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Tired of having a bad smiting skill so you cant make that kickin' dragon armor. Don't worry for there is a solution for you!

OK enough with the salesman talk, but I was messing around creating iron daggers in Whiterun today while and found out why Smithing is the easiest skills to get to a hundred. Its rather simple too, and when I started doing it I felt stupid for not thinking of it before.

All you need is a somewhat decent amount of money to buy supplies (iron ingot/ore which are cheap and leather. You can get leather pretty easily though just from collecting pelts from all the wolfs and animals in the wild).

Steps:

1. Buy as many iron ore and iron ingots as possible (this is actually the hardest part of the process). This may mean traveling to separate towns. I used the one in solitude and just bought him out and waited 48 hours for him to restock. This will require spending your hard earned septims. Still loads cheaper than training.
2. Take leather (or quickly make it from pelts) and convert it to leather strips. You can easily get way over 100 strips in a few minutes.
3. Now go to the anvil and smith yourself only iron daggers. Iron daggers only cost 1 iron ingot and 1 leather strip, so you can make a ton! Your Smithing skill will raise so dramatically by spamming the create button that you will feel dirty.
4. (optional) Sell back your iron daggers for minimal profit, BUT it will increase you speechcraft skill.
5.(optional). You can enchant all of these pity daggers to quickly boost your enchanting skill.

This is extremely simple and not cheating the game. The only problem you may encounter is getting all the iron ore. You DO need some money to get all of the iron ore, but if your a decent lvl and don't have a whole in your pocket you'll be fine.

One of my friends sent me this video literally while I was writing this post saying that it explained it better than me texting it to him. I guess I wasn't the first one to find out this little trick, but I don't care about taking credit or being "first". Just sharing the fun.
clickity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xd-NjqG ... re=related

Hope you enjoy:D

Found that out on the 10/11/11

Sharing info's a great idea. Not so great to share that you acquired the game before it was officially released A few suggestions you might want to test\consider as ways for improvement:

I've not paid a great amount of attention but my impression is that jewellery massively spikes your smithing unlike iron\leather. At low levels one silver gemmed ring will give you a full level. Maybe the XP earned in smithing relates to the value of the item created?

I smith all the raw resources I 'find' usually leather based. I've found the leather helm\bracers to be the easiest, a 2+1 or 1+2 leather\strips cost. If you hunt around the town you should find a fair few strips, and swiping them helps your stealth skills.

If all you're after is the option to buy more ore, find a decent merchant, quicksave, quit\CTD then restart and continue. The merchants fully restock. Saves having to wait\move towns. Just something I discovered today.


From the UESP Skyrim:Smithing page:
*Smithing will not always make gold and in many cases can cause you to lose coin.
*Creating iron Daggers is by far the easiest, cheapest and fastest way to level smithing. You can reach 100 smithing by simply traveling to every smith in Skyrim, buy all their Leather Strips (though buying Leather and converting it to Leather Strips is cheaper) and Iron Ingots and just build Iron Daggers over and over again. If trying to work very cheaply, leather bracers can be made purely from materials gathered from slain animals.
*When making basic jewlery, it's better to make rings over necklaces. They cost the same to produce and have the same value total, but you get two rings instead of one necklace, giving you twice as many things to enchant to level enchanting and more things to sell to level speech.

I'd probably quibble with the rings better than necklaces. Depends what gems you have.

Do any of you know where to find a lot of iron ore? Im buying all the black smiths out. Lol

Go to the blacksmith in Solitude and wait 48 hours and he'll restock. I am pretty sure that all vendors restock after 2 full days, or 48 hours. Only reason I say Solitude because I personally had the best luck there. He seems to stock more than anyone else.

Well..in my experience, it was usually just after 24 hours or so..but that could depend on the vendor, too.

What I do is

Buy Iron Ore
Turn it into Gold Ore
Make Gold Rings

Sell it for massive profits, massive increases in speech (it grows faster by selling more expensive things) and massive increases in smithing (making higher tier items such as gold rings give more exp than iron daggers)

Another way to increase your smithing very easily is to train it up. I use Balimund in Riften.

Train one level and exit his dialogue. Go into sneak mode and steal your gold back. Do this as often as you like or as you level allows. (This also levels up your pickpocket skill so it might not work if your trying to control your leveling.)

I know there is a limit to how many times you can train per level but this is free and actually works very well. Just don't train all 5 times and then try to steal your gold back, your chance of successfully stealing that amount of gold is 0%.

If you'd rather spend effort instead of gold (And hey, maybe you wanna raise your combat skills too) You can keep track of where you've found iron ore, and go mine some yourself. I know there's some in embershard mine near Riverwood (And some just outside its back entrance too), as well as in bleak falls barrow. This does mean you'll need to smelt it before you can use it, but simply use the forge in whiterun

i didnt make iron daggers I made leather boots, then enchanted them with a petty level soul to reduce ice damage or something then sold them back

my smithing skill is currently 74

-Sonix

Nice info, hopefully it helps people that didn't know! I actually figured it out when I accidentally made an iron dagger at around 30 smithing and realized it gave just about the same amount of experience as my other creations did. I'd highly recommend enchanting your daggers. It's an easy increase to enchanting, plus it raises the value to somewhere around 300, meaning you'll be making at least around 100 on each dagger you sell. Also, I dunno how you guys feel about stealing, but Beiran in Solitude and the other smith whose name I can't recall in Riften have a good amount of ingots and ore in their homes. Personally, I didn't mind it because I was working for the Imperials and stole from Stormcloak loyal towns in order to deprive them of their ability to make new armor. I'm not sure about the times, but it seems to be after a week they'll also restock their houses, so you can go and get some more ingots. Smithing is also a good way to 'fence' your stolen materials if you aren't a member of the thieves guild, as your created item is obviously no longer listed as stolen.

I really wish you hadn't posted this. It was easy enough to discover on one's own, and now it's just going to be Casual Friday(pun intended) every day at the smithy.

I found this out today too. Only I make leather braces. I didn't think of enchanting though, good idea!