Alchemy Recipes List - Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 Guide - IGN (2025)

Alchemy is a crucial part of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. During your adventures, you'll want to mix brews (such as Digestive Potions) to fix all sorts of ailments and to give you the edge. Before we get into the recipes, read up first on how to find spots to actually brew the potions (or if you'd rather, click or tap here to skip to the recipes).

How and Where to Brew Potions

Potions can only be brewed at Alchemy Benches. You’ll find the first in Bozhena’s Hut during Kingdom Come Deliverance 2’s length tutorial section. The next bench you can use is in Troskowitz, right next to the Apothecary on the west side of the settlement. Both the Alchemy Bench and the Drying Rack in Troskiwitz are yours to use, and it won’t be counted as trespassing.

During the story sequence of brewing medicine for Hans in Bozhena’s Hut, you’ll get a brief rundown of how potion-making works. There are 8 different parameters that affect the type and quality of the potion you’re brewing:

1. The liquid base you pour into the cauldron, whether it be Water, Wine, Oil, or Spirits.
2. The amount and the order of the ingredients you add to that base.
3. Whether or not you grind those ingredients in the mortar and pestle.
4. The heat of the fire, controlled by the bellows.
5. The position of the cauldron, which can be moved down to bring your mixture to a boil.
6. The timing of each boil, as measured by the sandglass on the alchemy bench.
7. The method for extracting your potion, whether to distill it or simply pour it out when it’s done.
8. The quality of your available ingredients.

If you make a mistake while brewing a potion and it affects the quality, Henry will often comment on what exactly went wrong to help you dial it in for next time.

Perks such as Secret of Equilibrium 1 and 2 make the process more forgiving, meaning you can make simple mistakes such as mistiming a boil or using the wrong amount of an ingredient without sacrificing potion quality.

Secret of Secrets, which you can unlock after reaching Alchemy level 16, adds a new tier of potion quality when you follow the recipe's precise instructions. This new high-quality tier of potions will be marked with Henry’s name, so instead of Strong or Weak Marigold Decoction, you’ll get a handful of Henry’s Marigold Decoction. Learn more about helpful alchemy perks, tips and more in the How to Get Better at Alchemy guide.

Better Living Through Chemistry

Your most frequent method of learning a new potion recipe is simply to buy it from an apothecary. These are expensive at 100-200 groschen apiece, but once you know a recipe it's yours for good.

Alternatively, you can experiment to find new recipes. When you're at an alchemy bench, turn to the herb shelf and interact with it to choose specific items from your inventory that you can add to a brew. As long as you've hit upon the right combination of ingredients for a potion, if not necessarily the right directions, Henry will usually count it as a discovery and write the actual recipe in his journal.

You can thus learn many of the recipes in the game for "free" by purchasing them, writing down the formula, then reloading your last save and creating the potion at the closest alchemy bench.

Alchemy Recipe Cheatsheet

Another option is to use this guide to fill out Henry's potion list as soon as you can and never spend a single groschen on recipes. You can find every potion ingredient in the game as soon as you get out of the stocks in Troskowitz, although you'll have to buy a few from traders, so you can start your alchemy career straight away.

This can do some damage to KCD2's early power curve, as it gives you a reliable source for potent early-game potions like Fox, but it's a handy option for speedrunners.

It's a little meta-gamey, but here's a quick cheat sheet for every potion in the game. While you'll have to buy some materials from grocers or apothecaries, you can find the ingredients for almost every alchemy project (besides Fever Tonic) in the game in the first major area. Many of them don't even require you to leave Troskowitz.

If you're looking to get every recipe in one long crafting session, your "shopping list" for all the recipes besides Fever Tonic would look like this:

• 1 Amanita muscana
• 8 Belladonna
• 2 Boar's Tusks
• 3 Chamomile
• 3 Charcoal
• 1 Cobweb
• 4 Comfrey
• 7 Dandelions
• 7 Eyebright
• 1 Henbane
• 3 Herb Paris
• 1 Leached Coal
• 5 Marigold
• 7 Mint
• 4 Nettle
• 5 Poppy
• 5 Sage
• 2 Saltpetre
• 4 St. John's wort
• 2 Sulphur
• 4 Thistle
• 5 Valerian
• 7 Wormwood

Alchemy Recipes List

As the tutorial tells you, every potion recipe starts with a liquid base. These are provided by the infinite bottles of water, spiritus, oil, and wine that are found on the left side of every alchemy bench in the game. You never have to buy wine or drinking water to use in a recipe.

When recipes mention a "turn," this refers to a single turn of the sandglass at each alchemy bench. This is a crucial part of the process. Allow each boil to go on for just as long as the recipe suggests. Once you've got a handle on alchemy, you can time it out in your head or with a stopwatch app, as each turn lasts about 9 seconds in real time, but don't simply freestyle the timing.

As far as we can tell, there are a total of 27 alchemy recipes in KCD2: 22 potions, 3 types of poison, and 2 types of gunpowder. The in-game Crafting menu says there are 24 potion recipes, however. We're still on the hunt for those last 2.

Aesop

"Increases riding and dog-handling skills. If good quality, animals will take less notice of you and dogs won't bark at you."

This potion comes in handy for both hunting and burglary. It can let you get the drop on roving wolf packs, sneak by villagers' guard dogs, or get Mutt to do more damage in a fight. In less violent news, it's also helpful when horse racing.

While it may look like it's tricky to make Aesop without hunting, you can buy 2 out of the 3 ingredients straight from Aranka at the Nomads' Camp.

Aqua Vitalis

"Reduces loss of health and slows bleeding."

This potent defensive potion reduces the amount of Health you lose when struck by an enemy attack. If you have the chance to prepare for a fight at all, such as when you're going into an arena, a high-quality Aqua Vitalis can give you a significant edge.

Artemsia

"Increases Strength by 2 for 10 minutes."

Try as you might, there are a few points in KC:D2 where you can't avoid an old-fashioned swordfight or brawl. For those moments, Artemsia comes in handy as a performance enhancer. The Strong brew also helps cover one of your weakest spots by lowering the Stamina cost of your primary combat actions.

Bane Potion

"Reduces health by 110, resulting in certain death. Decreases health faster if good quality. More suitable for poisoning cooking pots than applying to weapons."

You can use Bane potion on food to create poisoned lures, which can come in handy if you're looking to take out wolves or boars. Alternatively, if you're sneaky, you could take out the odd bandit camp by sneaking in at night and poisoning their stew pot.

While Bane is always fatal once administered, it works dramatically faster at high qualities.

At time of writing, the recipe for Bane Potion in Henry's recipe book identifies one of the ingredients as "fly agaric." In your Crafting menu, this ingredient is correctly listed as Amanita muscaria.

Bowman's Brew

"Improves your archery skill and if good quality, reduces the loss of stamina while aiming."

Archery in KC:D2 is a lot harder than it looks. Bowman's Brew can counteract some of that by making it less stamina-intensive to hold your bowstring back, which gives you more time to line up your shot.

Buck's Blood

"Increases stamina and increases stamina regeneration if good quality."

As you'll notice early on, the biggest limiting factor in KC:D2's combat is stamina management. Buck's blood helps remedy that by providing a long-lasting buff to Henry's stamina meter. Once you've found a decent source for comfrey, it's worth keeping a few bottles of Buck's blood on you throughout the game.

Chamomile Decoction

"Sleep heals you faster and if good quality, Energy replenishes faster while sleeping."

Chamomile can be found everywhere in KC:D2. While Sage is less common, this is still a good starter recipe to grind up your Alchemy skill. Given how long the effects last, it's also a useful potion to keep going on Henry in the early game when you're mostly stealing short naps in stolen beds. Once you've got a few permanent places to sleep, chamomile decoction loses some of its utility.

Cockerel

"Increases Energy and if good quality, slows tiring."

Did you know that energy drinks were invented by Bohemian alchemists in 1403 AD?

Cockerel is a decent potion to have on hand when your Energy is low but you're nowhere near a usable bed. It gives you that much more time before Henry is forced to find somewhere to sleep.

Digestive Potion

"Reduces the feeling of fullness after food and cures food poisoning. If good quality, cures any poisoning, as well as boosting your vitality."

Digestive potions are situational, but really helpful when you need them. Specifically, food poisoning is a serious threat in KC:D2; it drains your Health at a steady rate, which can kill you, and doesn't expire on its own. If you aren't paying attention and eat some bad meat before bed, you can end up dead. That makes it worthwhile to keep even one weak digestive potion on hand for emergencies, even if it's just in your magic item bench.

You can also use a digestive potion to counteract the Stamina debuff you get if your Nourishment goes above 100.

Dollmaker Potion

"Makes running impossible and reduces weapon skills. Decreases health as well if good quality. Suitable for applying to weapons rather than poisoning cooking pots."

You can apply Dollmaker to your weapons to partially paralyze opponents. This prevents them from running, impacts their combat skills, and at high quality, inflicts a slow damage-over-time debuff.

If you're planning to play Henry as an archer, use Dollmaker on your arrows to tilt fights in your favor. It's a lot easier to run away and wear your target down if they can't move at a pace above a walk.

Embrocation

"Increases agility and if good quality, reduces the amount of stamina used by sprinting."

If you like using faster weapons or skirmish tactics, Embrocation was made for you. It's a little harder to make than the other potions on this list, as it requires boars' tusks, but provides a short-lived bonus to your Agility.

Fever Tonic

"Fever and related complications can often end in death. This tonic reduces fever if given in time."

This plot-required potion has no use in the field. In a typical run through the game, you'll make it once during a main story mission and never again. It's equally effective at every quality level.

Fox

"Improves speech and speeds up reading if good quality. Also increases the amount of experience gained if best quality."

One of the annoying ironies of KC:D2 is that if you're playing legitimately, you won't be able to make Henry's custom Fox potion until you're far enough into the game that you won't really need it. The recipe doesn't show up until relatively late in the story and you can't get the Secret of Secrets perk until you're an accomplished Alchemist. That being said, it does come in handy for any social challenges at any level, and the experience boost from max-quality Fox can be useful if you need to grind up some unused skills.

Hair o' the Dog

"Reduces drunkenness, or if good quality, restores complete sobriety and also helps with hangovers and alcoholism."

You can get a little drunk in KC:D2 to provide some short-lived stat bonuses, particularly to Speech and Vitality, but it's easy to overdo it. If you need to get sober fast, or you've been drinking enough that Henry's becoming an alcoholic, Hair o' the dog can help fix you up.

If you end up drinking with the Cumans in the "Invaders" side quest, Hair o' the Dog will not act to remove Henry's blurred vision. You're stuck with that until the next morning.

Lead Shot Gunpowder

"Gunpowder used to fire lead shot that even the best plate armour can't stop at close range. For safety reasons, load only when sober."

Hey, everybody, let's help end feudalism! This is ammunition for Henry's hand cannons and cannot be used by itself. It has no quality levels.

Lethean Water

"If you want to put to rights the imprudent choices of your life, all it takes is 1 mouthful, and you can choose your perks anew. Beware, though, the process is irreversible and painful!"

As Greek mythology nerds may have guessed already, you can drink Lethean Water to automatically reset all your level- and skill-derived perks and refund all the associated points. It does not affect perks like Lab Dweller that you receive from attaining in-game goals, nor does it affect any temporary buffs you might have at the time.

Reportedly, drinking Lethean Water can cause Henry to black out for a few hours. It seems like it might be relatively rare, but even so, you're better off waiting until you're somewhere safe to drink your Lethean Water.

Lethean Water has no quality levels.

Lion Perfume

"A strong but short-lasting perfume. Substantially increases charisma for short periods, but reduces charisma if combined with another perfume."

If you're trying to fast-talk your way through KC:D2, Lion perfume is a helpful way to get someone on your side. In an age where nobody smells good, perfume is apparently social magic. Don't try to double-dip on Lion and Mintha, however, as they actively lower your Charisma if used in concert.

It's also worth noting that Lion is one of the easiest recipes to make, with only 2 ingredients and 3 real steps. The sage can be a sticking point and you'll probably have to buy most of the mint, but it's a solid pick for power-leveling your alchemy.

Lullaby

"Reduces Energy to 0. Reduces Stamina regeneration if good quality. Suitable for applying to weapons and for poisoning cooking pots."

Your basic sleeping poison. It doesn't drop enemies on the spot, but instead, slows them down and lowers their Stamina. Anyone outside of combat afflicted with Lullaby will usually go straight to bed, which gets them out of your hair for a while. If you're looking for a non-lethal way to neutralize a building or a bandit camp, Lullaby's your best bet.

Marigold Decoction

"Gradually heals part of your health. Helps against hangover, or cures it immediately if good quality."

This is the closest thing to a "healing potion" that exists in KC:D2. While the healing is never fast enough to make a real difference in a fight, it remains the best of your available options for regenerating health in the field. It's also really easy to make, with two common ingredients and an uncomplicated brewing process.

Mintha Perfume

"A weak but long-lasting perfume. Slightly increases charisma for a longer period, but reduces charisma if used with another perfume."

Mintha is the flip side of Lion, exchanging potency for duration. It's more complicated to make than Lion, but all the ingredients can be found for free without leaving Troskowitz as long as you don't mind stealing mint from the apothecary's garden. It's useful to have some in your back pocket for negotiations or to smooth-talk your way into a certain wedding.

Moonshine

"Henry's home-made moonshine. A strong drink that is sure to put you in a good mood."

Aged for well over 30 seconds, this bathtub hooch is good fuel for bad decisions. It has no alchemical quality levels and is one of the strongest alcoholic beverages in the game. Have fun.

Nighthawk

"You will see better in the dark and your Energy will deplete slower or if good quality, not at all."

It's night-vision goggles in a glass. Nighthawk lets you see more effectively in darkness with a visual effect that looks a lot like you've just turned up the contrast setting on the world.

Here's a dark basement without Nighthawk:

Here's the same basement after drinking some Nighthawk:

It's very effective if you're creeping around underground or at night, but does come with a natural drawback: Nighthawk means you see much less effectively in good light. It's almost not worth using it during the day, as it means you're virtually flashblind if you have to go back outside. Still, if you're playing KC:D2 as a hardcore burglar, you'll never want to be without some Nighthawk.

Painkiller Brew

"Lessens the effects of wounds and reduces the amount by which maximum stamina decreases with health."

Look, they didn't know about rum yet. You make do.

As you've likely noticed, your maximum Stamina drops in direct proportion to the amount of health you've lost. Painkiller doesn't actually keep you from losing any of that health -- that's what Aqua Vitalis is for -- but it does keep your injuries from lowering your Stamina cap. That can make a big difference. You're also much less hindered if you try to move or fight while heavily injured.

Quickfinger Potion

"Increases thievery and craftsmanship skills."

Picking pockets is difficult, but Quickfinger can make it measurably easier. If you're somehow not thieving your way through KC:D2, the same potion also helps you with other skills like blacksmithing.

Saviour Schnapps

"Saves the game and if good quality, boosts strength, vitality and agility."

It's save-scum soda. Saviour schnapps is required if you want to make a quick-save. Notably, the better-quality it is, the more benefits it confers, so you'll want to be careful about what quality of it you use at any given time. If you aren't actually heading into a fight, the stat bonuses from the good stuff will be wasted.

Saviour schnapps gets Henry tipsy, so you'll incur the Drunkenness debuff any time you use schnapps to quick-save. Keep this in mind if you're about to do something that would be impacted by alcohol, such as attempting to make gunpowder.

Scattershot Powder

Warning: When the instructions say "load only when sober," they aren't kidding. Being even a little drunk when you successfully complete a gunpowder recipe, i.e. from recently drinking Saviour schnapps, will kill Henry on the spot.This unlocks the Hic-Hic-Boom trophy/achievement.

"Gunpowder used to fire scrap iron and other small projectiles. Will pierce anything with ease at close range, but is ineffective at long range. For safety reasons, load only when sober."

As long as we've overthrowing the feudal system, we might as well invent the sawn-off shotgun. Like lead shot, scatter shot is ammunition for Henry's hand cannon and cannot be used by itself. It has no quality levels.

Soap

"You can't wash your own clothes without soap."

You need a bar of Soap if you want to do your own laundry, rather than paying for the service at a bathhouse every time. This can be accomplished at various spots around the map, the first of which you'll find is a small pond near Semine.

Your homemade Soap has no quality levels.