How to make Alchemy any good

[FrankMcFuzz]

I've been experimenting with this system for a while now. I've been able to come up with a really easy and cheap quicksilver healing potion which is cool, I'll let you know how to make it if you want it, and a couple decent stat buffs, but usually they come with wounds so big and severe they're not worth it.

Hand-picking ingredients with the same effects from the wiki don't seem to work, example:
Puffball, lampstalk, and duskfern all contain the Int stat; however, using a herbal grind of puffball/lampstalk with a duskfern swill creates a potion for sewing, which is not contained in any of the base ingredients. (poison tho)
BUT, when I tried this again with a herbal grind of duskfern/lampstalk with puffball swill creates an elixer that is only poison, with no stat buff, even though it's all the same ingredients!

Adding lye to anything seems to poison it entirely, I've been having more success not including the higher tier concoctions like brimstone and lye reactions, because I don't really understand when they should be used.

Basically, my questions are:

1) How do I make this worth it?
2) How can I remove/lower/change the wounds incurred?
3) How can I even know what works if it's all just totally random when ingredients are used in different orders during the production?

[Sevenless]

1) How do I make this worth it?
2) How can I remove/lower/change the wounds incurred?
3) How can I even know what works if it's all just totally random when ingredients are used in different orders during the production?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/ ... /htmlview#

All the data is old, just read the info in the first tab. It describes how the various systems work pretty well.