Max Fortify Enchanting, Alchemy, Smithing

How to get maximum Fortify gear and potions in Skyrim Special Edition

Intro

In this guide I will show you how to use the alchemy and enchanting loop in order to gain the max % increase boost in fortify alchemy, enchanting and smithing, combined with a few items: Ahzidals armor set, Black Book: Sallow Regent and Notched Pickaxe.

I'll keep it as shot and simple as its possible.

Preparation

First off make sure to have both Alchemy and Enchanting at 100 and the following perks installed:

Alchemy perks: Alchemist (5), Physician (1), Benefactor(1)
Enchanting perks: Enchanter(5), Insightful Enchanter(1)
*(x)= Perks points needed

Next make sure you obtain Ahzidals set thru the quest Unearthed[elderscrolls.wikia.com]
4 items are required to gain the active power Ahzidals Genius giving you a 10% increase on Enchanting(Boots are the most important, skip the rings as they wont help).




And obtain the Black Book: The Sallow Regent[elderscrolls.wikia.com] from White Ridge Barrow in Solstheim and complete the quest, giving you a switchable boon of 10% increase in any skill category:
Seeker of Might (Combat skills), Seeker of Sorcery (Magic skills), Seeker of Shadows (Stealth skills)



Geather Fortify Enchanting potion ingredients:

Blue Butterfly Wing (Easy to obtain)
Snowberries (Easy to obtain)
Spawn Ash (Easy to obtain)
Also: Spriggan Sap, Chaurus Hunter Antennae, Ancestor Moth Wing, Hagraven Claw

You need to combine 2 to make a potion, I suggest getting a lot of them to at least make 15 potions.

Get unenchanted items: Gloves, Head, Armor, Ring, Necklace at least 6-7 of each as we will be using them to steadily upgrade our gear.

And make sure you have previously obtained an item that has the Fortify Alchemy enchantment so you can disenchant it and learn the enchantment.

As well as atleast 30 Grand soul gems or Black Soul gems filled with grand souls needed for enchanting.

Having the Severin Manor[elderscrolls.wikia.com] house as your own will help a lot in this process as you can jump in and out of the Black Book realm(Apocrypha) and it having an Alchemy and Enchanting table.

Once you have this mega shopping list checked you can start!

What sorcery is this?!

Start off by reading the Black Book Sallow Regent and use the Seeker of Sorcery boon to get an increase in Magic skills (enchanting), read the book again to get out. Equipt Ahzidal set and start enchanting:
First round you will get a set of 28% increase in Alchemy, make the 4 items (Head, Armor, Ring, Necklace).



Jump into the book again(read it) and use the Seeker of Shadows this time to get an increase in Stealth skills (Alchemy), get out of the book, equipt the alchemy set and go to the alchemy table. Craft a Fortify Enchanting potion, you will get an 35% enchanting potion.



Now read the book again, and use the Seeker of Sorcery boon, get out, get to the enchanting table, equipt the Ahzidal set, drink the potion you made and craft the next set of gear to Fortify Alchemy!
You should now have a 32% increase in Alchemy per item.

Back into the book you go and get Seeker of Sorcery again, get out, equip the new alchemy gear, make the potion again, get 38% increase in enchanting potion.
Repeat the process to get the 34% increase alchemy gear, and a 39% potion.

Last time around is 35% increase in Alchemy and 40% in Enchanting!





The whole process is simple but sometimes confusing
1.Make a set of gear to increase alchemy with Sorcery boon
2. Equipt Alchemy set with Shadow boon = Fortify Enchanting potion
3. Equipt Ahzidal set + Sorcery boon + drink potion = Fortify Alchemy set
4. Repeat 2 and 3

Just make sure you have the right boon active and the right gear equipted, you can see this is in the Active Powers tab.

I believe this is the cap for these 2 Fortify options, if you have any information please feel free to share, more below.

Smithing

Every level of Smithing increases fortification results, having 100 is best.

Using the 35% Alchemy gear with Seeker of Shadows boon you can make a Fortify Smithing potion that gives you 158% increased smithing.
Using the potion to Fortify Enchanting by 40%(along side the Seeker of Sorcery boon) gives a 35% increase in smithing on gear, you can enchant a set of 4 items (Armor, Gloves, Ring, Necklace).

Using the boon Seeker of might gives you an additional 10% in all Combat skills (including smithing).

Notched Pickaxe does NOT WORK WITHOUT Unofficial Skyim Special Edition Patch (USSEP)

Using (equipping) the Notched Pickaxe (Found on top of the highest mountain in Skyrim, up from where Paarthurnax is) will give you a 5 point increase in smithing.



Notched Pickaxe does NOT WORK WITHOUT Unofficial Skyim Special Edition Patch (USSEP)

Caps based on game version

The fortification cap depends on what game version you have (this being a SE guide I presume you have all the DLC's) The results can differ. Just in case someone from oldrim is visting guides here, I will point out that:

Skyrim Base game cap for Fortify Smithing and Alchemy is 29%




Skyrim Legendary Edition and Special Edition cap for Fortify Smithing and Alchemy is 35%




Skyrim Creation Club Rare Curios cap for Fortify Smithing and Alchemy is 47%




Bethesda's official mods features
Having the Creation Club mod "Rare Curios" will add 51 new alchemy ingredients to the game, being an release from Bethesda I will include it to this guide.

The 3 following ingredients have a higher magnitued for a certian effect, resulting in an stronger final effect of the potion, meaning you can futrher increase the results to 47% on Smithing and Alchemy:

• Stoneflower Petals (Enchanting x2)
  
• Dreugh Wax (Enchanting x2 and Smithing x1.25)
  
• Gold Kanet (Smithing x1.25)

You can obtain these from the Khajiit traders if you have the Rare Curios mod owned and installed.

Combined with Ahzidal's Genuis and Sallow Regent boons the results are as seen in the pictures above.

This can result in some crazy final results, for example making an Dragonbone Warhammer and sharpening it makes the value of the item over 50k Septims!

Special Thanks to gaier19 For pointing this difference out!

Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch Changes

Very special Thanks to Finn for pointing this difference out!

Guide was published in July of 2018 and either no one noticed or no one reported that USSEP changes the results of fortify options in Skyrim, but it does, guide is now updated to show the vanilla game results.

I will include the USSEP results here as well, most people use the mod and it probably fixes something more than deliberately changes the fortify formula of the game.

Using the USSEP mod gives the following results:

Skyrim Base game cap for Fortify Smithing and Alchemy is 33%


Skyrim Legendary Edition and Special Edition cap for Fortify Smithing and Alchemy is 41%]


Skyrim Creation Club Rare Curios cap for Fortify Smithing and Alchemy is 47%


Will also point out that:
Notched Pickaxe Works with the USSEP Patch.

Additional info and Thank you

Making the alchemy gear first instead of making the potion first made the process a bit faster.

Potion effects last 30 seconds, this pauses during some dialog boxes but keep track of the enchantment results, or just click and press buttons fast.

You can have 2 enchanting options with the Enchanting perk Extra Effect.

Having OP gear can kill the game challange, you can one hit most enemies which can be fun for a while but gets borring pretty fast, can suggest mods that rev up the game difficulty if you already make op gear.

Also having mods installed may affect the process in some way, having mods that change the game mechanics of any of these skills will alter the results but the method should still apply.

Thank you for reading my guide on increasing Alchemy, Smithing and Enchanting fortification! Feel free to give your own results in the comments, as I have looked into this topic for a while and could not find consistent result on the internet.

Check out my other Skyrim guides on Steam:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1226889727

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1815333697
You can find more of my screenshots on Flickr :)[www.flickr.com]



And have a nice day :)

[LMBMotorsports]

I glitched this accidentally on xbox360 11 years ago. I was able to go WAY higher then this, it was insane that the dps got so high I could 1 hit anything in the game. Could walk away from the game and take damage and never get hurt. kinda broke the game as it became basic at best. Nice guide.

[Quacamolio]

I got 39% without mods on Special edition with all cc. Necromage with vampire. without using any CC ingredients.
But actually it isn't 39 % because the 25 % needs to be applied on the item u are wearing so it's 48 % alchemy. U can check this in active effects.
I was trying to get max amount so I needed only 2 items to get 100 % reduction on any school.
Also something fun to now is, captain boots and boatswain boots are seen as clothes. So you can have 5 gear slots with fortify smithing. In a way it's not intended but yeah.
You can make it as OP as you want. But it's a good way to play a character that is good at multiple things

[Lampros]

Ah, okay; so it's not something I can just pluck up from vanilla or minimal mods! ;)

[Keen]

Thank you! She was made with mods, at that time I was using Enchaned character edit with UNP body mod and BIJIN skin, KS Hair mod.

[Lampros]

Utterly gorgeous character right above. Was she created with vanilla character selection tools or with mods?

[Keen]

Hi, personally I did not try with the necromage perk as it goes down i long road to follow, might give it a try for a future guide? Thanks for reading.

[X_m7]

Has anyone tried combining the Rare Curios version with the Necromage perk (so no USSEP) and pushing it to the limit? When I tried that (so Sallow Regent + Ahzidal set + Rare Curios + Necromage) I got past 100% fortify alchemy per item, but it tapers off really slowly, like 14 iterations and it's still not done so I stopped there. Combining all that with the Falmer helmet glitch makes it go off the rails, it got past 1000% fortify enchanting at one point so I stopped that too, it was starting to look like the fortify restoration glitch lol.

In the end I decided to settle on Ahzidal + Rare Curios + Necromage (so effectively swapping out Sallow Regent with Necromage), it stopped at 55% fortify alchemy, 113% fortify enchanting and 281% fortify smithing, with the advantage that the black book is out of the way, and it also stopped at about 7-8 iterations too.

Anyway, thanks for the guide, being able to find a reference for the maximums without USSEP and the Necromage perk was awesome!

[Schatz'LoonieS]

Thank you for the guide, and yeah I make 1 set overpowered Armor and Weapon.
but I think I will throw away my armor cause of imbalance, it took me 8x hit to kill Revered Dragon with greatsword at legendary difficulty. but still, I'm glad to try this! thank you

[Keen]

Hey glad I helped :)

[Cheruser Colicabill]

finally i'v got 100% spell reduction in one piece of armor (ring, armor, head or necklace), thanks to u and to rare curious <3