle Scuttle
3 Blessed Thistle
3 Blue Entoloma
2 Bugloss
4 Butterfly Wings
3 Chaurus Eggs
2 Clam Gall
3 Columbine
2 Corn Flower
2 Crimson Nirnroot
2 Dragon's Bile
3 Dragon's Blood
3 Dragon Rheum
5 Dragonthorn
2 Emetic Russula
4 Fleshfly Larva
3 Imp Stool
3 Lady's Smock
2 Luminous Russula
1 Mountain Flower
2 Mudcrab Chitin
4 Namira's Rot
3 Nightshade
3 Nirnroot
3 Powdered Mother of Pearl
3 Scrib Jelly
3 Spider Egg
1 Stinkhorn
2 Torchbug Thorax
3 Vile Coagulant
3 Violet Coprinus
2 Water Hyacinth
2 White Cap
5 Wormwood
Which is 21,618 gold worth of mats according to average PC-NA TTC prices excluding the new mats to farm (3 Chaurus Egg, 2 Crimson Nirnroot, 3 Vile Coagulant).
Then, make the following 32 combinations at any Alchemy Station:
Fleshfly Larva + Nightshade
Lady's Smock + Namira's Rot
Beetle Scuttle + Butterfly Wing + Mudcrab Chitin
Beetle Scuttle + Butterfly Wing + Nirnroot
Beetle Scuttle + Lady's Smock + Violet Coprinus
Blessed Thistle + Dragonthorn + Stinkhorn
Blessed Thistle + Dragonthorn + Wormwood
Blessed Thistle + Namira's Rot + Scrib Jelly
Blue Entoloma + Bugloss + White Cap
Blue Entoloma + Clam Gall + Scrib Jelly
Blue Entoloma + Nirnroot + Spider Egg
Bugloss + Clam Gall + Spider Egg
Butterfly Wing + Columbine + Dragonthorn
Butterfly Wing + Scrib Jelly + Spider Egg
Chaurus Egg + Crimson Nirnroot + Vile Coagulant
Chaurus Egg + Dragon's Blood + Powdered Mother of Pearl
Chaurus Egg + Mudcrab Chitin + White Cap
Columbine + Corn Flower + Lady's Smock
Columbine + Namira's Rot + Wormwood
Corn Flower + Violet Coprinus + Wormwood
Crimson Nirnroot + Fleshfly Larva + Water Hyacinth
Dragon's Bile + Dragon's Blood + Dragon Rheum
Dragon's Bile + Fleshfly Larva + Namira's Rot
Dragon's Blood + Nightshade + Vile Coagulant
Dragon Rheum + Powdered Mother of Pearl + Torchbug Thorax
Dragon Rheum + Powdered Mother of Pearl + Vile Coagulant
Dragonthorn + Emetic Russula + Water Hyacinth
Dragtonthorn + Torchbug Thorax + Wormwood
Emetic Russula + Fleshfly Larva + Violet Coprinus
Imp Stool + Nightshade + Nirnroot
Imp Stool + Luminous Russula + Mountain Flower
Imp Stool + Luminous Russula + Wormwood
Please attribute this as "solution provided by Tevalaur of Sunshine-Daydream.org" if you share this on your website or anywhere else!
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This part with the potion maker addon is some of the worst advice i have ever received in this game. This is not a lazy method. I had to click through 135 pages looking for locks before it seemed that all locks had been resolved. This took around 250 steps, I'm not completely sure how many. That is shockingly economically wasteful. I can't imagine how someone thought this was a good way to do things, scrutinising for locks rather than just performing an efficient list. That advice is very bogus, I wish I could remove it.
A quick note on how to do this the lazy way if you are on PC: Get the Potion Maker addon, and have all of the above-mentioned ingredients in your inventory/bank/craft bag. Then open the alchemy station, and make sure that nothing is highlighted, and hit Search. A list will pop up with a bunch of lock icons in the rightmost column. Click on each potion with a lock on it and hit R to craft, and it will unlock that potion recipe and tick off that usage for the ingredients. You can go down the list creating locked recipes and it will pop up the ones with ingredients you haven't mastered, and that will actually just present each ingredient to be unlocked as you go. As you master ingredients the locks go away so all you have to look for is that lock icon. I managed to get herbs and poisons finished in just a couple of minutes doing this, it was mindboggling. Great addon.
For those that find this thread and otherwise are unaware of the resource, there's also a guide to leveling alchemy and learning traits within Sunshine Daydream's Guide to Alchemy.[/quote
Thanks for the guide Royal_Kitsune. Think I did everything in the first 2 lists in post #2 (not in order, I'd done some before finding the list), but had to do three more to complete:
i do think this might be because the order is important on this one due to most combines trying for at least two traits learned where i can but if someone else has this issue please let me know so i can fix!
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