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I was curious to see just how high this could go without using the Fortify Restoration bug.

My reasoning went like this:
With Alchemy and Enchanting maxed, with all relevant perks and before any other shenanigans...
Best Fortify Enchant potion you can make: +15% (Enchanter's Elixirs give +25%)
Best Fortify Alchemy gear you can make : +20% (Peerless gives +25%)

Further, with an Enchanter's Elixir you're still only getting +22% to Alchemy. So self-made equipment isn't as good as the best stuff that can be found. But with no Fortify Alchemy rings and if using a Falmer Helmet, you're going to have to self-make those. To maximize that aspect, one would need to consume an Enchanter's Elixir while a vampire with Necromage... this makes the Elixir functionally +31%, which in turn allows the ring/helmet to be enchanted to +23% Alchemy.

I pick up some Peerless equipment, and with Necromage the +25% becomes +31%. I think to myself "Huh. I heard that Fortify Alchemy caps at +29%, and I think those people were talking base effect, not under active effects with Necromage... so maybe it can go even higher..."

From the Making_Money page...

When the process is complete, you should have Fortify Alchemy and Fortify Smithing enchanted clothing items = 29% each, Fortify Enchanting potions = 32%, and Fortify Smithing potions = 130%.

Thing is, with Necromage, a couple of Peerless items, and the other slots filled with self-made +23% items, my total Fortify Alchemy gets up to +146%. With that gear, the Fortify Enchanting potion I can make is +37% (which acts as +46% with Necromage). What's bizarre about this is that, from that point onward, the best Fortify Alchemy equipment I can make is +25% base. It's as if Necromage is making you hit some kind of cap prematurely... Although maybe using the Falmer Helmet plays some role?


For the curious, the best I was able to do was 5x +25% Fortify Alchemy items, which with Necromage is effectively +155% total. With that, I could make a +38% (+47% with Necromage) Fortify Enchanting potion. But since I wasn't able to hit +29% base, I can only assume that it's entirely possible to do better.

It's not that I'm all that interested in having an unstoppable killing machine.
I'm just curious what is actually possible and/or why this particular approach failed in the way it did.

There's a lot of things. Patches changing things that were forgotten to change in the wiki, timing out on the durations of potions, perks. Honestly I skipped the alchemy aspect of buffing.

EarlJ wrote: Best Fortify Alchemy gear you can make : +20% (Peerless gives +25%)

Unles something's changed since dawnguard came out for pc.... the best you can make without enchanting potions should be 25% fortify for alchemy (with 5/5 enchanter and the insightful enchanter perk).

Add in that the best possible crafted enchanted equipment usually has two effects instead of one, I don't see how any of the randomly generated peerless/extreme/etc pieces (which can get as high as 35% that i've seen) can compare to dual enchanted pieces of comprable effect magnitude.

Huh, well something must be up with my save. Maybe some one-off bug with the order I chose perks...

I double checked the other day: All relevant perks, skills maxed, character is not a vampire, nothing weird in active effects... and it's still coming up +20%. The only other thing I could think of is that the Breton's innate Resist Magic is being considered, but that seems... stupid. Besides that, I can still craft +40% Archery stuff, which is analogous to the Peerless level for that...

For background, I'm playing on the 360 with no patches.

EarlJ wrote:For background, I'm playing on the 360 with no patches.

And there's your reason. That certain enchantments only reached 20% instead of the 25% that they should, was fixed with the 1.1 patch if I remember correctly.