Hello. I've been trying for a week now to become the best Smith in Skyrim, but it's just taking too damn long!

It appears that spamming Iron Daggers no longer works, something to do with the update?

Anyways, what's the best way to get a high Smith level quickly?

If you play on Xbox or PC you can buy Hearthfire and purchase and build all houses, that should boost your smithing quite a bit.

Now, the value of the item Smithed is what counts towards skill leveling. The more expensive it is, the more credit you get towards the skill. It has been this way since Patch 1.5

I would think the contribution from house building activities is less than building weapons and armor. Tanning and Smelting don't give credit to the skill increase, even though it makes the same noise as a forged item when you are done. Perhaps the building activities are limited in the same way.

Make jewelry until 30 skill because it's the most expensive thing to make without perks and then switch to Dwarven, the most expensive to make with mostly free materials.

I bought Lakeview Manor and crafted a lot of iron fittings and stuff, and after a little while i had smithing up to 30, note that i made more then needed in the end though.

The character that is building houses is already at 100, so I did not get to see what contributions there are. However, with the number of things that are made for a house, I would be surprised if the rate of skill increase is the same, as a person would max out smithing just by building a house. Perhaps it is the low value of the iron fittings and nails and such that keep the increase in check.

Fastest and cheapest way I found is to get the Dwarven smithing perk then make a bunch of Dwarven bows. Dwarven ingots can be got for free in many different places. Same with iron.

I would also recommend getting foritfy smithing apparel and fority smithing potions. After you make some bows, go over to the grindstone and temper them with your fortify smithing apparel and potions. So, for instance, get 30 Dwarven ingots, 10 iron ingots, and make 10 Dwarven bows and then improve them.

I still make iron daggers and leather helmet and jewelry when my smithing is in low level and it seems to bring up the skill quickly enough.

When I get smithing skill to 50 or 60, and can get improvements above Superior, then I focus on improving things. Wearing enchanted gear and drinking fortify smithing potions is very very helpful at this point.

One thing I do when I get to 70 or 80 is buy up expensive weapons and armors like ebony armor and glass warhammer, improve it and sell it back to the smith. If you can improve an ebony armor to legendary, it gives you more experience than making a new ebony armor.

I would say leveling smithing is still very easy, and more interesting than the old way.

Go to Halted stream camp in the whiterun Hold, it is North of the city of whiterun. Kill everyone and get the spell tome transmute mineral ore, and alteration spell that turns iron ore into silver ore and then gold ore, get a pickaxe and mine iron ore, major deposits are found in Halted stream camp itself, the embershard mine and Fort Fellhammer mine. use the spell and make a ton of gold jewelry. Another way to really grind lower level smithing, is to find a very expensive enchantment, like banish, and enchant weapons with them, then go to Balimund in Riften and train smithing for 5 levels every level, get your money back by selling off the ridiculously expensive Banish weapons, (e.g an iron dagger with banish enchant and a petty soul gem can have a value of 1500 septims at mid-enchanting levels. Finally when your smithing is very high, just improve really expensove armor and rake in the points!

I got a few smithing levels out of a mage character who had a 60-ish Smithing skill when she started building her house. Her way of getting the skill to 60 (for the Arcane Smithing perk) was making jewelry for enchanting.

This.

You can get lots of dwarven metal in the museum in Markarth by stealing scrap and smelting it down by the river. Get the key from Calcelmo for killing a few spiders. I make mostly dwarven bows because they don't require steel or leather.

After you do that, go buy some training and sell back those improved Dwarven bows to recoup some of the cost.

If you go the light armor route the steel plate armor is your friend at higher levels, base is worth 600 and cordium and steel is the advanced materials.
And as other say use smithing potions and gear then tempering as the price increase on the gear determine how much you level up.

Thank you, that's pretty good

If you have Dawnguard and don't want to level alteration with jewelry the best way till level 30 is crafting iron arrows. Just need to chop some free wood and since you craft 24 arrows for 1 iron you have better skill increase than with iron daggers with less expensive material. Even with the new skill system with patch 1.5, crafting iron daggers is better than iron armor at low levels since you receive a fixed xp amount whatever you build (independent of value). With arrows, you can stock them and selle them later when your speech skill is high enough and have some haggling help (necklace, bless, potions, Clavicus or thieves guild hood,...).

Personally, making the most expensive item then upgrading it can level you very quickly. It's more difficult if you take the light armor side, due to materials being less available.

One method which hasn't been touched on yet in this thread is making and upgrading Nord Hero Weapons. This method requires finishing the Companion's Arc, finishing with 'Glory of the Dead', whereupon the Skyforge will unlock some new recipes to convert Ancient Nord Weapons, commonly found on Draugr and Undead, into Nord Hero Weapons. While your inputs are heavy, they're incredibly common, and buying steel bars isn't prohibitively expensive either.

This is a great option for light armour smiths early on, before Advanced Armours are unlocked, without tying up that otherwise useless perk in Dwarf Smithing.

Seriously make jewelry, I dont know about you but from regularly playing I get piles of gold, silver and gems just hold on to it until you get a nice pile going and then crank out a crap load of jewelry. After I finish a round of major questing and want to upgrade my gear I convert all my gems to jewels and i usually jump 5-20 smithing levels depending on how long its been since i cleared out my jewels. I always make a habit of buying gold and silver ingots and ore when I'm in town so I can use up more gems later. Its a ton of light weight profit when your done.

Good level up and also money maker are:

1. "Steel Plate Armor"(for the left side)
2. "Orcish Armor" (for right side)

Buy the materials build and upgrade the armor, then sell it. (bad speech skill can result in a minimal loss of money but it is still very cheap)

3. "Transmute"(alteration speel) you can find it at the "Halted Stream Camp"(north of whiterun)
Buy iron -> transmute gold/silver -> make ring/amulete -> sell -> PROFIT

I mine the precious metals in the Reach and make tons of jewelry with all the precious stones I find. I usually end up leaving Kolskegger Mine with 20-30 gold bars.

If your rich and have lots of mooch items, I suggest travelling from hold to hold, buying all ingots (and ores if there is a smithy) that you have the level for and spamming bows. The thing is that they only need the ingot and are worth a pretty penny.

i wouldn't do that. i have do that first time but no more. enjoy your game by playing/killing/collecting. and not that way.

plain and simple, Jewelry. gold, silver, made 7 items got three levels. kinda broken