I found an item giving me a +20% bonus on improving weapons and armor. ("Weapons and armor can be improved 20% better.")
But there's no difference in wether I wear the item while upgrading my gear or not.

What am I getting wrong? How do these enchants work?

There's no difference when you make the items, but there should be a difference when you upgrade at the grindstone or work bench. As long as you're wearing whatever item you found and are trying to upgrade rather than make, then you're not doing anything wrong. Sounds like a bug.

I'm only talking about upgrading it, not crafting a new item. Oddly it doesn't work for me.
Does anyone have the same problem?

What are the potential upgrade stats of the weapon/armor with and without the +smithing enchant item?

Take a look under Active Effects in your magic menu and see if Fortify Smithing is listed there.

If you're on the PC, open the console and type 'player.getavinfo smithing' without the ' ' and type what it says here

I got two test objects.
steel armor: 59 to 77 (exquisite)
steel plate armor: 75 to 86 (superior)
no matter if I wear it or not.


The effect is listed in the magic menu.
Console says:
current value 43,00 computed base 43,00
reference base value 15,00 (auto-calculated)
modifiers: temp: 0,00 perm 0,00 damage 0,00
level-up-value 43,00

The console looks as it's supposed to, if your smithing skill is 43.

Try to go to Alvor's House in Riverwood. There's two potions in the basemant that should give +20% to smithing.
Drink one and see if it makes a difference when you try to improve your stuff. Then try with and without the piece of gear equipped.
If that doesn't make any difference, then I'm out of ideas

It's just a guess, but it may have to do with your level in smithing. It could be that your smithing level or perks don't let you upgrade beyond exquisite, and that even with the +smithing item, your level still isn't high enough to get to flawless.

I just had this same problem. I've done it before so I know the required levels but since upgrading to 1.2 it doesn't seem to work properly. Another 1.2 bug?

Could be. Did you and Sheijan make the character with the issue after patch 1.02?
I've made, improved and enchanted daedric and dragonscale gear today without any issues, but I made that character on the release build.

I can make and improve gear OK, it's just that taking a fortify enchant potion doesn't help. For example, at 25 smithing, I was able to take a 17 enchant potion and improve to exquisite (which requires 40) now I can only improve to superior (which is what 25 would allow normally)

I already tried using a potion and it worked. Tried it again just now, still worked.


I set the skill to 100 and here are the results:
59 > 102 (legendary) with item
59 > 96 (legendary) without item

skill 50:
59 > 83 (flawless) with item
59 > 77 (exquisite) without item

skill 49:
59 > 77 (exquisite) with item
59 > 77 (exquisite) without item

WTF? 30% potions work, but 20% enchants don't work. What kind of wicked logic it this??! Damn you Bethesda!! You wasted hours of my life!
Crafting in Skyrim is WAY too intransparent! Without internet guides and cheats it's nearly impossible to see through everything!


I made the character on 27th, I have no idea when the patch was released. It was my first one.
It starts to go on my nerves. I wasted the whole evening trying to figure out what's wrong. I shouldn't have started crafting at all ;p
But I guess the problem is solved now..

Golden rule: max out every profession before trying to understand anything!
Thank you all for your help.

I tried again after reading the above and did it both with the weapon equipped and unequipped. Still no luck; 40 skill gives exquisite option as it should but taking a 20 fortify enchant potion does nothing. When I did the same last week, I got the option of flawless as if I had 60 skill and as I would expect.

edit: I loaded an old character from 1.02 and repeated; this time it worked properly - not sure what the problem is now but it's definitely inconsistent.

3 questions.. Can you disenchant it and where did you find it? and what is it called?

OK, this is annoying. I loaded a third character and I have the same problem again: fortify smithing potions don't have any affect. If I load another character also made with 1.02, it works properly. Nobody else has this problem? I don't feel like continuing if a fortify enchant outfit isn't going to work ( and since a minor smithing ring doesn't work now, why would an enchant ever work.)
What's really baffling, though, is why one character is OK and another one made at about the same time isn't.

Could it be possible that something is broken because of cheating? Or didn't you cheat at all?
That's another thing I had in mind with my problems, too.

In another forum a user who plays skyrim has the problem that his perks don't increase the improvement as it should.
He collected 2 identical sets and improved it before he had the perk. Then he got the perk, improved the other set, and the effect was the same.
It seems many people have problems with smithing perks, enchants and potions....

No cheating but I do open the console regularly to name my saves, if that matters.

I just made a new character with 1.2 to try and I have the same problem: no potions, no enchants work.