I only smith to make a living but i dont smith anything for myself except sharpening my sword every now and then

Only my warrior smiths. My thief does alchemy and my spellsword does enchanting.

The thief doesn't need improved weapons or armor because ever hit is a sneak attack you can't kill what you can't see.

The spellsword doesn't need smithing since every weapon is an enchanted weapon and armor is reinforced with enchantments and magic.

It's the potions that have the huge effect on the items improved. I play the game only taking the steel and arcane smithing perks, then just using enchanted fortify smithing apparel I find (max being +100% from 4 peerless smithing items).

Helmets seem pretty efficient. Leather helmet, for ex.... 2 leather, 1 strip. 60 value. (let's see.... ok, yeah. Double checked on the wiki. Iron dagger is 1 iron, 1 strip. 10 value. Iron helm is 3 iron, 2 strips. 60 value. Slightly less than 3x ingredients, 6x value; Steel is better. Helm - 2 steel, 1 iron, 2 strips... 125 value. Dagger 1 steel, 1 iron, 1 strip... 18 value. Less than 2x ingredients, 7x value.) Helmets tend to have about the same low ingredient cost as boots & gloves, but 2-3x the cost.

(And then there's doing any gold & silver jewelry you happen to get the mats for. But that's looking at it from the standpoint of using found materials, not Waiting them out from the vendor.)

I started a new mage and I won't be using smithing at all. I'll never give up alchemy, though I don't plan on spending any perks on it for a long time. I may or may not avail of enchanting... depends on how I feel.

I like the act of smithing too much to not use it. I don't invest in perks (Except steel and Arcane Blacksmith for obvious reasons), and only use store bought "Of Smithing" Potions and enchatments. I also don't powerlevel my smithing, I only craft jewelry, more specifically, jewelry with a gem involved (so no Gold Ring, Silver Ring, Gold Necklace, Silver neckalce), which tends to create a pretty slow, but well-paced rate of improvement on the skill.

Playing on Master, this tends to have, what I feel is the appropriate balance between Player power and enemy power. With an Armor rating of around 300(ish) and a weapon damage of about 115, I can kill enemies in about three to five hits, and be killed in two to eight, depending on the enemy.

I don't invest in Enchanting at all, I find that using what I buy and find makes the game a bit more interesting, though it svcks that Enchantments can apply attributes to pieces of armor not featured in game. (Weapon Damage on the feet, for example)

I use enchanting + smithing and no alchemy. It's still very good. You can reach armor cap fairly easy and weapons do good damage. I'm pretty happy about it mostly. If I feel too OP, I craft myself weaker weapon and/or weaker armor for a while. But I keep going back to armor cap. It feels good to be sturdy. At expert level, I find that 100 damage sword is about right. 50 damage sword gets a bit frustrating. 200 damage sword gets a bit OP. I think it's a good idea to explore what feels best for you.

I don't take perks in Smithing or Alchemy (which I impose limits on what ingredients I can use) and I never use Enchanting, even though it's the crafting skill of my class. Although I don't do this to purposely gimp myself or to "rebalance" the game, I just don't want to.

My rule, don't smith an item you haven't found. I allow myself to smith to equip my companions and whatnot, but if I haven't found ebony armor yet adventuring, I'm not going to acquire my first set smithing.

In fact, I think that should be a smithing requirement ... finding and destroying an article to learn it's 'recipe' before you can smith it.

Smithing is fine now, you actually have to put a little effort into it other then "iron dagger x1000"

Now they need to fix enchanting.

Even though it's not part of my RP and im not a mage i can't help but use every alchemy table i find and am a gifted potion maker :/

I think I'll deprecate Smithing as well as I did with Enchanting for my next build...I leave my character open for other skills that way.

I didn't smith a thing with my first two characters but now I do; for both the upgraded stuff and the $. I hate not having a good home to live in and smithing everything I can find allows me to have a home ASAP. I've only made it to 100 smithing twice and frankly, that was just because I wanted to see how high I could get my armor rating (once with light, once with heavy). And I'll keep doing it. It's fun.

One of my characters is a smith, the other five are not.

I always smith but my characters are mainly a warrior based class.

Without smithing, you can't get the best gear in the game. That's a choice RPers can make, but I kinda like to at least sample the content in the game I bought. I don't use Dragon Armor anymore, but I had to at least make some to see it.

I have a Khajiit character who only uses the skills in the thief constellations, so no smithing for him. Ro'Shandra does not beat his weapon.

I had all the Smithing perks and crafted my own gear and weapons, and upgraded them to legendary.
As Bacillus said in an earlier post, it's a great way to make money.
Now that I'm playing as a mage, I'll need to focus on the perks for spells, so I won't be using Smithing to the extent I did with my previous character.

I sometimes play characters who use obey the rule - can only use what they find. Have done this for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim makes life interesting. My main problem with smithing is why is it only the the pc who gets the perks of enhanced weaponry and not the npcs.

I find that after 1.5 upgrade there are more efficient, cost effective, and fun ways of leveling up smithing. If you buy corundum ingots, steel ingots, iron, and leather and make steel plate armor, improve it and sell it, you make a profit while leveling up a lot faster. Much better bang for the buck than iron daggers. If you have Dwarven perk, you have access to ridiculous amounts of free dwarven ingots in dwemer ruins. You can make lots of money making stuff and level up smithing at same time. Making jewelry from all the loose gems you find in dungeons levels up smithing quickly also. It's also a good technique for laundering stolen gems.

I'm sorry, but that is not what I meant by "bang for buck". Actual monies and/or profit has nothing to do with it. I was testing something else and needed to raise my Smithing. I guess I could have just used the console command to give myself skill points, but still.

I was not actually playing the game. I was even using the default character by entering the console command COC Riverwood, at the main menu. I will be testing this later, and from what I seen earlier, crafting 4 iron daggers increased your skill level the same amount as two iron armors, for less the materials. From that, I can assume that the amount of material used to craft daggers is a lot less than the material used to craft Steel Plate Armor, and raise the Smithing the same amount.

i use it as much as possible on armor & bows, and normally on other weapons. i like to not die and have to repeat things, but i dont like killing everything in one hit, unless its with a sneak arrow.

so whats the best thing to make to level it up now? havent actually played since that patch came out

I use it, I just don't exploit it there's a big difference, and unless you make 100 iron daggers a day, it's well balanced.

It's true that making iron daggers is more efficient than making iron armors, but that does not extrapolate to higher tier items. As you move up the smithing tier, the value of the items go up dramatically. And the experience gained is roughly proportional to the square root of value created, or value added. So making one Daedric Armor (Value = http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1367340-anyone-not-use-smithing/3200) and improving to normal legendary (added value = 3200) will generate about same experience as making 35 iron daggers. If you wear fortify smithing gear, you can add 6400+ value to your armor for the cost of 1 ebony ingot, which will add roughly the same experience as 43 iron daggers.

I do no crafting, I rely upon the Divines to give me what I need. I am a warrior not a artisian.