Hi there,

Not sure if it's the right section but since my issue is about game mechanics...
The case is that I don't know what I'm doing wrong but, as the title says, potions and gear of fortifying smithing don't seem to work...

Situation:

The fortify smithing effect DOES appear under "magic effects"
However, when I go to a grindstone to improve my sword (skyforge steel sword if that matters), the fortify effect makes no difference.

More specifically:

Default Skyforge sword. Damage: 27 (thanks to some perks and fortify one-handed equipment)
Superior Skyforge sword WITHOUT any fortifying smithing gear equipped. Damage: 34
Superior Skyforge sword AFTER equipping ring of major smithing (fortifies 17%) and drinking a potion (fortifies 20%). Damage: still 34.

My version of Skyrim is the last one (1.3.10)
I'm on PC and have no mods installed that alter smithing or alchemy in any way.

Is there by any chance some super-stupid-and-obvious thing that I'm not doing??

Thanks in advance.

This seems to be a not-too-common bug that I've heard reported only a few times. I have it and it's very annoying. Everything worked properly until I upgraded to 1.2, then neither enchants nor potions worked. I even reverted to 1.1 but that didn't fix it and the latest patch didn't either.

You also may not be high enough level in smithing for the bonuses to kick you up to the next level, had that happen a few times.

Mmm...interesting. You mean then that smithing fortifiers are "all-or-nothing" bonusses? I.e. they either bring you to the next quality tier ('exquisite' in my case) or they do nothing at all?
That would certaintly explain my issue since my smithing skill is only at 24 (I almost never used it despite being at level 22)

Well, do you have the steel smithing perk? If you do, 24 skill gets you "superior" add 37 to that and you get 61, enough for flawless.

I have "steel smithing", yes.
One thing though: my fortifiers appear as % and not as "skill increases by x". More precisely, both the potion and the ring I was using have this description: "For x seconds, weapon and armor improving is y% better". So my smithing skill never reached 61 (24 + 37); it simply was 37% better than normally. In practice though, this 37% better made no difference.

When it was working for me, the improvement was actually adding the number to the skill, not a percentage; I think the description is wrong. The fact that the improvements are in discrete steps (below 100) seem to bear this out.

Ok solved I think.

Using console commands I started to raise my smithing skill to find the point at which, with my fortifiers, I could start crafting exquisite gear. With both fortifiers (so, smithing 37% better) I only needed a skill of 32. Without them, I needed a skill of 40. So the fortfiers DO work for me in the end.

Fortify smithing doesn't add X amount it increases your smithing by that %. Say you have a smithing of 20 and you have a fortify smithing total of 100%. Your smithing is 40. Its not a huge increase. However if your smithing is maxed out 200 instead of 100 is a very big deal.

This, with gear and Potion mine is now over 300 total makes a huge difference

There's a couple possibilities here. One, it could be that, before the gear reaches Legendary quality, Smithing bonuses can only boost it to the next tier. Another is that there are piecemeal increases in the gear's stats, interim boosts, but they're so fine that it requires maxed weapon or amor skill to see the difference. I do know that with Legendary-quality gear and a 30% smithing boost, I was able to see a significant difference in effectiveness between 100-skill Legendary Dragonscale armor and Daedric and Ebony swords, vs. the 130 skill versions.

From some testing, that isn't quite true. Your fortify % bonus isn't applied to your raw skill, it's applied to (skill - x), where x appears to be 14, or a fraction below that. So if you have a skill of 20, you are only going to get bumped up to 26 with fortify 100% (or the perk, which does the same thing).

Also, the perk, fortify effects from enchanting, and fortify effects from potions appear to be applied separately, and work off the improved number from the previous step. So if you have a skill of 20, the perk, +100% from enchants, and +100% from potions, you'll get 20 + ((20 - 14) * 1.00) = 26, then 26 + ((26 - 14) * 1.00) = 38, then 38 + ((38-14) * 1.00) = 62. The higher your base smithing skill, the more pronounced the effect - you only need a base skill of 60 with the same modifiers to reach the effective skill of 203 needed for the second level of Legendary improvment (+24/+12), and you can get higher enchant and potion modifiers.

So for the OP, with a +17%, +20% and +100% from the perk, a skill of 32 wound up at (32 + (32 - 14) * 1.00) = 50, 50 + ((50 - 14) * .2) = 57.2, and 57.2 + ((57.2 - 14) * .17) = 64.5, and a raw skill of 65 is needed (sans perk) to get to exquisite. Like I said, I think the actual number to subtract isn't exactly 14, so using that calculation gives you a slightly lower total effective smithing skill than you really have.

Oh, and with a base skill of 100, the perk, and the higher fortifies, you should be able to get an effective smithing skill of over 800.

I'm on 360 and when my smithing skill is at 100 any potions or gear with smithing buffs makes my gear worse when trying to upgrade them.