Alchemy and ingredients

[caralampio]

I have a few questions regarding alchemy and ingredients.

First, do ingredients ever respawn in the fields? I have not seen them so far. If the ingredients are "one time only" (speak of limited resources!) then it seems terribly wasteful to lose a lot of them while self-training alchemy. Especially since some effects are shared by only three or four rare ingredients. When I started the game I cleaned all the surroundings of Seyda Neen from ingredients, I had a ton of Hypha Facia, violet coprinus etc. I even sold my "surplus". Now I rarely find these items, only sometimes in barrels or stores and in limited quantity.

Second question, is there a way to make alchemy easier (a mod perhaps)? It's so tiresome to take ingredient by ingredient and then check all the other ingredients in the slider to find any matches.

Third, about eating ingredients. NPC's sometimes suggest that you carry some food in case you become fatigued. But, I have eaten ingredients that restore fatigue (like kwama eggs) and my fatigue is not restored, it always says "this ingredient has no effects on you". But sometimes I have eaten stuff that harms and THOSE effects do happen, like Drain Agility. An article in this site suggests (and the game tutorial) that you eat ingredients to learn their effects but seeing that good effects don't occur, bad effects do, and the effects are NOT revealed to your character (a ? still shows) eating stuff as you do in Oblivion or Skyrim doesn't seem to be a good idea. Thoughts?

[dzio]

1. Yes, they do, it just takes a while (don't remember how long exactly). Shouldn't be an issue really, the world is huge, the vendors' inventory respawns too (some of them restock certain items immediately, so you can buy as much as you want - just buy all units, exit dialogue, open dialogue again and the same amount will be available again. Rinse and repeat.) and most potions can be created in several different ways. One rather annoying exception are Restore Magicka potions - they are essential for magic users but require rare ingredients. So my advice is - don't worry about common effects, hoard ingredients with rare effects you think will be useful for you, never waste anything with Restore Magicka effect. Also, look into alternatives - if Restore Magicka is unavailable, make some Fortify Magicka (that uses some of the most common ingredients out there).

2. I played vanilla Morrowind, so I don't know abut any mods. As for making the ingredient selection easier - first of all, it will get easier when you just remember the important combinations, without looking at the effects listed. Give it some time. And second of all - I made a colour-coded chart I always kept by my computer. Every character had their own chart, so I could roleplay them discovering those effects for themselves. But that may be a bit too OCD for you.

3. Eating the ingredient gives you a chance to be affected by its first effect. It doesn't always happen. I don't remember now whether the chance was higher with higher Alchemy skill levels, but it definitely is not zero, even for low-level characters.

[YogiBaar]

Second question, is there a way to make alchemy easier (a mod perhaps)? It's so tiresome to take ingredient by ingredient and then check all the other ingredients in the slider to find any matches.

You could use the potion maker on my Morrowind site and see if that helps, but that's not in-game, unfortunately.
http://morrowind.inventivegamer.com/tools/potion-maker/

[Denina]

It respawns every 3 game months. There are mods that make it shorter though, such as Nymeria's Monthly Respawn. There are a lot of ingredients in the game though so it's not easy to run out if you do enough exploring.