As of August 2009, while I still believe most of the following information to be accurate, it has been over 4 years since this study was done and I caution the reader to take the results with a grain of salt. It is my intention to re-verify the data as soon as I carve out some time for alchemy again, but in the meantime this information should be treated only as a starting reference to your own research. During the summer of 2010, it was announced, with the release of the Stonecarving system, that the Mechanical Lore split was progressing. To that end, I will not be re-verifying any of this information until after the eventual release of the new Alchemy system.

For my tests, I used freshly precisely foraged herbs.  First I tested the freshly foraged herb, then in the dried state, next dried and made into a standard alchemy potion/salve/tea and finally dried and made properly into a tincture.  I did not test any of the items that require a store bought item (ex. ithor potion), although may at some point do those.

With the wounds I used, obviously there is no way to get exactly the same wound each time, so I tried to make a note when the herb healed it all the way down.  If further testing is needed, those will be the ones I try and duplicate first.  However, I was very careful that when I was working on the herbs that heal multiple areas (such as cebi or yelith) I would only have a single wounded area so that the tincture/potion/powder was only affecting a single area.  At some point, it may be interesting to test to see how diffused the herbs get on multiple areas, but that was not within the scope of this round of tests, sorry.

On the lowest healing message (You get an itching sensation around your <area>) there is a chance that the herb state will heal, but the wound you have is too severe.  For instance, when I tested drinking sufil mash on a bruised, swollen and slashed right eye, it was at first the 'itching' message. However, I healed the wound down to a bruised, swollen and bleeding right eye and it was able to work.  I believe though that when the wounds become more severe, the less potent herb states will become less effective regardless.

In many cases, the best form to take in the herb is via a tincture you drink (which always results in a mild internal poison).  Exceptions to this are Cebi Tincture and Eghmok Tincture (and of course the ones that don't make into tinctures).

Except with what I think is a buggy tincture, I never received the 'melting wounds' messaging.  I hope when we are able to make our own alcohol, we'll be able to do that.  However, I will keep my ears open for when folks do get that messaging, see if I can recreate it.

Also, I found that in many cases, there really isn't a notable benefit to drying the herb from the fresh foraged state unless you plan on making it into a potion/tincture.  For instance, yelith root precisely foraged yielded the same results as a precisely foraged yelith root that had been dried.  Perhaps each herb 'caps out' on what it can heal, and drying may help when your foraging skill is low, but once you cap out on finding the herb, drying can't improve it past a certain point.  More testing needs to be done on that.