Geas

Maybe there is something I'm missing, but is there anyway the learning system could be made easier to understand? I've been making potions for over 2 hours and 200 herbs and haven't gained a single skill rank in alchemy. On the other hand, I spent 30 minutes reading in the library and gained ranks in several skills.

This may not be so frustrating for those who spend most of their time killing things as it is fairly obvious how to improve your skills, but for those of us learning non-combat skills it would be really helpful to know if what we are doing is actually helping us learn anything.

Since I am not the wizard responsible for alchemy I don't quite know how the alchemy skill improvement is handled, but for 99% of the total skills it's pretty much always the same: you improve it by doing it. And no, it doesn't help to do it 200 times within 30 seconds. Continuity is much more important.

I am not sure if I have ever gotten an alchemy improve just by
brewing a potion. I would think that I got most of them by analysing
potions.
However you should ask the higher ranked members for help.
They are willing to help, though it's difficult to help scholars if
they do not show us that they want it. I think most of your problems
regarding alchemy would be fixed quickly if you did as I suggested.

No i do not ever think i have gotten an alchemy + from brewing the potion but i do get them from analysing them

I see that you posted in response to a note from back in february, but in case this was still an open discussion:

you can get alchemy improves by dissecting corpses and analyizing what you find. analyzing ingredients in general is a good way to beef up alchemy.

-Alamar