The Witcher 3 Remastered Alchemy Guide: Oils, Potions, Bombs and Toxicity for Beginners

Other RPGs treat potions as panic buttons. The Witcher 3 expects the opposite order. A contract fight played properly looks like this: take the job, use your senses and the bestiary to learn what the monster is, then — before you draw — coat your blade with the matching oil, drink the potions the fight calls for, and keep the right bomb on your quick slot. On the higher difficulties, that preparation is simply how the game is meant to be played; on lower ones it is the difference between a slog and a clean kill.

The inputs are humble. Formulas are found in chests, bought from herbalists and merchants, and occasionally handed over by quests. Ingredients come from every herb bush you pass, every monster you gut, and every herbalist's stock — pick flowers compulsively from the first hour and alchemy never bottlenecks. Brewing itself happens right in the alchemy menu once you know a formula; there is no special table to find.

The game agrees with this guide, by the way: the prologue in White Orchard walks you through brewing your first Thunderbolt potion before the griffin contract, and the herbalist there will sell you what your gathering missed. That sequence is the whole system in miniature — a known monster, a prepared witcher, a short fight.

Oils are the highest-value habit in this entire guide, because they ask so little. An oil is crafted once and then applied freely, forever — it is never consumed and never needs re-brewing. Applying takes a few seconds in the inventory, and it must match the monster's class as listed in the bestiary:

Oils come in basic, enhanced and superior versions — each tier hits its target class harder, so upgrading the two or three oils you use constantly (necrophage and specter oil carry the early game) beats spreading ingredients thin. Two settings worth knowing: the options menu has an automatically apply blade oils toggle that coats your sword when combat starts, and if you played at launch and found it forgetful, patch 5.01 fixed it resetting between sessions — it is safe to rely on now.

Potions are your in-fight toolkit: drunk from the quick slots, they deliver a strong effect for a short window. The beginner shelf that covers most situations:

Every one of those drinks costs the same currency: toxicity. Each potion adds to Geralt's toxicity level; let it climb too high and the potions start poisoning their drinker — your health drains while the level stays in the red. Toxicity falls on its own over time, so potion use is a budgeting exercise: two potions for a hard fight is normal play, four at once is a medical event. Like oils, potions come in basic, enhanced and superior versions — stronger and longer, at a higher toxicity price.

Bombs are thrown, come in limited charges (meditation refills them — section 5), and each one exists to solve a specific problem. All eight, at roster level:

Beginner loadout logic: Northern Wind for control, Grapeshot for packs, Moon Dust in wraith country, and Dragon's Dream whenever a fight happens somewhere enclosed and flammable.

Decoctions are alchemy's heavy shelf and worth meeting early, even if you use them late. Each is brewed from a specific monster's mutagen — the trophy-chemical you loot from named and powerful creatures — and grants one strong, long-lasting effect modelled on that monster. The price is that a single decoction claims a large share of your toxicity budget for its whole duration, so the working rule is one decoction at a time, chosen for the fight: regeneration against attrition fights, damage against races, and so on.

Two famous examples, so the idea is concrete: the troll decoction steadily regenerates vitality for its whole duration, in and out of combat — the attrition-fight answer. The ekhidna decoction converts stamina spent (Signs, for instance) into vitality, which is why sign-heavy players prize it. Both flavours of thinking — "sustain through the long fight" and "turn my casting into healing" — are what decoctions are for; you will loot the mutagens long before you need to decide.

The refill rule that makes all of this sustainable deserves its own paragraph, because it is the fact beginners most often miss: meditate with strong alcohol in your inventory — alcohest or a strong spirit — and every potion and bomb you have crafted is refilled to full, automatically. You do not re-gather, re-buy or re-brew. One bottle of spirits after a hard day restocks your entire arsenal, which is why experienced witchers loot every bottle they see.

Alchemy is one of the four rebuilt trees — green, and organised into the same prerequisite chains as the rest: oils, bombs, potions and toxicity skills unlock off each other rather than off a points total, every skill has 3 ranks, and bought skills still need a slot to work. The trailer's own Alchemy screen shows the shape of it — flask icons for potions and oils, bomb and skull icons for the bomb and toxicity sides — and its readouts pair alchemy slots with green mutagens feeding vitality, alchemy's traditional stat pairing.

The reassuring part for beginners: the tree is an amplifier, not a gate. Oils, potions, bombs and the meditation refill all work fully with zero points in alchemy; the skills make individual pieces stronger, longer or safer (toxicity tolerance among them). Dip into the tree for the one family you lean on hardest rather than spreading points across all three.

Do my potions and bombs run out permanently? No. Once crafted, an item is yours forever. Meditate with strong alcohol (alcohest or spirits) in your inventory and your full stock of potions and bombs is restored automatically.

Why am I losing health after drinking several potions? Toxicity. Each potion raises it, and past the safe level it drains your health. Wait for it to fall between fights, and drink White Honey if you need it gone immediately — accepting that it clears your active potions too.

Do oils wear off or get used up? Neither. An oil is crafted once and can be applied before every fight at no cost; it never needs re-brewing. The only job is matching it to the monster's bestiary class — or turning on the auto-apply setting and letting the game do it.

Which oil and potion should a beginner make first? Necrophage oil (the early game is wall-to-wall drowners and ghouls) and Swallow (vitality regeneration forgives every other beginner mistake). Specter oil is third, the day your first wraith contract appears.

What is a mutagen, and why do monsters drop them? Mutagens are alchemical trophies from specific, powerful monsters. They have two jobs: slotted beside skills they boost the matching stat (green mutagens feed vitality, beside alchemy skills), and brewed into decoctions they grant a monster-flavoured power for a large share of your toxicity budget.

Do I need a workbench or a special place to brew? No. Once you know a formula, brewing happens in the alchemy menu wherever you are. Herbalists still matter — they sell formulas and the ingredients you are missing.