Note: Although this mod is feature complete, it still requires some testing and is likely to undergo bugfixing and balance changes in the near future. If you download this now and offer helpful feedback, you have my thanks.

The Hermetic Art is a ground-up reimagining of Skyrim's alchemy system. The goal is to make the player feel more like a classic alchemist, hunched over old texts and mysterious instruments trying to discover powerful secrets. The changes THA introduces will be explained below, but first a notice...

Warning: The Hermetic Art adds significant complexity and time investment to alchemy without necessarily making it stronger than in vanilla Skyrim. This mod is not intended to fit neatly in to the regular dungeon-delving play style of Skyrim. It is aimed at those who specifically want to add depth to roleplaying an alchemist. Now on to the explanation.

Part 1 - Alchemy Stations

When you activate an alchemy station you will now see a list of options, as shown in the image below.

"Mix Potions" opens the normal alchemy menu. "Make Recipe" is for pre-determined recipes as described further below. The other 3 options are for refining raw ingredients.

Part 2 - The Ingredients

All ingredients are associated with 4-5 alchemical properties. However, most ingredients are gathered in their "raw" forms, which has only 1 "weak" property (weak properties are at 1/4 strength.) The other 3 properties, which are at full strength, are accessed by refining the raw ingredients with the Mortar and Pestle, Alembic and Calcinator. Ingredients can usually undergo 1 or 2 of these processes. The new refined ingredients are used in the regular alchemy screen exactly as normal.

Many of the properties associated with these ingredients are the same as in vanilla, but others have been changed around. Some alchemical properties have been removed entirely and new ones added. See more in the "Rebalancing" section below.

A handful of ingredients are considered "pure." These have all 4 properties at full strength, just as in vanilla. These ingredients are naturally in a form ideal for alchemy. There are also two "pure" ingredients, wheat and salt piles, that have all weak properties. These may be better saved for cooking. There are a couple other small exceptions to the system, for instance spriggan sap is now the ingredient distilled from a taproot.

Part 3 - Recipes

For those who do not wish to do all the experimentation to find potion combinations themselves, there is now the ability to create pre-made recipes. These recipes create many of the standard potions that can be found in the world. This comes with a couple pros and cons

Cons:
-Recipes must be learned before they can be used. They are unlocked by recipe notes and alchemy books that are sold by alchemists and found in loot.
-Each recipe requires 3 specific ingredients, often including something not found in basic alchemy, such as a particular alcohol or a filter material. The required ingredients get rarer as the potions get more powerful.

Pros:
-Since the recipes have fixed magnitudes, they can offer access to powerful potions with a minimal perk investment in alchemy.
-Recipes are the only way for the player to make fortify smithing and enchanting potions. These abilities have been removed from regular ingredients to break the enchanting - alchemy loop.


Part 4 - Rebalancing and Changed Effects

The magnitudes of alchemy ingredients and potions have been rebalanced and normalized. A given property can only be "strong" (full strength) or "weak" (1/4 strength). Restoration potions now work over the course of 5 seconds and most alchemy effects have had their maximum strength changed. Some effects have been removed from regular alchemy entirely (including the fortify crafting abilities as mentioned above,) and some new ones have been added.

Included in the changes to the effects is a remade system of curing disease through alchemy. Diseases are now divided in to maladies of the musculature, the skeleton, the cranium, and the blood. There are now separate effects for curing each of these categories. Only a very few ingredients still have the power to make a panacea. Best combined with a mod that makes it so you can't just instantly heal diseases at shrines.

Part 5 - Gold, XP and Perk Tree

The base value of most alchemy effects has been cut in half. This means player created potions wont be such an easy way to amass a huge fortune, and it also directly cuts down the xp gained by mixing potions. This is offset by gaining xp from refining ingredients, as well as flat xp bonuses every time you learn new recipes (whether or not you have the ability to actually brew them.) All of this is designed to make training alchemy less focused on mass production, and to reward experimentation and learning.

THA also includes an overhauled alchemy perk tree that makes more sense for the new system. Perks like experimenter and purity are less powerful and so have their requirements reduced.


And that's all the critical details. Everything else is best discovered by playing.

Compatibility

-CACO, Apothecary, etc. - This mod is completely incompatible with other alchemy overhauls like these.

-Ordinator, Adamant and other perk overhauls - Simply load the perk overhaul after this mod. The custom perk tree from Hermetic Art is no longer an integral part of the mod and can be safely overwritten

-Mods that add ingredients - Ingredients added by other mods will still behave normally when using this mod, This won't really cause any bugs, the added ingredients just won't match the balancing and flavor of this mod. I plan to add some patches for at least a few such mods

A note on SE/AE version:
THA doesn't use any SKSE functions and will work with both 1.5x and 1.6x versions of Skyrim. Currently the changes to ingredients have not been carried over to any of the CC content so if you're using them they will all act like "pure" ingredients and be out of balance. I plan to eventually create a separate version that changes at least all of the ingredients from the free update for AE users.

Credits

-Models for many of the powdered and calcinated ingredients are taken from the modder's resources made by Oaristys
-Models for many of the distilled ingredients are taken from xxAwesome_Potionsxx SSE by Lucifonxx
-Thank you to the folks on the r/skyrimmods discord for helping to answer my annoying scripting questions.
-Thank you to Jaiim for a nice little script improvement