Marth's Alchemy Overhaul (MAO)

A load-order-aware Skyrim SE overhaul that replaces single-use potions with permanent, reusable Flasks. Instead of brewing consumables that vanish on use, you gather abstracted essence in the field, learn effect blueprints by analyzing potions you find, and configure a small kit of flasks you refill and reuse forever. Vendors stop selling potions; the world's potions become the recipes you unlock. The perk tree and the ingredient economy are calibrated to your actual load order, so the numbers fit whatever list you play — nothing is hardcoded.

Requiem / LoreRim compatible — the patcher targets whatever alchemy tree wins in your load order and installs on top of it rather than fighting it.

What it does

• Essence, not ingredients. Harvesting flora and looting creatures increments a three-tier essence pouch (Base / Catalyst / Apex) instead of filling your inventory.
• Flasks, not potions. A small perk-scaled kit (2–6 flasks, 2–9 charges) of permanent flasks, each configured with a discovered blueprint. Dry flasks refill from your pouch on sleep or a background timer.
• Blueprints from the world. Analyze a potion you find to learn its effect.
• Coatings. Offensive blueprints become timed weapon coatings (with the Vanguard Coating perk).
• Two economy modes via an MCM toggle: essence mode (default), or ingredient mode where a flask charge instead costs its recipe ingredients out of your bags. Blueprint learning works in both.
• A rebuilt perk tree (via the Synthesis patcher): flask-focused perks replace vanilla's brewing perks; non-crafting perks your list ships are kept. Without the patcher, the perks auto-grant by Alchemy skill so the mod is still fully playable.
• Native-first. Flask, essence, and blueprint state lives in the C++ SKSE plugin and serializes to the SKSE co-save — no Papyrus save bloat, instant effect application in combat.

Requirements

• SKSE64 (Skyrim SE 1.6.1170 / Anniversary Edition)
• Address Library for SKSE Plugins
• SkyUI and MCM Helper (the configuration menu)
• Synthesis — recommended, not strictly required. Adapts the perk tree and ingredient tiers to your load order. Without it, perks auto-grant and tiers use a built-in fallback.

No DLC required (Dawnguard/Dragonborn only add extra ingredients to the pool).

Install

1. Install with your mod manager near the end of the load order; enable MAO.esp.
2. Add the Synthesis patcher — open the shipped MAO.synth, or in Synthesis add a Git Repository patcher for https://github.com/marthofdoom/MAO (project installer/MAO.Synthesis/MAO.Synthesis.csproj) — and run it.
3. Re-run Synthesis after any load-order change so the perk tree and ingredient tiers stay matched to your list.

See assets/MAO-README.txt for the full user guide.

Development

Built entirely on Linux with no Creation Kit and no xEdit: MAO.esp is generated byte-by-byte from MAO_GenerateESP.py, the CommonLibSSE-NG plugin builds on GitHub Actions (MSVC), and the load-order patcher is a shared C# codebase used by both a standalone CLI and the Synthesis patcher. Releases are cut immutably into releases/ by tools/release.sh. Documentation entry point: Docs/INDEX.md (ARCHITECTURE / INVARIANTS / ANTI_PATTERNS).

Quest compatibility

Quest items and quest-flagged items are protected automatically — they never convert (e.g. Vaermina's Torpor, Jarrin Root, Berit's Ashes, the White Phial).

A few quests instead ask you to gather or hand over ordinary ingredients (The Only Cure wants Deathbell + Vampire Dust; some favor quests want bundles of common flora). Those ordinary ingredients still dissolve into essence while conversion is on — they can't be auto-excluded without breaking normal gathering. For such quests, toggle "Convert ingredients to essence" off in the MCM, gather/deliver, then toggle it back on.

Status

Public testing candidate (v0.23.x). The core loop, economy, coatings, perk tree, and MCM are complete. Known experimental/unfinished: automated-potion-mod compatibility and the Fluid Motion perk (see the Nexus page's Experimental section). Bug reports with a MAO.log are very welcome.

Credits

• marth — design, direction, and all in-game testing
• Claude (Anthropic) — implementation: plugin, generator, patcher, tooling, docs
• CommonLibSSE-NG

Permissions

See the Permissions section on the Nexus mod page.