I'm hoping someone can clear something up for me.

Until recently, I had been operating under the assumption that once a weapon had been improved to "Legendary" status, that this was really the ceiling for making it better (apart, of course, from then enchanting it). Thus, my primary goon-smacker is a fire-enchanted Daedric Warhammer that I spiffed up to Legendary status as soon as I had the ingots. It's a rather unfair weapon, but I like going into skirmishes knowing that losing isn't really in the cards.

And even though I usually use the hammer (since it's SUPER EFFECTIVE), I decided to branch out a bit. Reason being, my leveling had hit something of a tableau, since my most-used skills had all maxed out. So, since my one-handed was weak, I figured I'd double-wield some Daedric Maces for awhile in an attempt to beef up my One-Handed, and hopefully start building up some more leveling points. So I pounded myself up some new weaponry.

But then I discovered something interesting. When I went over to the wheel to buff the maces I'd just created, I also had the option to further enhance the Warhammer. Seeing as I had enough ingots, I did everything I could. And while it certainly improved the maces, it also added a healthy handful of damage points onto the Warhammer total...a total that was already pretty insane to begin with.

At the time, I chalked it up to having just downed some Blacksmithing potion, and also wearing some Bracers and an Amulet, each with a smithing buff...None of which I'd had to use when improving the hammer to "Legendary" in the first place. So, of course, as soon as I was finished, I ran back to my chest, and loaded up. I assumed that as long as I had the ingots and a potion/bracer/necklace buff, I'd be able to continue to level up the weapons.

But for some reason, this theory proved to be somewhat faulty. Because even though I still had the necklace and bracers on, and had downed an even STRONGER potion the second time, I couldn't buff the hammer up any more. Weirdly, I COULD immediately improve the brand-new maces for the second time. And when I bounced over to the 'bench to check my matched Legendary Daedric armor, I noticed that I could continue to improve SOME pieces, but not others...Even though I had created it all at the same time as the hammer.

So...What's the deal? Can you continue to improve weapons as long as you have a stronger-percentage combo of buffs active than you did the first time around, or what? Since weapons don't degrade like in Fallout 3 and F:NV, it doesn't seem to be that anything had worn out.

Has anyone else worked out what the formula is?

The higher your improve smithing enchantments and improve smithing potions are, the higher you can upgrade the dmg of your weapons and the def of your armor. But there is an armor cap at roundabout 600 def.