If you can't stomach paying for low-level materials and you're not keen on finding them, then go pay for smithing training. The cost for training at low skill levels is much cheaper than buying the materials needed to make enough iron weapons or armor to hit each level.

I think it is a lot better. I was a little on the fence at first, but I have come around to feeling rather comfortable with the change.

If you are going to buy materials, make them and sell it back to the blacksmith, iron dagger is cheapest among the three. But if you are going to buy materials, make them, improve them and sell it back to the blacksmith, iron armor comes out on the top, but by very very small margin.

If you hunt and have lots of leather, making and improving leather helmet is optimal. It makes slightly less money than making leather armor, but gives you more experience.

Buying training from a trainer is more cost effective than buying materials from the smith and making iron daggers until level 50.

If you find a daedric armor in the wild, it is most likely worth it to pick it up, buy an ebony ingot, improve it, and sell it back for free experience and extra profit. But buy the time you find one in the wild, you will probably have maxed out your smithing already and may decide that extra hassle of carrying it back home is not worth it.

Have the Warrior stone active, be Well Rested, and steal all of dwarven metal pieces in markarth where calcelmo is hanging out. You can craft a bunch of dwarven bows and raise your smithing skill up that way.

Smithing requires some gathering of resources now and some thought, not just irondagger-irondagger-irondagger, and so on.

Smithing used to be a gimme, now its not. People complain about money being too easy to obtain in skyrim, pay Balimund in Riften to train up your smithing and unload some extra cash.

I really didn't notice the change although I wasn't really smithing much except to make Daedric bows for my first character. I recently started a second character & got really annoyed at how many healing potions I was using while wearing Thieves Guild Armor. I did grind up Leather Bracers (which requires less materials than Iron Daggers) to get Elven Smithing & Arcane Enchanter. The benefit of Leather Bracers and/or Helmets is that while you hunt for the materials you get to improve other skills in the process plus end up finding some locations to loot so it's not too boring.

The OP is absolutly right; I gave up my second main and skyrim in general for this reason. I will wait for the dlc and play with my first main.

Chars not planning to perk anything beyond steel and arcane are pretty ******. I did; just wanted to upgrade guild armors and weapons; having no more options than steel body armor and jewelry makes smithing a major PITA. I don't see how alch and enchanting are as hard as smithing now: none of them requires you to perk a skill (dwarven smithing) just to have decent exp progression.

On the opposite: I gained a skill level for every magic item I disenchanted on lower levels. 1_skill_level just for destroying an item! And I had warrior exp boost stone...

Why is this game soooo haaaaard.....

Well slap me and call me hurr-durr. I guess I'm an idiot for mining BD

So if someone has an idea to play a... craftsman. He never hefts a weapon, never joins a Faction, the whole character build is around a craftsman (Armorer, Weapon Smith, Jeweler) and that's how this character makes his/her entire living, the player RP's this character heavily... that's stupid?

I'm sorry.

I was mistaken when I thought that this was a game where you go wherever you want, do whatever you want, or even live another life in another world. A game built so that you can make and RP any type of character that you want and RP it as heavily or as lightly as you want.

How silly of me...

Yeah, my bad. I realised just a few minutes ago when I saw my post again. That'll teach me for trying to do maths in the early hours of the morning, lol.

The problem I have with smithing is that it's just as engaging as armor repair were in previous games, but doesn't feel like it seamlessly integrates into what my character is doing. Repairing armor and weapons felt like a natural thing to do whenever I returned to civilization. Smithing in Skyrim feels like I'm putting all the important stuff on hold just to grind a skill so I can improve the equipment I already have.

I think reintroducing equipment degradation and having that improve your smithing skill would go a long way toward's improving the flow of the skill improves. Also bringing back repair/smithing services that allow a character who is not focused on smithing to still derive some benefit is just as important.

i would hardly call what they have done since 11-11-11 'working hard'

more like 'hardly working'


i would love stuff to degrade again, just tweak the OB degradation a bit and integrate something about repairs into the smithing tree.

I don't mind smithing the way it is now, but I would say its the rest of the skills skyrocketing that bothers me.

before 1.5 my armorer leveled pretty well alongside my other major skills. Now it seems like it gets overshadowed by speechcraft gains from selling the stuff I craft, so my character feels like they're out leveling one of their primary skills.

(did that make any sense?) at any rate, my solution is the mine straight east of markarth. 11 gold veins and a few puny forsworn.

Like i said before The only problem with smithing is it being in the game. Either remove it as a skill or remove it from the game period. With smithing in the game, it just fells more like an MMO. You have to craft and grind to make your gear useful at all. While in the past elderscrolls it was all about exploring and finding rare weapons. With smithing that has diminished completely. Even most daedric artifacts are useless now. And playing without smithing on hard difficulties is almost impossible. Please bethesda don't put smithing in the next game

Not sure if serious.



No, really. Smithing's still pretty simple to skill up. Well, maybe not compared to "I spend an hour doing /wait and buying out the vendor. Poof! Instant Smithing!", but that was 1. not how it should be, and 2. way way easy.

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OP: Yeah, daggers aren't The Best Way anymore. But if you'd spent even a little time thinking about it and looking at the recipes, you'd have been making Iron Helmets (and Leather ones) instead. Barely more materials than a Dagger, six times the value. If you're still insistent on doing the "grind Smithing by exploiting vendors and Wait" thing, it's quite possible. You just have to actually put some thought into it.

Smithing can work so long as they don't design it in such a way that it completely overshadows legendary loot items. First reintroduce equipment degradation so there's a purpose beyond constructing new items, second remove the ability to smith things like daedric armor and weapons. Maintain the ability to improve legendary items with sufficient skill.

In general, though, there needs to be a total shift in the way weapons and armor work. Take some cues from Fallout, different weapons should be more or less effective than different armor types. Right now, equipment in TES is on a linear scale. Iron is trash, daedric is god. That's not interesting, and it forces characters along a specific path unless they're willing to sacrifice combat effectiveness.

Yes i agree it can work, but why have it as skill that impacts the amount of damage your weapons do. Honestly you can have a skill level of 15 in onehanded and with a high smithing skill make godly weapons that can easily destroy the toughest opponents. Your damage out put is a little to much dependent on you smithing skill is all.

i rarely used smiting and the changes are perfect.

Im just trying to get level 50 so I can improve my nightingale armor

It's level 60 to get "Arcane Armor" where you can improve magical armors and weapons.

If you have gold, silver, and some gems then jewlery is the best thing to smith at low levels. Plus you get a good return on it.

If you insist!

I actually like the mining and collecting and smithing part. It's called a RPG for a reason ...

"Each has their own way" - Orc, khajiit, Argonian

I think we should all keep this in mind when playing Single Player Games.

i actually used smithing for the first time after 1.5 came out. well i had used it before but i didn't really like it. but now that it levels up by the value of what you smith it is much more fun to do right now i am at i think 84 or 85 and just made and have a full set of enchanted ebony armore can't wait to make some daedric and dragon bone armors. i have yet to see dragonbone armor one in this game aside from videos on youtube. and i've had the game since launch.

Hello!

Sorry for stealing the post for a 'lil while, I'm not allowed to start new ones.

I've been bringing my smithing and enchanting up tp 100, in order to enchant awsome gear with for example +25% smithing. But despite the fact that I have 100 enchanting, I can only enchant gear up to +20% smithing. Anyone know why?

Thanks, in advance
/Mattias

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Edit.
Nevermind me, I'm allowed to post new topics now, for some reason.
/M