I've never used smithing before and the game is very easy for me. I've heard that at higher levels it becomes more difficult, but my characters stop at around level 25 because the game becomes boring...

I have a sneak toon around level 21, sneak almost 80 (perked). 1h around 40, archery 50 (perked). Bow is orcish, daggers are dwarven, both found. No gear upgraded via Smithing.

Playing on master, the vast majority of mobs I come across, even casters, take a bunch of arrows from sneaking to take out. Basic bandits, novice mages, skeevers and non-frost wolves I can take in one or two shots. Nothing else. And forget about sneaky dagger attacks at this point -- barely scratches the surface. Again, low-armor casters I can take out with daggers before they know what's going on, but it's still only after a couple of dual-wield power attacks.

So I spend alot of time shooting, running, hiding, waiting for the eye to go away, sneaking back...etc

Just to give some perspective. People who say "yes it's viable" or "no it isn't", while not being dishonest, aren't really giving you the full picture bc you don't know if they're playing on novice or master or what else they've done with their toon.

edit: in the interest of providing the "full picture", my character refuses to use companions. As a thief/assassin, she needs to get in and out quick. That's what she said. Not my character. You know what I mean.
edit2: OP asked about perking smithing -- I'd say you can get away without perking smithing and not have too much trouble. However, if you don't even skillup smithing, while it does seem viable, you're going to have a much harder, slower go at it.

Just turned level 29 and haven't Blacksmithed anything. I'm also a stealth/archery character and doing the right quests get you good equipment for stealthing.

I did not blacksmith anything until my character was in the low 20's for a level. Never had an issue in the game with the weapons I bought or found being able to handle what was coming after me.

Depends on your playing style. My char focuses on stealth, dual wielding daggers and high damage bows and arrows. I don't use armor and often use a companion/follower as a tank in skirmishes I can't avoid. For my char smithing is important. To he able to get the best daggers and bows available. Improving weapons is essential for my char survival. I need good weapons and speed to inflict as much damage as possible before the enemy can retaliate.

Of course it is, you'll have more fun that way as well. In fact, playing the game implies to me that they tested for difficulty without taking any of the crafting skills into account at all towards combat balance.

I didn't train the Smithing skill until about level 40, since I got tired of only recieving orcish and steel armour as loot.
I think my game might be bugged because I'm 59 now, nearing 60, and have yet to discover more than 2 pieces of ebony loot so far, let alone daedric.

I just hit level 43 on my pure stealth character. I completely ignored most perks except Archery and Stealth and some Alchemy - I use the alchemy for poisons, and for health potions, since I found that even at this level, if multiple mobs close in on my ranged lightly armored character, I get my ass handed to me. (I got mobbed by 5 falmer at this level and it turned ugly fast. They, along with some other mobs, do seem to have a superior ability to locate you in spite of a very high stealth skill. Whereas other mobs you can practically sit on their lap and they don't "See" you.

Anyway, I eventually put a couple perks into Blacksmithing - purely to grab the ability to upgrade my enchanted bows, since I am now carrying the awesome Nightingale bow. But I was fine without that boost in damage until fairly recently, but at around level 40, I started struggling against some mobs again. (But only if they spot me, it's been fun just sniping everything. )

I always have a few extra perks - I just don't use them each turn, so it gives me room to throw a few at Alchemy, for example, when I was needing to beef up my poison making.

A Sneak dual wielding daggers character relies on on one-shotting targets out of stealth. Smithing is crucial to that. Your only form of defense with this build is to run away and re enter Stealth and try again after the target resets - or - swing and try to dodge attacks which is going to take FOREVER to kill something. Neither are very satisfying. If you are looking for a higher level of combat go with 1H + Shield, or 1H + Magic or 2H. At least you can block and use spells too in these cases.

To be honest, I think Ive only used a couple perks in the entire smith/enchant/alch tree, to which I regret.... I can kill almost everything in around 5 arrows, 1 or 2 with stealth and damage bonus apparel. I'm having a lot of fun not being too overpowered. My next character I think Im going to do the opposite of what I did now, and make a 1h mage, that excels in smith/enchant/alch tree.

yes it's possible but makes the game much harder...i play pure mage with robes and at lvl 55 i have many challenging fights

My girlfriend didn't put any perks in smithing until last night and her character has always done very well. I love smithing, but it makes it far too easy to become overpowered.

My high elf mage made his own jewelry, nothing more. At level 50-something he got cocky and decided to "show" his followers exactly how armor and weapon should be used. I made it through several dungeons with plain old light armors and swords, no problems, no magic. So, yeah, totally doable.

I've played a Desctruction/Conjuration mage, a Sword and Board warrior, and now a Dual-Wielding hybrid Mage/Rogue/Warrior, all on master, without touching smithing until later levels when I'm pretty much done with my character and just want to be OP. It can be difficult at times, not having some extra armor due to lacking improved smithing perks, or having to wait until, say, glass armor drops instead of being able to make it yourself. But I find it's more enjoyable, you don't get that uneven jump in power you'd get from crafting an entire suite of the next tier of armor before it even drops in game.

This post made me laugh outloud! You are a roleplayer, like me!

I have a sneaky Khajiit (level 43) that put three points into smithing, Steel, Elven and Arcane. With that he can improve any magical gear and can improve Elven daggers to an amazing degree. Elven daggers are light and powerful enough to carry you through the whole game if well smithed. So if you can squeeze out three more perk points you might think about these three. You definately don't need more than that. But I tend to agree with others here that say you can could get by without putting any points into smithing. The 15x damage you get from sneak dagger attacks is insane, and for tougher boss monsters, you can do a dual wield backstab with daggers for double 15x damage.

My first char had all the perks. That was just to see what you could do. The next 6 chars only invested 2 perks in it. That is all that will ever be invested again. Unless I just want to create my own gear. Even without perks in Alch and Enchant, you can combine them to get a weapon or Armor to legendary.

Of course it is, you don't need to improve your weapons to make them actually work. It just helps.

For me the crafting system takes away the joy of finding a good piece of equipment as treasure, so I only use found loot.

Potions would be different, but my auto-potion mod doesn't work with alchemy created potions so .. meh.

Personally, I think a single crafting skills by itself is enough to get by on. It's when you start stacking them that things get OP.

Smithing - Warrior
Enchating - Mage
Alchemy - Thief

Legendary weapons and armor put out and take one hell of a beating.
Enchanted weapons and gear allow the mage to boost his/her abilities and do extra damage.
Poisons and potions allow the stealthy character to inflict a multitude of effects on their target while boosting their own abilities.

I didn't use smithing on my first two characters. It didn't seem to matter with my first (mage) but on my second character (sneaky archer 100 in Archery/almost all perks and sneak up to x3 damage) at some point (when she got to Level 40) I starting feeling like I needed more punch from my bow and even though I had an Ebony enchanted bow (I was doing some enchanting with that character) I needed more from it. I've started a third character (another sneaky archer) and I'm doing smithing to see if that will make a difference when I get up to the 40's. I'm not investing all that many perks though and have no intention of going all the way to 100 in skills.

I'm running a Archer girl, that isn't using any magic weaponry, alchemy, or enchanting and only uses blacksmithing and it's going ok so far (like 25). When I do get to 100 blacksmithing that will be the limit on my weaponry and armor improvement.

My conjurer/destruction mage did just fine without it. I mostly played her on Adept, though.

A stealth character should be just fine, provided they are...you know, stealthy.

My orc warrior on master...now, he needed smithing, since all he could really do was run up and hit things in the face.

Shouldn't it be the other way around? Demi- means half

That is awesome.

This.


I haven't used any crafting skills since my first character.. which is always a test.

It's much more enjoyable.