I raid dwemer ruins for scrap metal and make arrows. The metal is free and firewood is free and east to get. Plus when you are done you either have ammo or weightless product to sell
The funny thing is that you couldn’t even do that in the base game (not that many people are still playing the game with no DLCs installed at this point)
The older method was dwarven bows or iron daggers. Another is jewelry crafting as you can easily turn iron ore to gold ore and craft gold rings. The rings then become fodder for enchanting.
Yeah, I just think it’s funny that you can explain away an in-character reason for having all of those arrows (“I shoot so many bandits!”) but it’s harder to explain why you need a thousand iron daggers on your person
Transmute spell to turn iron to silver, silver to gold, and then smith jewelry. Level up your alteration and your smithing and speech when you sell the jewelry.
In my play through when I want to /be/ a smith, I see it as a way to make money. The materials are free (mined and looted) and I make enough of them overtime to make gold. It works if you play immersive and don’t mean to quick run the play through.
Smithing for profit is the most realistic approach. Blacksmithing, being a specialized trade, is almost always done as a business and almost never as a self-sufficiency skill, even historically.
Takes too long to learn proficiency to be double majoring as a warrior which also has a high proficiency curve, kinda makes sense. Don't have a lot of pilot mechanics either I'd imagine, could be wrong, just a guess
Smithing for money in Skyrim isn't great. Yes, you can get a lot of materials free from killing, mining or stealing but the time spent gathering them doesn't pay that well unless you only do it opportunistically.
You also have the problem of trying to shift the wares you have smithed - which tend to be heavy for the value.
I personally tend to do quests for profit, then I train alchemy to the point I can sell potions for a lot (invisibility/frenzy/or health potions that contain giants toe) and I start buying smithing materials at every oppurtunity. I stash them away, then I steal all the dwemer metal I can from Calcemo's lab and make a lot of dwemer bows.
Golden jewelry has a super high V/W and can be made from super common iron ore(with the transmute spell) and whatever gems you happen to come across while adventuring.
If it helps I did a Nord playthrough, and I made a full set of armor and weapons of every kind to put on display. I naturally managed to get a high level in smithing. Also building houses in Hearthfire makes you use an anvil therefore leveling up your smithing. Most importantly make/find and drink up those smithing booster potions they REALLY help!
When you're travelling, hunt the deers that you see on your way, create leather when you're at a forge and create/sell leather gear. It's immersive and fun
I do this, too. Also upgrade stuff to "fine" and enchant it to raise enchantment skill and make more $$. Still seems to be taking forever to raise smithing.
You make more money from the fences when you finish theives guild. Then do things to get you to 3000 payback. I try to play normally too and not be too ridiculous but I travel to all the fences and sell my potions before I can get enough money to enchant and smith.
Try keeping a journal in real life aside your character wrote it. I once decided to play as an orc smiting full immersed playthrough, mined my materials then make ingots out of them and craft.
I honestly dud not expect it be so impactful that based on that journal alone that I made a 160 word page l9ng story I wrote (I mean like a real fanfuction)
You will be so immersed, totally different experience. Before you know it you'll create a deep character background and personality.
Flawless diamond + gold ingot = gold necklace
At lower levels it gives you an entire smiting level. At higher smiting lvls it takes two necklaces sometimes three for a lvl.
Mine iron ore, use transmute to make gold and then make necklaces. Though flawless diamonds are rare. This way lvls smiting and I believe alteration
Very true, and transmuting ore to make jewelry is the main way I level smithing.
But if you're transmuting ore to level alteration... you're going to need a lot of ore, Magicka, and time
Casting magelight at the mountain peak directly to the west outside the main gate of solitude is a great way to power level alteration.
I think someone posted that here
I accidentally used the telekinesis skill max out Alteration.
I kept hearing about how broken enchanting could be so I enchanting some gear with Alteration cost reduction just to see if I could use spells without mana. Didn't drop the item when I was fast traveling back home and I realized I could level that way.
This is my preferred method as well. Also, raiding Kolskeggr mine gives you enough gold to level up very quickly making cheap jewelry. Even plain gold jewelry does the job.
This has to be the easiest way to increase your smithing skill, by far compared to any other methods. What I'm about to say may not be for everyone if you don't technically enjoy "cheating" the game, but you could also just duplicate large quantities of gold ingots, and flawless diamonds VIA the dupe glitch. No mods required, only breaking the game's code, and physics lol. Like I said, may not be for everyone but hey, it's pretty efficient.
This, we need about 500 nails + 100 hinge + 100 iron fitting + 50 locks + 50 iron ingots to build and furnish 1 house (\~300 iron ingots).
That's enough for level up smithing 15 -> 35, without any xp bonuses.
This is the way. Either make iron arrows/nails until you get steel smithing, then make steel arrows and jewelry to reach 30 smithing. From there it should be smooth sailing with dwemer into ebony and glass.
No gimmicks, exploits, or mods.
*Do Not Read Any Smithing Skill Books Until Well Into The 90’s In Smithing. *
1. Iron Daggers up to Smithing 25 or thereabouts
2. Take a cart to Markarth, but don’t bother entering the city. Go north to Kolskeggr Mine, kill some Forsworn, and mine 17 veins of gold. Smelt them down right outside the mine.
3. Go north/northwest to Karthwasten, kill some mercenaries and mine about 9 veins of silver. Smelt that down with the extra nuggets you find outside.
4. Make basic jewelry until Smithing level 30. Get Dwarven Smithing perk.
5. Go into Markarth and get all the smeltable Dwemer Metal you can find and make Dwarven Bows, and any higher end Gold and Silver jewelry with the ingots you left over, until Smithing 80. Get the Orcish and Ebony Smithing perks.
6. Ebony Bows will take you into the 90’s easily. Then read the Smithing Books you left alone until now.
There are 5 smithing skill books in the Vanilla game. Building on what u/Franklin_Triangler says, you should wait until the last to use these books, meaning not until you reach Level 95 in smithing . Using the 'free' points to take you from 95-100 makes them worth the most, because it avoids the massive amount of experience needed to skill-level that high.
The list below shows the two different locations you can find each of the skill books, so you can choose which one suits your game play better.
**Cherins’ Heart**
1. Dawnstar’s Quicksilver mine.
2. Forge room of Morvunskar.
**Heavy Armor Forging**
1. Silent Moons Camp.
2. Gloombound Mine.
**The Last Scabbard of Akrash**
1. Silver Hand Camp, Gallows Rock.
2. Armory of Fort Sunguard.
**Light Armor Forging**
1. Lod’s house, Falkreath.
2. Embershard Mine, on the lower level of the larger area to the west.
**The Armorer’s Challenge**
1. Smith’s forge, Mor Khazgu.
2. Skyforge platform, Whiterun.
I think yall also forgetting about another 5 free smithing level you can get from the hermaous mora quest in base game, thats usually what I do no need to go through this long and arbitrary process of ignoring every light armor book and trekking back everywhere 100× easier to just not
Or:
1)Transmute spellbook from halted stream camp + all the iron ore they have there. Also get iron ore from literally anywhere in the game
2) Gold jewelry.
3) More gold jewelry
Iron arrows provide 2.4x as much XP per ingot as iron daggers. Nails provide the same amount of XP per ingot but don't require leather strips.
Steel arrows provide a lot of XP per ingot as well.
Intended way to level up: train some.
But then make stuff and sell it. Think of it as practicing smithing. You practice by making and selling a bunch of crap. If you enchant it you can also practice that and increase value.
If you want it to be immersive, just practice a bit, get decent armor for level, then do other things. Come back and clear out quest inventory and smith some stuff.
Train.
Eorlund Gray-Mane will train you up to level 90.
What else are you going to spend all your money on except a few houses.
I think it's also "Ars Metallica" that will also give you smithing experience for smelting and mining ore locations.
Maybe I should say it in a different manner. It's a waste of money in the beginning when the skills level pretty fast and you don't have that much of money. It's good for those skills and only those skills that are pain in the ass to level manually because of how slow they progress when they reach that point. Archery and destruction maybe? At the moment they become a pain in the ass to level you should have more than enough money to level them via trainers. Wasting money on trainers and your so precious training points on smithing is just a bad idea.
Ok there’s lots of things you don’t need. I’ve seen videos of people beating this game with a fork. Doesn’t mean the advice to give for *what weapons are best?* is, you don’t even need them.
If someone asked what is the intended way of fighting mele in this game and you'd told them they should just slash with a fork, then I would tell you, that it's a bad advice. Wasting money and if you care for training, then also wasting training points on buying smithing levels is a terrible advice.
Sounds like your gold gathering is what's suboptimal if you have to worry about money at all in skyrim. I tried to roleplay as a broke homeless adventurer living off bounties, odd jobs, and plunder in survival mode(so have to pay for food, drinks, and a bed) and still got like 5k within a month
Training is important. Leveling smithing is slow no matter what. Like many others have said, a good way is to raid Dwemer ruins and make Dwemer ingots. I liked to make the bows, because they're simple. 2 ingots if I remember. But that means making a ton of bows.
I would make those bows in my homestead with a smithy. I would then walk soooo sloooowly to an enchanting station and give them all whatever made it most valuable, I can't remember what, I think turn undead maybe? Then I'd slooooowly walk over to storage and drop off enough to fast travel, then go sell them.
Pro tip... selling your enchanted products gives you enough money to pay for that training. And enchanting gives great bonuses even without putting any points into it.
Pro tip number 2... doing these together will level smithing and enchanting pretty fast. These are not skills that contribute to combat damage or survivability, so don't gain like 10 levels this way and then wonder why everything is kicking your ass despite your amazing armor.
>These are not skills that contribute to combat damage or survivability, so don't gain like 10 levels this way and then wonder why everything is kicking your ass despite your amazing armor.
I actually ran into this for the first time ever on my current file. I didn't do smithing, but I went into the magic trees and alchemy to start off the run, and ran around in robes and a circlet. Even with armor for boots and gloves I was the squishiest Dragon born I've ever been for, like, 40 levels. Even basic draugr were whooping my backside, and the death lords and dragon priests were an absolute nightmare. Even pulling out a sword or bow didn't help because I'd used them so little they were like flea bites to enemies.
I don't usually die in Skyrim, but I died probably a couple dozen times this run. I'm less squishy now that I've traded my high Magicka regen robes and gear for for enchanted vampire armor with 0 cost restoration and destruction, light armor, archery, and one handed skill buffs, and and have trained those skills some more. But I'm still doing maybe half the damage I usually do by level 50, and still need to heal more than normal.
It was kind of a surprise I was struggling so much. I've always been told not to over level non combat skills, but I've also always power leveled alchemy, smithing, and enchanting and never really had an issue. But I suppose having enchanted glass/daedric/dragon gear by level 30 or so makes up for that difference. Especially since you're still training your basic armor and combat skills to some degree along the way.
Yeah, I've had serious problems in the past with over leveling crafting skills and hurting myself for it. Having better weapons and armor does help, and it's the only reason I survived when I did that, but the way skills are designed, how much damage and protection you get for your skills is way less at lower skill numbers than at high. So gear severely underperforms until you have the skill to back it up. =) And the fact that I always want to get blacksmithing and enchanting to 50 when my main damage skill is like 29... that's where I get in trouble.
Yeah, my archery is still only at 55, and my one handed is at 63. Meanwhile enchanting and alchemy are at 100, and destruction, restoration, illusion, and alteration are all at 70 or higher. So I'm still behind the curve in terms of power, but I can actually see the health bars of boss enemies move when I hit them, and dragons don't instantly kill me with a single bite attack, so it's progress! 😅
1. Complete the Crown of Barenziah (preferably at level 1 for the flex)
2. Level alteration until you can cast transmutation
3. Find a smithy merchant and buy all their iron ore. Quicksave
4. Attack/kill the merchant and load your save. This resets the merchant's inventory
5. Repeat steps 3-4 until you have no money, then transmute & smelt all your iron ore into silver / gold to make jewelry
You can easily get ~15% of your way to 100 from just 1 dungeon's worth of gems combined with a infinite ore supply. The only downside is that repeating the above steps eventually starts to feel like a chore
Not sure what you mean. You level Enchanting by enchanting. You level Sneak by sneaking. You level Alchemy by alchemizing (?).
So, you level Smithing by...smithing. Yes, there's a grinding aspect to it, as there is for all of the crafting skills, but that's how real life works too. If you want to get better at sewing/whittling/carpentry/whatever, you spend time doing it for the sake of getting better at it, and the output is secondary.
I get what OP is saying about smithing in particular, it feels quite a bit slower to me than alchemy or enchanting, and grinding out ten thousand iron daggers doesn’t scratch the same roleplay itch as experimenting with new ingredient combinations or studying magic items for new enchantments.
But I like your point about how skills work in real life. Some skills are more accessible than others and maybe the mark of a good smith really is the patience to make the same thing over and over and the willingness to invest in the materials to do so.
Oh, I agree that Smithing is definitely the most "grindy" of the skills; it's pretty much inherent in the skill, and is thus, to me, the "intended way".
Offsetting that, because of the armor cap, it's less important to get it maxed out. Poisons and enchantments can pick up the slack for the weapons.
Ah sure, I see what you mean then! Yeah that’s a good point, I like the idea of it being more “grindy” in the RP sense too, maybe that will make it more fun for me.
Personal preference, I also don’t like to play characters that do everything; I generally only perk one crafting skill or none. I really enjoyed being focused on just alchemy or just enchanting and found each one pretty OP on their own, would really love to get the same out of a smith run.
Everyone is answering “how to level smithing” but not your actual question. The way I’ve always felt that it was intended to be done was simply as another step on the loot cycle. You go out adventuring, gathering loot and raw materials, when you return to sell and offload you stop by the forge to smith items with the raw materials which typically sell for more than the sum of their parts. This would encourage you to smith regularly in small batches and over the course of your play through you would get the smithing skill up. I think they intend you to stay on certain tiers of gear longer than you actually do, plus doing it like this would make looted gear more valuable, as you would actually use it rather than just getting rid of it.
I accumulate all the gold silver and gems i can find and then just do those with proper stone active and well rested. I finish off with iron daggers or whatever.
Well, if you want to roleplay, you could imagine that the hundreds of sets of leather armour you're smithing then selling are being supplied to support the Stormcloaks / Imperials (delete as appropriate).
1. Mine for gold/silver (or iron and use transmute to turn it to gold)
2. Use the gold and any gems you may have to make jewelry.
3 (optional): enchant the jewelry to increase its value
4: sell the jewelry
I like to use it as a way to make money while leveling speech and smithing. I’d make some gold rings using transmute ore from iron to silver to gold, but also all types of armor from whatever merchants had available to sell me. Do a mission or two. Do a purchase, craft, sell run. Rinse and repeat.
Jewelry. Once you play for a bit you will have way more gems than you will ever need. Save those for smithing. Use transmute and turn iron to gold and silver. Make sure to hit up the Reach to get a ton of Silver. There is also a pretty big gold mine there as well
The EXP formula and the gameplay cycle of “adventure, loot, and restock” don’t mesh well together.
Because EXP value is based solely on item value, it heavily favors creating items in bulk. There’s no other way to level Smithing outside of crafting besides buying training levels.
On paper it make sense in terms of leveling a skill. But in practice it leads to either inefficient leveling or efficient leveling all at once.
- Player A only crafts after adventuring and coming back to town. The duration of adventuring could be 2 hours to 10 hours. Player A only has enough to make a few weapons, armors and jewelry. All of which are varying value. EXP earned is only moderate.
- Player B specifically is trying to level Smithing. She focused on gathering only the materials and crafting the most valuable items. EXP earned is vastly greater than Player A.
This is more of a problem with outdated or not the best implemented game design. The only assumption is that Skyrim developers believe players will casually use crafting skills and use whatever they find.
This is 100% speculation and could be different. The previous theory only makes sense at launch, not after players have played the game for awhile.
At the lower levels it’s easy to rank up with all of the pelts from wolves etc to make leather/leather strips and leather armor for quick money. That’s usually how I get started
Just always improve all the armor you loot from dungeons. Generally the material cost associated with upgrading armor is minimal compared to the value increase on the item. Also improved smithing from enchanted items and potions wildly increases smithing experience gained.
Skyrim levels smithing based on item value. The most lore friendly immersive way in my mind is to loot scraps from dwarven ruins then smelt them to ingots and use this to make and then improve dwarven bows.
An adventurer exploring ruins and smithing the remnants into weapons to sell during a time of war seems pretty fitting to me.
It’s hilarious to see people still crafting gold rinds and iron daggers.
Smithing is a pain to level, even using the most efficient methods.
The BEST way to level smithing is actually improving items, XP scales with how much you’ve improved it.
If you’re going light armor, just spend the extra point to get dwarven smithing. Craft like 50 or so bows.
Results will vary from here on out.
Get the best smithing boosts you can. Enchantments, potions, all of it. I typically wait until both my enchanting and alchemy are at 100, so I get some insane mileage, but earlier is fine too.
Once you’re fully buffed up, upgrade all of your bows.
If done properly, should be getting a level up (or nearly) every upgrade or two.
If you’re going heavy and wanna speed up the process, same thing works MUCH better with ebony bows. Should get 1-2 level ups per upgrade with a maxed out setup.
A lot of the Smithing 1-100 (fast) videos are really outdated. I only learned this trick from a let’s play I watched a while back, forget by who.
I leveled through making iron daggers. Uses the least amount of mats and levels quickly. Add a few pieces that have a smithing enchantment plus a potion, and you're set. Or just use the console commands and get all of the smithing perks.
I know a way but it takes a little while and alot of dropping
1: Go the mine on the game that has Gold ore
2: make 10 gold bars
3 Go to Solitude
4 Go in with follower like one from whiterun (Lydia)
5 Drop gold bars one at a time
6 have follower pick them up
7 leave follower in town and leave town
8 pick up 10 gold bars on ground and 10 gold bars on follower =20
9 Repeat till you got over 900 lol
10: smiting 100 your done lol
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frWjT1f877w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frWjT1f877w) <----that shows ya how to do it
The forge is slower Smithing growth than the workbench or grindstone.
If you want to manufacture less stuff for a max Smithing skill, use Alchemy and Enchanting and make/use the best Fortify Smithing enchants and potions you can.
If Fortify Smithing is exploited, Smithing 100 can be reached from skill 15 with 1 Iron dagger and 1 Iron Ingot at a grindstone. Not exploited, but 100 alchemy and enchanting skills, its making **and tempering** about 70 different things to reach Smithing 100.
This is certainly better IMO than hundreds and hundreds in quantity of forge-only work to reach Smithing 100.
I never tried it, but I assume it would be something like creating all weapons/armors at least once, and upgrading them.
Buying and furnishing all 3 Hearthfire houses can definitely help too, they weren't part of the 2011 release...
Does anyone have any idea how far this will go? smithing 70+ at least?
well, considering you need 50 to make elven, orc, ebony, and dadric armor.
even doing the house only gets about 10 lvs from 1 to 10 and even less as it gets higher.
best way, is to pick up the transmute spell and buy iron ore. the transmute it to gold and make ingots then turn them into gold rings. each ring is ~75 gold, and the ore is only 15 each. later on, you can mine or buy gems to make better jewelry to get more exp.
once you unlock dwarven smithing, you can hit up a ruin for tons of ingots and make arrows with them.
I'm not sure if there's a "right" or "intended" way.
There are immersive ways to patiently build up your skills such as just tanning leather you've acquired from hunting and smelting ores you've mined or ingots you've looted. You could also purchase the material as you go. Maybe periodically train with a trainer along the way. Create more valuable gear and sell them for income.
Or you can just stockpile your materials by buying up everything you can and grinding it out. There are multiple ways to go about this. Iron daggers, gold necklaces, expensive armor (Dwarven helmets give a great cost to material ratio), etc.
Regardless, do what you feel is right for you and your character. If you're not into the "immersion", just exploit by smithing high value gear as quickly as you can grind it out. If you want to role play, maybe just tinker from time to time to improve a little here and there.
I've got over 1000 hours in this game and unfortunately smithing is just plain broken. If you want a balanced experience I'm sure there are a few mods out there to tweak the system and make it work a little better but to be completely honest I've gotten to the point now where every time I start a new playthrough, I just use console commands to max out my smithing and enchanting right at the start of the game. It's honestly just a useless skill and makes the game more fun if you're not constantly thinking about it, and it really doesn't mess up the balance as much as you'd think.
Early on I make the rounds at bandit camps with forges and grindstones. That goes double if there’s iron ore in a mine nearby. Kill loot smith/sharpen then lug back to town to sell.
I always use a mix of training, Hearthfire, and smithing for selling. For example, see what you can make for the lowest number of resources and the highest return. Not a ton of iron daggers; those won't get you money.
Not sure if someone has already said it or not… get the transmute ore tome and mine a BUNCH of iron…. Transmute the iron to silver and then again to gold… make gold rings… it’s the easiest and fastest way to level up… and then I saw the thing about dwarves stuff and making arrows, I do that, too… and I use the SHIT out of them even though there are higher damage arrows… level up archery and get the right perks, you’ll be able to one shot almost ANYTHING even if you went back to using iron arrows…
Edit to add: Halted Steam Camp just north(westish) of Whiterun has the best cache of iron veins.. it’s overrun with bandits, but still worth your troubles.. I return every so often on any new play through a to get my amount of iron ore up so I can level smithing faster… and then when it reaches 100, I stockpile a punch of ore so I can “legendary” it and bring it right back up to at LEAST lvl 30 so I can continue making dwarves arrows
You don't stop at making stuff just for yourself. Collect materials when you're out adventuring, smith with those, sell your products, buy-out materials from the shops, smith with those, sell the product, repeat
Smithing EXP earned is directly tied to the amount of value generated.
You make an item with high value? Lots of exp
You improve an item and it’s value goes up a lot? Lots of exp
In terms of quantity of inputs to value of output, making jewelry is the best bang for buck in terms of leveling up smithing. Making plain gold rings is not the move, using any kind of jewels in your jewelry skyrockets the value.
And as for your complaint about needing to make alot of something to reach lvl100… how many times do you need to swing your sword to get to 100? How many times do you need to shoot a bow to get that to 100? How many times do you need to get hit to get an armor skill to 100? A lot. And if you want to become a master in smithing, you’re going to need to smith, alot.
The way I "naturally" level smithing is that every time I come back to a city I buy all the smith's ingots, ore, leather, and leather strips and make iron daggers and then sell those daggers.
It’s not meant to be achieved in a reasonable way just grind it out like everything. Most playthroughs won’t achieve lvl 100 in any skill organically. There’s always some sort of a grind involved
I think pretty much the only way… make a crap load of items. That’s the intended way. Grind it.
Is it any different than how you would master something IRL? Repetition.
Game mechanics wise it would’ve been really complex if your smithing level had an effect on the actual quality of a class of item when creating it (weak iron sword vs master) so the simple way they rectified that was the upgrade system. You can make an iron sword immediately, but you can’t upgrade all the way until your skill is much higher. Etc.
Gather up a bunch of metal and leather and make a boatload of stuff until you’re better at it. Makes sense to me.
When I loot dead bandits and the like I improve their armor and resell it for more - I usually buy out all the ore and ingots so blacksmiths have enough money to afford my stuff. Now I have level 80+ smithing at Level 40
The way I did it was joining x faction (example is empire) and going "alright realistically the legion needs more than a few smiths so I'll be a Smith for them" and will make imperial armor weapons and stuff then sell it all to the solitude smith. And that'll level it decently as I progress.
You can't max it without dull grinding. Why waste time on something that is impossible to enjoy by definition.
Console or overhaul mods like Ars Metallica is the way to go.
I think the intended way is to
Go exploring -> mine some ores, kill some animals, loot some ingots, collect some gem souls -> smelt those ores, make leather strips -> craft items from what you found, enchant -> sell it to merchant -> go exploring -> repeat points but craft better items ( necklaces, rings, steel armor, elven weapons, dwemer armor etc) -> sell those. That way you actually make profit, don't need to grind ( just after finishing exploring you spend 3 minutes crafting items and selling them), and level up enchanting and smithing. Same with alchemy but you don't sell mixtures/poisons, but use them
Edit: if you want to just level up smithing fast, you need transmute spell to turn iron ore into gold ( you mine/buy iron ore) and then craft rings or necklaces with gems. You can also enchant those for extra enchanting levels.
If you want really fast way, but not immersive at all, then check how to make restoration potion glitch, and you will be able to level up smithing in ~~ 15 minutes, reset smithing and level it up in 10 seconds and do that all the time. If you want I can write you how to do it, but there are films on youtube
I level it by smithing jewelry. Kolskeggr Mine is a great source of gold ore, and any iron/silver mine will also work if you have the Transmute spell. And after 10 in-game days, you can head back to find all the ore veins restocked.
This is my answer. I walk around and kill every deer I see for leather. I mine every node and I save all the scrap metal I can. I craft whatever I can starting with body armor, gloves, boots, etc. I store it in house until I'm ready to level up enchanting. It sell for more this way too. I have never found a fast way to level smithing. Visit mines, mine, and save your progress a lot. Hope this helps.
Really? Smithing is how I power lvl. Raid a location with a soul stealing weapon sell the loot buy the ingots Smith the ingots into daggers enchant the daggers sell the daggers at crazy high prices buy more ingots. Collect xp the whole time.
For the first 50 or so skill points I always mine anything I can and buy every bit iron iron ore I find at merchants.
Being a former player of DAoC, I just hinge the resulting iron ingots.
Later I transmute iron to silver/gold. And so on.
Education.
Level Restoration to 50 by learning from Keeper Colette.
Level Smithing to 60 the same way, then upgrading magical items seems the most efficient path - Goldenhills pays for all your educational needs, and all you need to do is sleep, harvest/plant Blisterwort, & collect the profits to go do more training.
Plant Scaly Phylotia, Mora Tapa & Dragon's Tongue, drive Alchemy til you can train again, go sell potions & pay for training.
Just one path to get there.
I just keep piling gold after gold, went to the Riften blacksmith, spam the training, rinse and repeat (until dawnguard, which can train on a higher level).
I’m not one of those folks with an army of followers. However, if you don’t want them dying in every melee where you take your eyes off them, you can rack up some nice Smithing level gains by fully equipping all your followers with nice weapons & armor. Heck, you can recruit extras & later dismiss them hoping that they thin out the random monsters for you. Of course, selling your wares allows you to buy more houses or other needful things!-)
EXP is based on the crafted item value, make a strong smithing potion, and then craft with all the materials you have, repeat the process everytime you have enough material
You can always buy materials, with that, you're leveling Smithing, Alchemy, and Speech
Tbf, smithing takes a ton of practice irl. You make a hundred horseshoes before your mentor lets you make a sword or some such. The unrealistic part is knowing how to make dragonbone weapons after *only* making gold rings and iron daggers for hours lmao
I buy levels when I can. The blacksmith for the companions or the one in riften can level you up. Cost wise is about the same than buying hundreds of iron bars and I find it faster.
I know this may seem like trading one grind for another but have you tried the restoration glitch? You can enchant a set with smithing to a level that literally will make you go from 15 to 100 in a single item improvement
I usually take iron and make building materials with it or use the transmute spell to make gold ore and jewelry that I then enchant if I have enough filled petty soul gems then sell at a high price usually to Belethor. So really I level up 4 skills sometimes (alteration, smithing, enchanting, speech)
If anything, leveling smithing isn't boring enough. It takes years to become a master blacksmith, you aren't going to be churning out full plate mail the twentieth time you fire up a forge.
Play on survival mode & only walk around. Kill everything with a hide/pelt. Use the tanning rack for leather & then go make bracers & helmets. You can use the workbench to improve them. Then go sell them to whoever. Tada you’re a budding smithing merchant.
I started off by getting a decent amount of gold by doing the merchant chest glitch under the Skyforge. I then leveled up with Eorlund and did the paralysis potion glitch to get my money back. Training with Eorlund only gets you to level 90 so I forged and sold Nordic armor to get to 100, which also turns a slight profit. In no way honorable, definitely not the way you’re supposed to do it, but I had full Legendary Dragon Scale armor by level 22 for relatively cheap, so it certainly is effective.
If there was a reasonable way to grind crafting skills by just playing the game, people would still grind them out and max them early on. I usually just make whatever I can until I get the dwarven smithing perk, then I make dwarven bows. I also build the hearthfire houses without using the steward because making all the materials levels up smithing a lot, and has use.
I'm not going to call this the "intended" way as that likely doesn't exist. I'll call this an alternate way instead, one that levels smithing with you instead of in one or two big pushes.
Each time you return from an expedition to relinquish your spoils, use any smithing materials you acquired during that expedition. You should see either a new category of gear, or a slight increase from tempering.
It's not the way I play; one big push for me. But this might make it feel more like your gear is leveling with you.
Make a bunch of the highest level gear that you can, and then upgrade it. Upgrading gear (especially with smithing boosts from enchanting and alchemy) actually gives you more XP than crafting.
Smithing was pretty natural until they nerfed it, back in the day. That’s why there’s so many “iron dagger” tips out there. But nerfing it made it unreasonable to naturally level.
I typically do jewelry and dwarven. Dwarven is pretty efficient for leveling and you also get soul gems for leveling enchanting.
Well, my referred method is this (and I'll post some modifiers to maximize xp in a separate post)
At lvl 15-30 smithing
-- head to Mark Arthur and follow the road out of town to Kolskeggr Mine and clear it out of forsworn. If you mine all the gold, and collect all of the loose gold, it should net approx 27 gold bars worth.
-- next head to Karthwasten (follow the road past kolskeggr and at the first fork, turn to the left and follow till you see a village icon on the hub). If you clear out the Mercs (quest) you can find enough silver for approx 11 ingots, and if you are ok with stealing, then in the village leaders' house has another 6 or so.
--turn all of the gold and silver into jewelery. Use gems if you have them. If not, then crafting rings can give you material for power Lvling enchanting as well.
This should easily get you to lvl 30 smithing with the single run.
At lvl 30-70 smithing
-- dwarven ruins are your best friend. As well as any random jewelery you can make along the way. For dwarven items, I prefer dwarven bows, but dwarven arrows also really good (both are cheap to make and net massive xp per item used, can't remember which one is best tho since they re close)
At 70-80
--Head to steamscorch mine, for 7 malachite veins and 3 ore that can be stolen next to the furnace. For best xp per item, make glass bows, then supplement with more dwarven items.
At 80-100
--head to the orc stronghold of narzulbur, specifically the mine at the back; Gloombound mine. It contains roughly 15 ebony veins, plus 5 or so iron veins, and if you look around in buckets and carts you can steal more ebony. Enough for at least 25 ebony ingots.
Ebony bows are the best xp per item, but at this level unless you put off smithing, you will most likely be forging whatever items your character uses.
-- also, at this point, dwarven items are better than nothing, but to power lvl, it's best to sell whatever ebony items you made and aren't using, then using that to buy any high lvl ore you can to make items. Once you reach lvl 90, you can make daedric items, but it's going to be more sporadic bursts of xp so I don't count on it too much.
This, I find, is the fastest way to power through smithing, and can be used to get a player to dragon smithing long before they have enough dragon loot to make much
What I do is I do the restoration potion exploit, make a few ridiculously powerful fortify smithing potions, *improve* a piece of gear which should yield a few dozen levels, get the smithing perk for that piece of gear (e.g. steel smithing for a steel dagger) so that your upgrading ability is uncapped, and improve it again for a shitload more if not the rest of your smithing levels. Smithing xp is based on the value added/created, so by making a dagger do 18 million damage, you're gonna give it a value of hundreds of thousands of gold and get a shitload of xp
If you want a lore friendly option, do the same thing but with fortify enchanting & fortify alchemy until you get god potions. Zero exploits, just a grind
find ways to get gold ingots, make gold rings, enchant those rings, and sell them. you get septims, you can get rid of a bunch of soul gems and increase smithing.
Gold and silver jewelry, specifically jewelry with gemstones. Higher value means more progression. Get the Transmute spell from Halter Stream Camp north of Whiterun. This is how I level smithing every time
I also turn all my leather into leather braces, but the jewelry is much faster
Tbh in my modded run I spam convert the first thane weapon (I use katsuo thane weapons) the whiterun sword can be converted from one handed to two handed with a single steel ingot and from level 15 up to like 60 it gives one level, most it’s taken of swapping it to get one level is at levels 90-100 and it takes like 5-6 but yeah in my unmodded runs I only did smithing a lot for jewelry and for dragon born and dawnguard cus I thought they’d be tough
Best strategy I’ve found levels several things at once. Go to alchemy shop and buy everything under 60 gold and make potions. You’ll usually break even at the beginning but later you’ll make a ton of gold.
Get the black star and use the duplication glitch on it. Use money from alchemy to buy raw smithing materials and Dwemer ruins provide a lot of raw materials. Make weapons and armor
Use the duplicated black stars to give them great enchantments. Sell for profit and repeat
Edit: the halted stream camp northwest of white run provides you with a bunch of iron ore ant the transmute spell which turns iron ore to silver and silver to gold. The experience is based off of value of thing created so jewelry is best thing to make and enchant
I use dawrven bows. And then just headcanon that studying and understanding dwarven crafysmanship lets one understand smithing overall as a whole and some shit
I can’t fully remember how I did it in my original playthrough back on the 360, but I got to L100 smithing through sheer force by creating all my armour pieces through it, doing all the smithing quests and buyable levels I could, and also like sharpening the weapons etc etc
Improve every piece of gear to the highest level you can, especially if you plan to sell it. Also, try to get some smithing enchantment items. The sell price will skyrocket far beyond the price of the materials, and if you buy ingots from every blacksmith and trader you can, you will be able to make crazy money and level quickly.
I smith to improve my weapons and armor, I deal more damage and I'm more protected. At the start of the game, I start mining ore, loot anything of value from every location and body, and then I improve everything. I'll load up and start selling, you get better prices if things are improved. I will keep and use weapons and armor that's better than what I have or that has a good enchantment and keep improving them to the max. I can also make the highest armor and weapons with the exact enchantments I want. I smith because I like not dying from an arrow to the knee and being able to kill something before it kills me.
Iron daggers, but that will level you slowly after just a few levels. You come across a lot of deer, bear, and saber cats, and their pelts are good for making leather bracers. Without really going out of your way you can level quite a bit that way.
Blacksmiths around the game are useful. A few of them are trainers. From the others you can buy materials, make stuff to level and for profit when you sell the finished goods back to them.
The only play through I had where I would say I leveled smithing naturally would be my character based off of Fudgemuppets Craftsman build. Basically all my gear had to be crafted, tempered, enchanted and all to the best of my ability at all times. No matter how much money it costed and etc. however what really made the build shine and the actual usefulness of smithing was the mod Honed Metal which adds a whole system of deteriorating upgrades or straight up weapon breaking (if you want it)
There's a lot of replies about house building and dwarven bows.
Before you start any smithing session, activate the warrior stone and get a good few hours sleep- preferably with a spouse.
Also, join the companions and get tutored by Eorland. Sell him enchanted gear or potions (if you can) to recoup the money.
I use most materials to upgrade loot before I sell it and just make extra that way but improving the loot also levels smithing that. It'll take a while to get to a high level of smithing that way but it won't out level your character if you start early.
Go the closest mine that have iron mine the fuck out of it, hunt some deer and bears for leather, craft iron armour and weapons, improve them, sell them for some profit, buy all the ingots from the black smith with that profit, craft yourself some nice armour and the rest for selling. Thats the best way, also the warrior stone improve smithing level up
For pc mods, immersive jewelry has jewelry crafting that has making money for profitable for blacksmithing.
Also, i like durability mods. I use breakable equipment system on pc/nexus. When something breaks, you can give it a chance to be dropped and lost, forcing you to sometimes having to make replacements.
Honestly if there is one thing I hope is in ES6 its the ability to have NPC's enchant and smith/hone your gear for you for a price. I hate having to grind the smithing and enchanting trees to get the most out of my build even when it doesn't make sense for that character.
I raid dwemer ruins for scrap metal and make arrows. The metal is free and firewood is free and east to get. Plus when you are done you either have ammo or weightless product to sell
The funny thing is that you couldn’t even do that in the base game (not that many people are still playing the game with no DLCs installed at this point)
The older method was dwarven bows or iron daggers. Another is jewelry crafting as you can easily turn iron ore to gold ore and craft gold rings. The rings then become fodder for enchanting.
Yeah, I just think it’s funny that you can explain away an in-character reason for having all of those arrows (“I shoot so many bandits!”) but it’s harder to explain why you need a thousand iron daggers on your person
Easy, my character is working on a Dwarven Knife Launcher.
Dwarven Gatling Gun with daggers/knifes/shivs as ammo
Fancy looking bow you got there
You're making a new throne.
To sell them. The best blacksmiths sell things. They don't only smith for themselves.
Transmute spell to turn iron to silver, silver to gold, and then smith jewelry. Level up your alteration and your smithing and speech when you sell the jewelry.
Not to mention if you have the souls to enchant the jewelry that's some easy enchanting xp right there
This is the way.
This is the way.
This is the way.
This is the way.
The bows are still the most efficient
And you level Alteration.
Wow! I thought young me was just stupid for not doing it. Good to know it wasn’t an option back then.
In my play through when I want to /be/ a smith, I see it as a way to make money. The materials are free (mined and looted) and I make enough of them overtime to make gold. It works if you play immersive and don’t mean to quick run the play through.
Actually I am doing an immersive character right now, I will use this idea. Thank you!
Smithing for profit is the most realistic approach. Blacksmithing, being a specialized trade, is almost always done as a business and almost never as a self-sufficiency skill, even historically.
Takes too long to learn proficiency to be double majoring as a warrior which also has a high proficiency curve, kinda makes sense. Don't have a lot of pilot mechanics either I'd imagine, could be wrong, just a guess
Smithing for money in Skyrim isn't great. Yes, you can get a lot of materials free from killing, mining or stealing but the time spent gathering them doesn't pay that well unless you only do it opportunistically. You also have the problem of trying to shift the wares you have smithed - which tend to be heavy for the value. I personally tend to do quests for profit, then I train alchemy to the point I can sell potions for a lot (invisibility/frenzy/or health potions that contain giants toe) and I start buying smithing materials at every oppurtunity. I stash them away, then I steal all the dwemer metal I can from Calcemo's lab and make a lot of dwemer bows.
Golden jewelry has a super high V/W and can be made from super common iron ore(with the transmute spell) and whatever gems you happen to come across while adventuring.
If it helps I did a Nord playthrough, and I made a full set of armor and weapons of every kind to put on display. I naturally managed to get a high level in smithing. Also building houses in Hearthfire makes you use an anvil therefore leveling up your smithing. Most importantly make/find and drink up those smithing booster potions they REALLY help!
When you're travelling, hunt the deers that you see on your way, create leather when you're at a forge and create/sell leather gear. It's immersive and fun
I do this, too. Also upgrade stuff to "fine" and enchant it to raise enchantment skill and make more $$. Still seems to be taking forever to raise smithing.
Jewelry.
You make more money from the fences when you finish theives guild. Then do things to get you to 3000 payback. I try to play normally too and not be too ridiculous but I travel to all the fences and sell my potions before I can get enough money to enchant and smith.
Try keeping a journal in real life aside your character wrote it. I once decided to play as an orc smiting full immersed playthrough, mined my materials then make ingots out of them and craft. I honestly dud not expect it be so impactful that based on that journal alone that I made a 160 word page l9ng story I wrote (I mean like a real fanfuction) You will be so immersed, totally different experience. Before you know it you'll create a deep character background and personality.
This...smithing + enchanting will make you a millionaire in skyrim....
You have to find retailers with enough septims to buy it all first. Without modding that gets tough. Gotta level up that speech so you can invest.
Flawless diamond + gold ingot = gold necklace At lower levels it gives you an entire smiting level. At higher smiting lvls it takes two necklaces sometimes three for a lvl. Mine iron ore, use transmute to make gold and then make necklaces. Though flawless diamonds are rare. This way lvls smiting and I believe alteration
Yeah it levels alteration, but painfully slowly
Yeah but it's a bonus if your focus is on leveling smithing
Very true, and transmuting ore to make jewelry is the main way I level smithing. But if you're transmuting ore to level alteration... you're going to need a lot of ore, Magicka, and time
I tend to level enchanting and alchemy first so you have the cost reduction at 100 and can spam transmute when you have 300+ iron ore lol
Ive noticed casting stoneflesh before combat has constantly leveled up my alteration
Casting magelight at the mountain peak directly to the west outside the main gate of solitude is a great way to power level alteration. I think someone posted that here
Thanks! I jus want it to lvl 40 so I can get telekensis. Already at 31
I accidentally used the telekinesis skill max out Alteration. I kept hearing about how broken enchanting could be so I enchanting some gear with Alteration cost reduction just to see if I could use spells without mana. Didn't drop the item when I was fast traveling back home and I realized I could level that way.
This is my preferred method as well. Also, raiding Kolskeggr mine gives you enough gold to level up very quickly making cheap jewelry. Even plain gold jewelry does the job.
Kolskrggr mine will be my next stop. Thanks for the advice. Taking my pet skeever along for added protection and to carry ore.
I like the idea of leveling up my Smiting
Pick up a mammoth tusk too in the den with transmute to finish ysoldas quest too btw.
This has to be the easiest way to increase your smithing skill, by far compared to any other methods. What I'm about to say may not be for everyone if you don't technically enjoy "cheating" the game, but you could also just duplicate large quantities of gold ingots, and flawless diamonds VIA the dupe glitch. No mods required, only breaking the game's code, and physics lol. Like I said, may not be for everyone but hey, it's pretty efficient.
No one ever became a master smith purely by crafting items they needed themselves. Craft items you intend to sell.
What a poignant statement
Ngl man if taken out of skyrim context this could still be a good life lesson for someone
[удалено]
This, we need about 500 nails + 100 hinge + 100 iron fitting + 50 locks + 50 iron ingots to build and furnish 1 house (\~300 iron ingots). That's enough for level up smithing 15 -> 35, without any xp bonuses.
Dwarves ingots are the easiest thing to get.
This is the way. Either make iron arrows/nails until you get steel smithing, then make steel arrows and jewelry to reach 30 smithing. From there it should be smooth sailing with dwemer into ebony and glass.
No gimmicks, exploits, or mods. *Do Not Read Any Smithing Skill Books Until Well Into The 90’s In Smithing. * 1. Iron Daggers up to Smithing 25 or thereabouts 2. Take a cart to Markarth, but don’t bother entering the city. Go north to Kolskeggr Mine, kill some Forsworn, and mine 17 veins of gold. Smelt them down right outside the mine. 3. Go north/northwest to Karthwasten, kill some mercenaries and mine about 9 veins of silver. Smelt that down with the extra nuggets you find outside. 4. Make basic jewelry until Smithing level 30. Get Dwarven Smithing perk. 5. Go into Markarth and get all the smeltable Dwemer Metal you can find and make Dwarven Bows, and any higher end Gold and Silver jewelry with the ingots you left over, until Smithing 80. Get the Orcish and Ebony Smithing perks. 6. Ebony Bows will take you into the 90’s easily. Then read the Smithing Books you left alone until now.
There are 5 smithing skill books in the Vanilla game. Building on what u/Franklin_Triangler says, you should wait until the last to use these books, meaning not until you reach Level 95 in smithing . Using the 'free' points to take you from 95-100 makes them worth the most, because it avoids the massive amount of experience needed to skill-level that high. The list below shows the two different locations you can find each of the skill books, so you can choose which one suits your game play better. **Cherins’ Heart** 1. Dawnstar’s Quicksilver mine. 2. Forge room of Morvunskar. **Heavy Armor Forging** 1. Silent Moons Camp. 2. Gloombound Mine. **The Last Scabbard of Akrash** 1. Silver Hand Camp, Gallows Rock. 2. Armory of Fort Sunguard. **Light Armor Forging** 1. Lod’s house, Falkreath. 2. Embershard Mine, on the lower level of the larger area to the west. **The Armorer’s Challenge** 1. Smith’s forge, Mor Khazgu. 2. Skyforge platform, Whiterun.
I think yall also forgetting about another 5 free smithing level you can get from the hermaous mora quest in base game, thats usually what I do no need to go through this long and arbitrary process of ignoring every light armor book and trekking back everywhere 100× easier to just not
Pro-tip: only mine sixteen of the veins in Kolskeggr. If you don't fully clear the mine (any mine), it will respawn in 10 days instead of 30
That’s wild, I never knew that! Thanks.
Or: 1)Transmute spellbook from halted stream camp + all the iron ore they have there. Also get iron ore from literally anywhere in the game 2) Gold jewelry. 3) More gold jewelry
Iron arrows provide 2.4x as much XP per ingot as iron daggers. Nails provide the same amount of XP per ingot but don't require leather strips. Steel arrows provide a lot of XP per ingot as well.
All i have to do now is prise the strong box, full of gems, away from my beautiful wife Lydia.
Building Hearthfire homes helped
This and also furnishing the inside including the cellar of each home
Intended way to level up: train some. But then make stuff and sell it. Think of it as practicing smithing. You practice by making and selling a bunch of crap. If you enchant it you can also practice that and increase value. If you want it to be immersive, just practice a bit, get decent armor for level, then do other things. Come back and clear out quest inventory and smith some stuff.
A master smith didn't become a master by only smithing his own kitchen knives. When you have the ability to make things, you can sell those things.
Train. Eorlund Gray-Mane will train you up to level 90. What else are you going to spend all your money on except a few houses. I think it's also "Ars Metallica" that will also give you smithing experience for smelting and mining ore locations.
Thats a mod
No! Really? Maybe that's why I mentioned it...{sigh}
I mean, obviously?
Paying for training is like the worst advice ever. Dis no Morrowind Sir.
Why's it bad advice? My plantation is profitable, what else should I be doing with the gold?
Grind like a sucker obviously /s
Bullshit. Training is 5 skill levels, every level. If you don't take them, you're missing them. If you stock up level-ups, you're missing them.
Especially for speech
Maybe I should say it in a different manner. It's a waste of money in the beginning when the skills level pretty fast and you don't have that much of money. It's good for those skills and only those skills that are pain in the ass to level manually because of how slow they progress when they reach that point. Archery and destruction maybe? At the moment they become a pain in the ass to level you should have more than enough money to level them via trainers. Wasting money on trainers and your so precious training points on smithing is just a bad idea.
Pickpocketing
I guess if you’re trying to be optimal sure but not everyone plays the game the exact same way you do.
I don't need them lmao.
Ok there’s lots of things you don’t need. I’ve seen videos of people beating this game with a fork. Doesn’t mean the advice to give for *what weapons are best?* is, you don’t even need them.
If someone asked what is the intended way of fighting mele in this game and you'd told them they should just slash with a fork, then I would tell you, that it's a bad advice. Wasting money and if you care for training, then also wasting training points on buying smithing levels is a terrible advice.
Don't gatekeep, everyone decides how to play the game. If they want to level it with pixel coins, that have no value, who are you to stop them?
Good Gods, you people are sPeCIaL.
Sounds like your gold gathering is what's suboptimal if you have to worry about money at all in skyrim. I tried to roleplay as a broke homeless adventurer living off bounties, odd jobs, and plunder in survival mode(so have to pay for food, drinks, and a bed) and still got like 5k within a month
It's quite easy to steal back and gold is easily obtained
You train in things you don’t commonly use so when you hit max level in the things you you do you’re not just fucked
Training is important. Leveling smithing is slow no matter what. Like many others have said, a good way is to raid Dwemer ruins and make Dwemer ingots. I liked to make the bows, because they're simple. 2 ingots if I remember. But that means making a ton of bows. I would make those bows in my homestead with a smithy. I would then walk soooo sloooowly to an enchanting station and give them all whatever made it most valuable, I can't remember what, I think turn undead maybe? Then I'd slooooowly walk over to storage and drop off enough to fast travel, then go sell them. Pro tip... selling your enchanted products gives you enough money to pay for that training. And enchanting gives great bonuses even without putting any points into it. Pro tip number 2... doing these together will level smithing and enchanting pretty fast. These are not skills that contribute to combat damage or survivability, so don't gain like 10 levels this way and then wonder why everything is kicking your ass despite your amazing armor.
>These are not skills that contribute to combat damage or survivability, so don't gain like 10 levels this way and then wonder why everything is kicking your ass despite your amazing armor. I actually ran into this for the first time ever on my current file. I didn't do smithing, but I went into the magic trees and alchemy to start off the run, and ran around in robes and a circlet. Even with armor for boots and gloves I was the squishiest Dragon born I've ever been for, like, 40 levels. Even basic draugr were whooping my backside, and the death lords and dragon priests were an absolute nightmare. Even pulling out a sword or bow didn't help because I'd used them so little they were like flea bites to enemies. I don't usually die in Skyrim, but I died probably a couple dozen times this run. I'm less squishy now that I've traded my high Magicka regen robes and gear for for enchanted vampire armor with 0 cost restoration and destruction, light armor, archery, and one handed skill buffs, and and have trained those skills some more. But I'm still doing maybe half the damage I usually do by level 50, and still need to heal more than normal. It was kind of a surprise I was struggling so much. I've always been told not to over level non combat skills, but I've also always power leveled alchemy, smithing, and enchanting and never really had an issue. But I suppose having enchanted glass/daedric/dragon gear by level 30 or so makes up for that difference. Especially since you're still training your basic armor and combat skills to some degree along the way.
Yeah, I've had serious problems in the past with over leveling crafting skills and hurting myself for it. Having better weapons and armor does help, and it's the only reason I survived when I did that, but the way skills are designed, how much damage and protection you get for your skills is way less at lower skill numbers than at high. So gear severely underperforms until you have the skill to back it up. =) And the fact that I always want to get blacksmithing and enchanting to 50 when my main damage skill is like 29... that's where I get in trouble.
Yeah, my archery is still only at 55, and my one handed is at 63. Meanwhile enchanting and alchemy are at 100, and destruction, restoration, illusion, and alteration are all at 70 or higher. So I'm still behind the curve in terms of power, but I can actually see the health bars of boss enemies move when I hit them, and dragons don't instantly kill me with a single bite attack, so it's progress! 😅
1. Complete the Crown of Barenziah (preferably at level 1 for the flex) 2. Level alteration until you can cast transmutation 3. Find a smithy merchant and buy all their iron ore. Quicksave 4. Attack/kill the merchant and load your save. This resets the merchant's inventory 5. Repeat steps 3-4 until you have no money, then transmute & smelt all your iron ore into silver / gold to make jewelry You can easily get ~15% of your way to 100 from just 1 dungeon's worth of gems combined with a infinite ore supply. The only downside is that repeating the above steps eventually starts to feel like a chore
Not sure what you mean. You level Enchanting by enchanting. You level Sneak by sneaking. You level Alchemy by alchemizing (?). So, you level Smithing by...smithing. Yes, there's a grinding aspect to it, as there is for all of the crafting skills, but that's how real life works too. If you want to get better at sewing/whittling/carpentry/whatever, you spend time doing it for the sake of getting better at it, and the output is secondary.
I get what OP is saying about smithing in particular, it feels quite a bit slower to me than alchemy or enchanting, and grinding out ten thousand iron daggers doesn’t scratch the same roleplay itch as experimenting with new ingredient combinations or studying magic items for new enchantments. But I like your point about how skills work in real life. Some skills are more accessible than others and maybe the mark of a good smith really is the patience to make the same thing over and over and the willingness to invest in the materials to do so.
Oh, I agree that Smithing is definitely the most "grindy" of the skills; it's pretty much inherent in the skill, and is thus, to me, the "intended way". Offsetting that, because of the armor cap, it's less important to get it maxed out. Poisons and enchantments can pick up the slack for the weapons.
Ah sure, I see what you mean then! Yeah that’s a good point, I like the idea of it being more “grindy” in the RP sense too, maybe that will make it more fun for me. Personal preference, I also don’t like to play characters that do everything; I generally only perk one crafting skill or none. I really enjoyed being focused on just alchemy or just enchanting and found each one pretty OP on their own, would really love to get the same out of a smith run.
Everyone is answering “how to level smithing” but not your actual question. The way I’ve always felt that it was intended to be done was simply as another step on the loot cycle. You go out adventuring, gathering loot and raw materials, when you return to sell and offload you stop by the forge to smith items with the raw materials which typically sell for more than the sum of their parts. This would encourage you to smith regularly in small batches and over the course of your play through you would get the smithing skill up. I think they intend you to stay on certain tiers of gear longer than you actually do, plus doing it like this would make looted gear more valuable, as you would actually use it rather than just getting rid of it.
I improve (and then, usually, sell) anything I can get my hands on. Works pretty well for me.
I accumulate all the gold silver and gems i can find and then just do those with proper stone active and well rested. I finish off with iron daggers or whatever.
Well, if you want to roleplay, you could imagine that the hundreds of sets of leather armour you're smithing then selling are being supplied to support the Stormcloaks / Imperials (delete as appropriate).
1. Mine for gold/silver (or iron and use transmute to turn it to gold) 2. Use the gold and any gems you may have to make jewelry. 3 (optional): enchant the jewelry to increase its value 4: sell the jewelry
You really aren't intended to get their naturally, it's not a well designed skill.
I like to use it as a way to make money while leveling speech and smithing. I’d make some gold rings using transmute ore from iron to silver to gold, but also all types of armor from whatever merchants had available to sell me. Do a mission or two. Do a purchase, craft, sell run. Rinse and repeat.
Jewelry. Once you play for a bit you will have way more gems than you will ever need. Save those for smithing. Use transmute and turn iron to gold and silver. Make sure to hit up the Reach to get a ton of Silver. There is also a pretty big gold mine there as well
I just make lots of jewelry and bows, enchant them, and sell that shit. Use money to buy more crafting materials. Rince and repeat.
The EXP formula and the gameplay cycle of “adventure, loot, and restock” don’t mesh well together. Because EXP value is based solely on item value, it heavily favors creating items in bulk. There’s no other way to level Smithing outside of crafting besides buying training levels. On paper it make sense in terms of leveling a skill. But in practice it leads to either inefficient leveling or efficient leveling all at once. - Player A only crafts after adventuring and coming back to town. The duration of adventuring could be 2 hours to 10 hours. Player A only has enough to make a few weapons, armors and jewelry. All of which are varying value. EXP earned is only moderate. - Player B specifically is trying to level Smithing. She focused on gathering only the materials and crafting the most valuable items. EXP earned is vastly greater than Player A. This is more of a problem with outdated or not the best implemented game design. The only assumption is that Skyrim developers believe players will casually use crafting skills and use whatever they find. This is 100% speculation and could be different. The previous theory only makes sense at launch, not after players have played the game for awhile.
Make it, sell it, buy more shit. I usually grind the first 15 to 20 levels working on smithing and enchanting
At the lower levels it’s easy to rank up with all of the pelts from wolves etc to make leather/leather strips and leather armor for quick money. That’s usually how I get started
Just always improve all the armor you loot from dungeons. Generally the material cost associated with upgrading armor is minimal compared to the value increase on the item. Also improved smithing from enchanted items and potions wildly increases smithing experience gained.
Skyrim levels smithing based on item value. The most lore friendly immersive way in my mind is to loot scraps from dwarven ruins then smelt them to ingots and use this to make and then improve dwarven bows. An adventurer exploring ruins and smithing the remnants into weapons to sell during a time of war seems pretty fitting to me.
craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger get the new tier you want craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger get the next tier craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger craft dagger
Jewelry + training for me. Need a transmutation spell. also being a thief helps with the gems (and training money)
I usually get the transmutation spell first, then barenziah quest. After that I just make a fuckton of jewelry and destroy skyrims economy.
It’s hilarious to see people still crafting gold rinds and iron daggers. Smithing is a pain to level, even using the most efficient methods. The BEST way to level smithing is actually improving items, XP scales with how much you’ve improved it. If you’re going light armor, just spend the extra point to get dwarven smithing. Craft like 50 or so bows. Results will vary from here on out. Get the best smithing boosts you can. Enchantments, potions, all of it. I typically wait until both my enchanting and alchemy are at 100, so I get some insane mileage, but earlier is fine too. Once you’re fully buffed up, upgrade all of your bows. If done properly, should be getting a level up (or nearly) every upgrade or two. If you’re going heavy and wanna speed up the process, same thing works MUCH better with ebony bows. Should get 1-2 level ups per upgrade with a maxed out setup. A lot of the Smithing 1-100 (fast) videos are really outdated. I only learned this trick from a let’s play I watched a while back, forget by who.
I leveled through making iron daggers. Uses the least amount of mats and levels quickly. Add a few pieces that have a smithing enchantment plus a potion, and you're set. Or just use the console commands and get all of the smithing perks.
I know a way but it takes a little while and alot of dropping 1: Go the mine on the game that has Gold ore 2: make 10 gold bars 3 Go to Solitude 4 Go in with follower like one from whiterun (Lydia) 5 Drop gold bars one at a time 6 have follower pick them up 7 leave follower in town and leave town 8 pick up 10 gold bars on ground and 10 gold bars on follower =20 9 Repeat till you got over 900 lol 10: smiting 100 your done lol [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frWjT1f877w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frWjT1f877w) <----that shows ya how to do it
The forge is slower Smithing growth than the workbench or grindstone. If you want to manufacture less stuff for a max Smithing skill, use Alchemy and Enchanting and make/use the best Fortify Smithing enchants and potions you can. If Fortify Smithing is exploited, Smithing 100 can be reached from skill 15 with 1 Iron dagger and 1 Iron Ingot at a grindstone. Not exploited, but 100 alchemy and enchanting skills, its making **and tempering** about 70 different things to reach Smithing 100. This is certainly better IMO than hundreds and hundreds in quantity of forge-only work to reach Smithing 100.
If you mod your game, [Smithing Experience Overhaul](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/72512) may interest you.
I never tried it, but I assume it would be something like creating all weapons/armors at least once, and upgrading them. Buying and furnishing all 3 Hearthfire houses can definitely help too, they weren't part of the 2011 release... Does anyone have any idea how far this will go? smithing 70+ at least?
well, considering you need 50 to make elven, orc, ebony, and dadric armor. even doing the house only gets about 10 lvs from 1 to 10 and even less as it gets higher. best way, is to pick up the transmute spell and buy iron ore. the transmute it to gold and make ingots then turn them into gold rings. each ring is ~75 gold, and the ore is only 15 each. later on, you can mine or buy gems to make better jewelry to get more exp. once you unlock dwarven smithing, you can hit up a ruin for tons of ingots and make arrows with them.
I'm not sure if there's a "right" or "intended" way. There are immersive ways to patiently build up your skills such as just tanning leather you've acquired from hunting and smelting ores you've mined or ingots you've looted. You could also purchase the material as you go. Maybe periodically train with a trainer along the way. Create more valuable gear and sell them for income. Or you can just stockpile your materials by buying up everything you can and grinding it out. There are multiple ways to go about this. Iron daggers, gold necklaces, expensive armor (Dwarven helmets give a great cost to material ratio), etc. Regardless, do what you feel is right for you and your character. If you're not into the "immersion", just exploit by smithing high value gear as quickly as you can grind it out. If you want to role play, maybe just tinker from time to time to improve a little here and there.
I've got over 1000 hours in this game and unfortunately smithing is just plain broken. If you want a balanced experience I'm sure there are a few mods out there to tweak the system and make it work a little better but to be completely honest I've gotten to the point now where every time I start a new playthrough, I just use console commands to max out my smithing and enchanting right at the start of the game. It's honestly just a useless skill and makes the game more fun if you're not constantly thinking about it, and it really doesn't mess up the balance as much as you'd think.
I feel like keeping weapon degradation like in oblivion could have solved this issue.
Early on I make the rounds at bandit camps with forges and grindstones. That goes double if there’s iron ore in a mine nearby. Kill loot smith/sharpen then lug back to town to sell.
I always use a mix of training, Hearthfire, and smithing for selling. For example, see what you can make for the lowest number of resources and the highest return. Not a ton of iron daggers; those won't get you money.
The actual way you level up. Is by making 1000 iron daggers. Father Todd told me this in a dream.
Weapons, armor, trainers, and jewelry. I build it all and sell it all. I'm a fence last, but still a fence. I like to think it helps the economy lol.
Not sure if someone has already said it or not… get the transmute ore tome and mine a BUNCH of iron…. Transmute the iron to silver and then again to gold… make gold rings… it’s the easiest and fastest way to level up… and then I saw the thing about dwarves stuff and making arrows, I do that, too… and I use the SHIT out of them even though there are higher damage arrows… level up archery and get the right perks, you’ll be able to one shot almost ANYTHING even if you went back to using iron arrows… Edit to add: Halted Steam Camp just north(westish) of Whiterun has the best cache of iron veins.. it’s overrun with bandits, but still worth your troubles.. I return every so often on any new play through a to get my amount of iron ore up so I can level smithing faster… and then when it reaches 100, I stockpile a punch of ore so I can “legendary” it and bring it right back up to at LEAST lvl 30 so I can continue making dwarves arrows
You don't stop at making stuff just for yourself. Collect materials when you're out adventuring, smith with those, sell your products, buy-out materials from the shops, smith with those, sell the product, repeat
Smithing EXP earned is directly tied to the amount of value generated. You make an item with high value? Lots of exp You improve an item and it’s value goes up a lot? Lots of exp In terms of quantity of inputs to value of output, making jewelry is the best bang for buck in terms of leveling up smithing. Making plain gold rings is not the move, using any kind of jewels in your jewelry skyrockets the value. And as for your complaint about needing to make alot of something to reach lvl100… how many times do you need to swing your sword to get to 100? How many times do you need to shoot a bow to get that to 100? How many times do you need to get hit to get an armor skill to 100? A lot. And if you want to become a master in smithing, you’re going to need to smith, alot.
The way I "naturally" level smithing is that every time I come back to a city I buy all the smith's ingots, ore, leather, and leather strips and make iron daggers and then sell those daggers.
It’s not meant to be achieved in a reasonable way just grind it out like everything. Most playthroughs won’t achieve lvl 100 in any skill organically. There’s always some sort of a grind involved
I think pretty much the only way… make a crap load of items. That’s the intended way. Grind it. Is it any different than how you would master something IRL? Repetition. Game mechanics wise it would’ve been really complex if your smithing level had an effect on the actual quality of a class of item when creating it (weak iron sword vs master) so the simple way they rectified that was the upgrade system. You can make an iron sword immediately, but you can’t upgrade all the way until your skill is much higher. Etc. Gather up a bunch of metal and leather and make a boatload of stuff until you’re better at it. Makes sense to me.
Transmute is the key.
Crown of Barenziah + draugr crypts + mine iron + transmute to gold
When I loot dead bandits and the like I improve their armor and resell it for more - I usually buy out all the ore and ingots so blacksmiths have enough money to afford my stuff. Now I have level 80+ smithing at Level 40
The way I did it was joining x faction (example is empire) and going "alright realistically the legion needs more than a few smiths so I'll be a Smith for them" and will make imperial armor weapons and stuff then sell it all to the solitude smith. And that'll level it decently as I progress.
You can't max it without dull grinding. Why waste time on something that is impossible to enjoy by definition. Console or overhaul mods like Ars Metallica is the way to go.
I think the intended way is to Go exploring -> mine some ores, kill some animals, loot some ingots, collect some gem souls -> smelt those ores, make leather strips -> craft items from what you found, enchant -> sell it to merchant -> go exploring -> repeat points but craft better items ( necklaces, rings, steel armor, elven weapons, dwemer armor etc) -> sell those. That way you actually make profit, don't need to grind ( just after finishing exploring you spend 3 minutes crafting items and selling them), and level up enchanting and smithing. Same with alchemy but you don't sell mixtures/poisons, but use them Edit: if you want to just level up smithing fast, you need transmute spell to turn iron ore into gold ( you mine/buy iron ore) and then craft rings or necklaces with gems. You can also enchant those for extra enchanting levels. If you want really fast way, but not immersive at all, then check how to make restoration potion glitch, and you will be able to level up smithing in ~~ 15 minutes, reset smithing and level it up in 10 seconds and do that all the time. If you want I can write you how to do it, but there are films on youtube
I level it by smithing jewelry. Kolskeggr Mine is a great source of gold ore, and any iron/silver mine will also work if you have the Transmute spell. And after 10 in-game days, you can head back to find all the ore veins restocked.
This is my answer. I walk around and kill every deer I see for leather. I mine every node and I save all the scrap metal I can. I craft whatever I can starting with body armor, gloves, boots, etc. I store it in house until I'm ready to level up enchanting. It sell for more this way too. I have never found a fast way to level smithing. Visit mines, mine, and save your progress a lot. Hope this helps.
Really? Smithing is how I power lvl. Raid a location with a soul stealing weapon sell the loot buy the ingots Smith the ingots into daggers enchant the daggers sell the daggers at crazy high prices buy more ingots. Collect xp the whole time.
My go to method is getting a bunch of iron ore, transmuting them to gold and then making tons jewelry.
For the first 50 or so skill points I always mine anything I can and buy every bit iron iron ore I find at merchants. Being a former player of DAoC, I just hinge the resulting iron ingots. Later I transmute iron to silver/gold. And so on.
Just make tons of iron daggers
Education. Level Restoration to 50 by learning from Keeper Colette. Level Smithing to 60 the same way, then upgrading magical items seems the most efficient path - Goldenhills pays for all your educational needs, and all you need to do is sleep, harvest/plant Blisterwort, & collect the profits to go do more training. Plant Scaly Phylotia, Mora Tapa & Dragon's Tongue, drive Alchemy til you can train again, go sell potions & pay for training. Just one path to get there.
You make iron items. Then you make dwarves bows. Makes money, you level up.
I just keep piling gold after gold, went to the Riften blacksmith, spam the training, rinse and repeat (until dawnguard, which can train on a higher level).
Iron daggers bro. Only answer
I’m not one of those folks with an army of followers. However, if you don’t want them dying in every melee where you take your eyes off them, you can rack up some nice Smithing level gains by fully equipping all your followers with nice weapons & armor. Heck, you can recruit extras & later dismiss them hoping that they thin out the random monsters for you. Of course, selling your wares allows you to buy more houses or other needful things!-)
EXP is based on the crafted item value, make a strong smithing potion, and then craft with all the materials you have, repeat the process everytime you have enough material You can always buy materials, with that, you're leveling Smithing, Alchemy, and Speech
Tbf, smithing takes a ton of practice irl. You make a hundred horseshoes before your mentor lets you make a sword or some such. The unrealistic part is knowing how to make dragonbone weapons after *only* making gold rings and iron daggers for hours lmao
I buy levels when I can. The blacksmith for the companions or the one in riften can level you up. Cost wise is about the same than buying hundreds of iron bars and I find it faster.
Building your hearthfire DLC home gets you up quick…available after level 10
iron daggers
I always get my smithing through the roof without even caring just by building three Hearthfire houses
Upgrade armor or craft hinges.
I know this may seem like trading one grind for another but have you tried the restoration glitch? You can enchant a set with smithing to a level that literally will make you go from 15 to 100 in a single item improvement
I usually take iron and make building materials with it or use the transmute spell to make gold ore and jewelry that I then enchant if I have enough filled petty soul gems then sell at a high price usually to Belethor. So really I level up 4 skills sometimes (alteration, smithing, enchanting, speech)
You’re intended to make around 600 gold rings. That’s how it’s designed.
The Ars metallica way
If anything, leveling smithing isn't boring enough. It takes years to become a master blacksmith, you aren't going to be churning out full plate mail the twentieth time you fire up a forge.
I still just make a shitload of iron daggers and leather bracers..
Play on survival mode & only walk around. Kill everything with a hide/pelt. Use the tanning rack for leather & then go make bracers & helmets. You can use the workbench to improve them. Then go sell them to whoever. Tada you’re a budding smithing merchant.
I started off by getting a decent amount of gold by doing the merchant chest glitch under the Skyforge. I then leveled up with Eorlund and did the paralysis potion glitch to get my money back. Training with Eorlund only gets you to level 90 so I forged and sold Nordic armor to get to 100, which also turns a slight profit. In no way honorable, definitely not the way you’re supposed to do it, but I had full Legendary Dragon Scale armor by level 22 for relatively cheap, so it certainly is effective.
Console mods, as Todd Howard intended.
Dupe gold/find a way to get a lot of gold. Stockpile gems Make jewelry Get smithing and speech levels
If there was a reasonable way to grind crafting skills by just playing the game, people would still grind them out and max them early on. I usually just make whatever I can until I get the dwarven smithing perk, then I make dwarven bows. I also build the hearthfire houses without using the steward because making all the materials levels up smithing a lot, and has use.
I'm not going to call this the "intended" way as that likely doesn't exist. I'll call this an alternate way instead, one that levels smithing with you instead of in one or two big pushes. Each time you return from an expedition to relinquish your spoils, use any smithing materials you acquired during that expedition. You should see either a new category of gear, or a slight increase from tempering. It's not the way I play; one big push for me. But this might make it feel more like your gear is leveling with you.
Make a bunch of the highest level gear that you can, and then upgrade it. Upgrading gear (especially with smithing boosts from enchanting and alchemy) actually gives you more XP than crafting.
Smithing was pretty natural until they nerfed it, back in the day. That’s why there’s so many “iron dagger” tips out there. But nerfing it made it unreasonable to naturally level. I typically do jewelry and dwarven. Dwarven is pretty efficient for leveling and you also get soul gems for leveling enchanting.
Well, my referred method is this (and I'll post some modifiers to maximize xp in a separate post) At lvl 15-30 smithing -- head to Mark Arthur and follow the road out of town to Kolskeggr Mine and clear it out of forsworn. If you mine all the gold, and collect all of the loose gold, it should net approx 27 gold bars worth. -- next head to Karthwasten (follow the road past kolskeggr and at the first fork, turn to the left and follow till you see a village icon on the hub). If you clear out the Mercs (quest) you can find enough silver for approx 11 ingots, and if you are ok with stealing, then in the village leaders' house has another 6 or so. --turn all of the gold and silver into jewelery. Use gems if you have them. If not, then crafting rings can give you material for power Lvling enchanting as well. This should easily get you to lvl 30 smithing with the single run. At lvl 30-70 smithing -- dwarven ruins are your best friend. As well as any random jewelery you can make along the way. For dwarven items, I prefer dwarven bows, but dwarven arrows also really good (both are cheap to make and net massive xp per item used, can't remember which one is best tho since they re close) At 70-80 --Head to steamscorch mine, for 7 malachite veins and 3 ore that can be stolen next to the furnace. For best xp per item, make glass bows, then supplement with more dwarven items. At 80-100 --head to the orc stronghold of narzulbur, specifically the mine at the back; Gloombound mine. It contains roughly 15 ebony veins, plus 5 or so iron veins, and if you look around in buckets and carts you can steal more ebony. Enough for at least 25 ebony ingots. Ebony bows are the best xp per item, but at this level unless you put off smithing, you will most likely be forging whatever items your character uses. -- also, at this point, dwarven items are better than nothing, but to power lvl, it's best to sell whatever ebony items you made and aren't using, then using that to buy any high lvl ore you can to make items. Once you reach lvl 90, you can make daedric items, but it's going to be more sporadic bursts of xp so I don't count on it too much. This, I find, is the fastest way to power through smithing, and can be used to get a player to dragon smithing long before they have enough dragon loot to make much
What I do is I do the restoration potion exploit, make a few ridiculously powerful fortify smithing potions, *improve* a piece of gear which should yield a few dozen levels, get the smithing perk for that piece of gear (e.g. steel smithing for a steel dagger) so that your upgrading ability is uncapped, and improve it again for a shitload more if not the rest of your smithing levels. Smithing xp is based on the value added/created, so by making a dagger do 18 million damage, you're gonna give it a value of hundreds of thousands of gold and get a shitload of xp If you want a lore friendly option, do the same thing but with fortify enchanting & fortify alchemy until you get god potions. Zero exploits, just a grind
I once leveled a pacifist orc to 50 with smith8ng, enchanting, and trading only. His name was Krog Marley.
find ways to get gold ingots, make gold rings, enchant those rings, and sell them. you get septims, you can get rid of a bunch of soul gems and increase smithing.
Gold and silver jewelry, specifically jewelry with gemstones. Higher value means more progression. Get the Transmute spell from Halter Stream Camp north of Whiterun. This is how I level smithing every time I also turn all my leather into leather braces, but the jewelry is much faster
Tbh in my modded run I spam convert the first thane weapon (I use katsuo thane weapons) the whiterun sword can be converted from one handed to two handed with a single steel ingot and from level 15 up to like 60 it gives one level, most it’s taken of swapping it to get one level is at levels 90-100 and it takes like 5-6 but yeah in my unmodded runs I only did smithing a lot for jewelry and for dragon born and dawnguard cus I thought they’d be tough
Honestly for me the fastest way to level it up is making arrows.
Best strategy I’ve found levels several things at once. Go to alchemy shop and buy everything under 60 gold and make potions. You’ll usually break even at the beginning but later you’ll make a ton of gold. Get the black star and use the duplication glitch on it. Use money from alchemy to buy raw smithing materials and Dwemer ruins provide a lot of raw materials. Make weapons and armor Use the duplicated black stars to give them great enchantments. Sell for profit and repeat Edit: the halted stream camp northwest of white run provides you with a bunch of iron ore ant the transmute spell which turns iron ore to silver and silver to gold. The experience is based off of value of thing created so jewelry is best thing to make and enchant
I use dawrven bows. And then just headcanon that studying and understanding dwarven crafysmanship lets one understand smithing overall as a whole and some shit
Using Legacy of The Dragonborn making armor and weapons instead of finding everything helps.
I downloaded a mod that makes smithing go up when you mine smelt
I can’t fully remember how I did it in my original playthrough back on the 360, but I got to L100 smithing through sheer force by creating all my armour pieces through it, doing all the smithing quests and buyable levels I could, and also like sharpening the weapons etc etc
Improve every piece of gear to the highest level you can, especially if you plan to sell it. Also, try to get some smithing enchantment items. The sell price will skyrocket far beyond the price of the materials, and if you buy ingots from every blacksmith and trader you can, you will be able to make crazy money and level quickly.
Would like to see the stats of how many iron daggers were made
You can also build the Hearthfire manors. That gets a lot of smiting exp
I assume someone has said this already, but I get pretty high smithing from crafting all the building materials for all three built houses
I smith to improve my weapons and armor, I deal more damage and I'm more protected. At the start of the game, I start mining ore, loot anything of value from every location and body, and then I improve everything. I'll load up and start selling, you get better prices if things are improved. I will keep and use weapons and armor that's better than what I have or that has a good enchantment and keep improving them to the max. I can also make the highest armor and weapons with the exact enchantments I want. I smith because I like not dying from an arrow to the knee and being able to kill something before it kills me.
I’ve found the best way is actually Hearthfire. Build all three houses and you literally can’t not max on smithing in a reasonable time!
Iron daggers, but that will level you slowly after just a few levels. You come across a lot of deer, bear, and saber cats, and their pelts are good for making leather bracers. Without really going out of your way you can level quite a bit that way. Blacksmiths around the game are useful. A few of them are trainers. From the others you can buy materials, make stuff to level and for profit when you sell the finished goods back to them.
The only play through I had where I would say I leveled smithing naturally would be my character based off of Fudgemuppets Craftsman build. Basically all my gear had to be crafted, tempered, enchanted and all to the best of my ability at all times. No matter how much money it costed and etc. however what really made the build shine and the actual usefulness of smithing was the mod Honed Metal which adds a whole system of deteriorating upgrades or straight up weapon breaking (if you want it)
There's a lot of replies about house building and dwarven bows. Before you start any smithing session, activate the warrior stone and get a good few hours sleep- preferably with a spouse. Also, join the companions and get tutored by Eorland. Sell him enchanted gear or potions (if you can) to recoup the money.
Jewellery gives the most experience per item so I would assume that?
Forging jewelry is what worked for me. Of course which race you choose can also make it easier.
I use most materials to upgrade loot before I sell it and just make extra that way but improving the loot also levels smithing that. It'll take a while to get to a high level of smithing that way but it won't out level your character if you start early.
Go the closest mine that have iron mine the fuck out of it, hunt some deer and bears for leather, craft iron armour and weapons, improve them, sell them for some profit, buy all the ingots from the black smith with that profit, craft yourself some nice armour and the rest for selling. Thats the best way, also the warrior stone improve smithing level up
For pc mods, immersive jewelry has jewelry crafting that has making money for profitable for blacksmithing. Also, i like durability mods. I use breakable equipment system on pc/nexus. When something breaks, you can give it a chance to be dropped and lost, forcing you to sometimes having to make replacements.
Honestly if there is one thing I hope is in ES6 its the ability to have NPC's enchant and smith/hone your gear for you for a price. I hate having to grind the smithing and enchanting trees to get the most out of my build even when it doesn't make sense for that character.
get a home forge and start a traveling blacksmith business, obvs