I understand that smithing needed to be made more difficult but this is nuts. my character is level 40 with a smithing level of 88. I have crafted 685 weapons and 209 pieces of armor (mostly dwarven stuff) and its taken all that just to get to level 88. I was told that making jewelry is a good option but the materials needed for that are even more difficult to come by then dwarven stuff. I just really wish they would change it back or at least make it slightly easier because this is taking forever. Does anybody else feel this way?

EDIT: I guess i should throw in that the main reason this frustrates me so much is there are so many other things in the game that i would rather be doing. I wouldnt mind it taking longer if it was more fun to do it but now its very time consuming. If I only have time to play a couple hours a day i do not want to spend half that time smithing. I WANNA BE QUESTING.

I feel you, man. They took it WAY overboard. They should have just made it a little bit more challenging, in my opinion.

I thought it was just me, glad to know it isn't. lol

They made it hard so that you get a challenge from the game. You don't want it to be too easy otherwise you'll have have completed everything and get bored easier. I understand where your coming from but if you put in that extra bit of effort you'll be wearing dragon armour in no time

For real. it seems like the hardest skill to increase now. i just want to make some dragon weapons cuz i havent been able to do it since i got dawnguard.

i understand that it needed to be more challenging but i would rather be challenged in combat then challenged while standing in front of a forge for hours on end

Unless it changed again with the latest patch, nah. The newer Smithing makes sense - like Alchemy, items worth more give more progression. And it certainly didn't feel like it took an amazingly higher amount of stuff to level up Smithing on my last character to do it..... Iron / Leather / Steel helms, Dwarven bows, gold & silver jewelry... worked fine. Not sure what to say.


And certainly easier to skill up than Alchemy.

Actually, I've found that alchemy is ridiculously easy to level up if you make the right potions. Paralysis, invis or fortify health with a damage stamina regen effect are incredibly good. Smithing however, I've spent twice as much time smithing as I have making potions and my alchemy is twice as far along.

Jewelry is your best bet and easy way to get materials is just make something with high value and decent xp for smithing increase and then sell the item use money on more materials. Its all I ever really did. Also on quests collect light high value items and sell them plus that levels speech at the same time.

Perhaps I haven't found the right things/places to harvest bulk ingredients for valuable potions. Most of the ones I end up making are 100-300 value. Only reason my Alchemy gets along as far as it does is because you can train at the Whiterun shop and then sell off the million potions you've made to get some of your cash back. And Smithing's still faster.

You need the "Prowler's Profit" effect and the "Transmute" spell to really crank out the Smithing gains with Jewelry. Prowler's Profit gives you a high chance to find Gems in any container you open, you can easily end up with 60k+ Gold value of just the gems alone from a single Draugr Dungeon. You can transmute all the Iron Ore you mine/buy into Silver Ore then into Gold Ore, and use the Gold Ingots along with Gems to create Jewelry worth up to 1,600 Gold (Gold Diamond Necklace).

Well you wouldn't really be challenged in combat if you had Daedric or Dragon weapons and armor at like level 20.

Some Dwarven stuff are much better than others. Dwarven Bows are especially good. You really should be just making Dwarven Bows and improving them.

Make sure to improve everything you make. Improving an item gives you more experience than making a brand new item, and it only costs one ingot. This is true from level 30 or so, and much more true at level 80.

People talk about challenge, there's nothing challenging about a smithing mini game. All it did was make it more tedious. That's not a challenge. Its boring. The game should be played out in the world, not a menu at the blacksmith.

If they wanted to have smithing challenging and not tedious, then smithing skill should have incurred an actual action that you can fail, like lockpicking. Perks will increase your ability to craft said item. Its something that you could do, if your coordination is good enough, without perks. Much like lockpicking is. But more often than not, you'll overheat your metal and it will shatter in the water, losing your material.

But then raise the experience gain from completion back up. And way the heck up if you're a level 20 smith skill and you pulled off a set of daedric armor. High risk, high reward.

That's a more meaningful challenge. Not some retardedness that simply makes me use more for less, with no actual skill input.

Daedric or Dragon items aren't even that great to begin with. They weight more than things you'd normally find, and their bonuses are negligable. An iron sword can compete with a Daedric sword if Smithing is involved.

I just made a lot of iron daggers. Very easy skill to make, and can get a good amount of coin from the iron daggers. Was there some kind of update that came with Dawnguard that made smithing harder to level?

Patch previous to dawnguard I believe. Its quite more tedious now from launch. Note I said tedious, not challenging.

I agree

I just make the most expensive armor I can craft. With a skill of 88 you should be making Ebony Armor for 5 ingots and a few strips for 1500 a pop. That should be more efficient than crafting two helms at 3 ingots for 750 each.

Then why is everyone so upset they can't grind their level to get that stuff?

Yep. They made a change in either the latest patch or in Dawnguard (can't remember) that makes it more difficult to raise your Smithing level. When creating an item, the bar won't go up as high or as fast as it previously did.

There have been couple of people on this board who have been on the Chaurus Egg + Luna Moth kick.

I get excited when I see blue mountain flowers, and salt, and deathbell.

Salt + Deathbell = Slow poison. good money.
Blue Mountain Flower + Blue Butterfly WIng = Damage Magicka Regen

I'm usually able to get to 100 just making these two potions.

I take potion strength perks as soon as I can get them. There are 8 of them. And I also get 3 Experimenter perks for convenience. 11 perks. I like alchemy. It makes you rich.

Just because your not compatent at leveling smithing doesn't mean it isn't easy. Dwarven Igots are ridiculusly easy to come by, Marakth has 798 potential dwarven metal igots if you completely clear out all the dwarven metal. Thats enough for 266 tempered dwarven bows. (two igots to craft, and one to temper it). The xp gained is equalivent to the new value of the item so tempering quickly becomes more cost effective then simply crafting. And one shouldn't forget to have the warrior stone active and be well rested before you begin a lot of crafting, 30% is a huge bonus. Take a black smithing potion before you temper the items and you'll get XP even faster. We also have eight skill boosts to smithing not counting the Oghma Infinium.

By the time you reach ebony smithing the remaining 20 levels are easy because of the high value of ebony items. Going up the light armor side is a bit slower as you need to make steel plate from the advanced armor perk.

Now OP you say it took you 685 weapons and 209 pieces of armor to reach 88 in smithing, yeah your doing something wrong because I have an Orc warrior with 92 smithing and he's only made 266 weapons and 187 pieces of armor, I'm not sure how many were actually improved as I don't believe those stats to be accurate, but it should be most of them.

im level 40 with this character

Grinding skills is lame.

they changed it with the patch that came out just before the mounted combate addition. i believe it was patch 1.5