Alright, as a lot of you probably know, 1.6 updated smithing so you couldn't use iron daggers to effectively raise it. I'm fine with them removing this exploit, but there's no reason to smith enough to raise it besides trying to get to a certain level, meaning unless I create a million more irony daggers, I'm pretty stuck. Anyone know of any new tricks to raise it, that are close to the daggers?

I use the transmute spell to turn iron ore into...with enough castings...gold ore.

Use the gold to make gold jewelry...the items value is what counts now...I think!

You can also make alot of leather armor

It is the item's value. Jewelry works pretty well. If you have the ability to, continuously craft heavy armors (the torso piece) that have decent value, then sell them and buy more materials.

Go into a dwarven ruin say the ones under Markath, come back with all the smeltable dwemer metal. Make dwarven igots, then buy iron igots. Make dwarven bows and temper them. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Dwarven_Metal_Ingot#Mineral_Sources a list of the rich sources for free dwarven igots. The XP you gain is relative to the value of the item which is why bows are so profitable, especially dwarven bows, its also why you need to remember to temper the items not just craft them.

They definitely over-did smithing. Yes, it was probably a bit easy before, but now its impossible and one of the hardest skills to get up when its over 75. Sorry, OP I don't know any new ways to get it up other than grinding.

Don't forget Alchemy.

Luna Moth Wings+Chaurus Eggs=Expensive Invisibility Potions, both incredients are quite common. Alchemy is the easiest crafting skill to level up. Only because you don't know how to level smithing post 1.5, if you did you wouldn't say it was hard. I bet you only craft armor and never bother to improve the items you make at the workbench or grind stone. Including the Oghma Infinium smithing has fourteen free skill boosts for smithing, five books, four quests and of course +5 from the oghma infinium. Once you hit eighty you can head to Gloombound Mine, grab some ebony then craft and temper ebony bows. Tempered ebony items are worth FAR more then the value of even buying the ebony igots.


So many people forget to temper the items, its more cost efficent then simply crafting them, especially if you manage to get a few fortify smithing items.

Alchemy is one of the easiest skills to level. Especially if you collect ingredients all the time. There are plenty of combinations that can break 1k gold in value. Not only is it one of the easiest skills to level, you can bring home the bank, armored vehicle and the printing press at the treasury. Last playthrough I made around 50k gold (probably more, I'm sure I spent money on trainers somewhere in there) just going from level 50-ish to 80 with appropriate speech perks.

Best I've come up with is Dwarvem bows (2 dwarven ingots, 1 iron ingot) then upgrading the bows (1 ingot). Not sure if that scales all the way to 100 but I got about skill points (53-63) making about 30 bows and improving them.
(I had the warrior stone active for +20% skill gain and well rested for another 10%). Dwarven ingots are relatively easy to get although a pain to gather . Just hit markath. I think someone did the math and said there were potentially 700+ dwarven ingots in the dwemor runors there (I got a couple hundred out of labrythian if you do the mage college stuff). But there's a lot of travel collecting them since the materials to make them can weigh a lot.

This. Just always remember to loot pelts, then switch over to the Warrior stone and get a good night's sleep before you spam leather armor. Also jewelry, jewelry is the best fast:easy ratio I've seen.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON JEWELRY: Do NOT just spam gold/silver necklaces, try and collect a good amount of gems first. You will get WAY more experience if you're patient and gather up a good stock of gems.

I just pay for training up to level 50 (that's when the price jumps) then make jewelry with all the gems and metals I horded.