I notice the smithing perks for the armour types describe you as being able to "improve" armour of that type. Do we have any idea exactly what is meant by "improving"?

Secondly, there is the arcane smithing perk which lets you improve magical items. Do you suppose this perk stacks (ie. enchanted daedric can be improved by both the daedric perk AND the enchanted perk?) or something being enchanted alone is condition to improve it? - Or is improving something everyone can do, but you can't improve magic items normally, and the armour specific perks improve it by twice as much?


Just mulling over the possibilities while planning the basic perk distribution for my artificer (SInce I'll be using a lot of enchanted gear it may be that smithing is semi pointless and I'd be better off just taking only arcane blacksmithing to improve my enchantment heavy gear)

Probably means you can repair it over 100% like in Oblivion.

Without the perk, you can only improve it to "Fine". With the perk, you can improve to "Superior".

Superior is the second level of improvement, Fine is the first.

Raise from 100% condition to 200% condition is what I heard.

There is no conditions on weapons and armor. None, zip, zilch. They do not deteriorate.

Improving it means just what it sounds like: armor protects better and weapons do more damage when improved. You can improve everything normally (some skill rank requirements apply, I think) without perks, I think for a ten percent stat increase, but perks are needed to craft items, with the added bonus of bumping up that stat increase to 20%.

And no, without Arcane Smith you can't improve magic equipment at all.

I see, so the arcane smith won't let me take an enchanted item up to superior, to do that I'd need to take the relevant perk? (ie. enchanted glass sword would need glass smithing?)

Edit: Ninja'd xD