Skyrim web app knows all 21,000 cocktail recipes

A new web app has been released containing approximately 21,000 alchemy recipes in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Speaking exclusively to GamesBeat, co-creator Jason Bradicich of Adena Studios shared some details of the app’s creation and functionality.

“My friend and I created a web app for Skyrim to show us which potions we can create based off the ingredients in our inventory,” says Bradicich. “We thought the idea was pretty cool and figured we would slap a coat of paint on it and put it out there for the public to enjoy. It’s a huge help while playing the game it you’re into Alchemy.”

The web app was designed to be instantly accessible to anyone, with no registration required or cost to use. “Just load up which ingredients you have in your inventory, hit the button, and the site will show you which potions you can create. All 21,000 recipes, even multi-effect potions.”

For those who have already dabbled in Skyrim’s Alchemy gameplay, or are more interested in the algorithem powering the app, Bradicich explains. “It’s a little bit like those cocktail mixer apps where you put in all of the ingredients you have in your kitchen and it will show you all the drinks you can make.”

“Every ingredient that you can harvest has four attributes,” he continues. “When you combine ingredients you get a potion containing any attributes that the combined ingredients share. For example:

• Giant’s Toe: Damage Stamina, Fortify Health, Fortify Carry Weight, Damage Stamina Regeneration
• Hanging Moss: Damage Magika, Fortify Health, Damage Magika Regeneration, Fortify One-Handed
• Rock Warbler Egg: Restore Health, Fortify One-Handed, Damage Stamina, Weakness to Magic

“…the attributes in bold are shared between ingredients so combining these in this example would give you a potion that Fortifies Health, Fortifies One-Handed, and Damages Stamina. In the game there are anywhere from two-effect to five-effect potions.”

Bradicich went on to say that figuring out the recipes in-game can be a troublesome effort. You’d either have to look it up online, or find and eat the 93 different ingredients (some of which are extremely rare) multiple times to learn their effects.

“[We] solved the problem by finding a list of all the ingredients with their attributes, loading them into a database, then creating an algorithm that would match them all up according to the formula above,” says Bradicich. “It took us several days of moonlighting to perfect the algorithm and develop it and the site. It then took us 30 minutes just to run the algorithm. Once complete it had created about 21,000 different recipes. We haven’t tested all of them (for obvious reasons) but we have done a lot of testing. So far we have yet to find an error and have yet to hear of one from anyone using the site.”

Of course, we had to ask… out of all of the potions found within the game, which one would Bradicich make if he only had enough ingredients for one? “It would have to be Fortify Magika. This is because when you have Magika you can pretty much do anything else. It’s like wishing for more wishes from a genie in a bottle.”

You can check out the web app here.

For more on ways to bend Skyrim to your will, check out GamesBeat’s first and second guides.