Skyrim - Basic Smithing guide

It’s crafting skill for combat. You can craft your favorite armor, weapon, and even jewelry using this crafting skill. You can perform Smithing at set locations and will need raw ingredients like Ingots and Leather, which can be bought from Merchants or by Mining Nodes and Animal Skins. Higher your skill level, the more you can improve your weapon or armor.

Just as you can perform Alchemy at Alchemy Labs, you can perform Smithing at designated Smithing locations. In these locations, you will find different tools that serve different purposes. Following is the complete rundown of these tools:

Grindstone
You can sharpen your weapons at Grindstone for extra damage. Higher your Smithing Skill, more you can improve the damage of your weapon.

Workbench
It allows you to improve your armor. High your Smithing Skill, more effective will be the armor.

Forge
You can create new weapons and armor by combining raw materials at the Forge.

Tanning Rack
You can process hides into Leather and Leather Strips at the Tanning Rack.

Smelter
You can create Ingots (Crafting Ingredient) from raw ores – Iron and Gold.

How To Obtain Raw Materials For Smithing
You can get raw materials for Smithing by mining ores and smelting them at Smelter. You can get Hides by killing animals and then process them at Tanning Rock to create Leather Strips – which in turn, help you customize your items.

Mine/Vein Locations
Ore veins can be found mostly at higher elevations in mines – which can be mined to extract all types of ores. These Veins are represented by a crossed hammer and pickaxe symbol on your compass and map. They typically yield two pieces of ore – but can yield more than that. You may also receive a random gem when you mine veins.

Smithing Skill Perk Tree

Can be found here

How To Make Smithed Item
There is a Forging place in Whiterun in the main town area, by the first building. It also has a Smelter so it would be easy to make a Smithed item. To get the first ingredients to make a Smithed Item, talk to Adrianne Avenicci outside Warmaiden Shop, by Smithing area. Offer to help him and you will get first ingredients to make Smithed Item as a reward.

Use these ingredients to create your first Smithed item. It’s easy to make Smithed Items, you just need the required raw ingredients. Let’s say you want to create an Iron Helmet, you need 3 Iron Ingots and 2 Leather Strips for that.

Once you have these items, click on the item and select create. If you haven’t, then find these items. You can loot, purchase or steal these items for NPCs. Follow any path you want and everything else is self explanatory.

How To Create Iron Ingots – Mine some iron ore and then smelt that at any Smelter location and you should have Iron Ingots.
How To Create Leather Strips – Kill animals and get Hides. Process Hides in Tanning Rock to create Leather Stripes.

Workbench, Grindstones, Tanning Rack, Smelter, Forge Locations

• Workbench, Grindstone, Forge and Tanning Rack can be found in Riverwood.
• There is a Grindstone, Tanning Rack and Forge in Orotheim.
• There is a Forge, Smelter, Grindstone, Tanning Rack and Workbench in Whiterun.

Notes

• Choosing Heavy Armor smithing skill perks is recommended regardless of whether you choose to use Light or Heavy armor, as it gives you access to both the best weapons (Daedric Weapons) as well as the best armors for both types of armor.
• Unlike other Elder Scrolls games, weapons and armor do not degrade, and therefore repairs are not necessary
• 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.
• The perk Advanced Armor only allows scale and plate made of steel. Scale seems comparable to elven, while steel plate is comparable to orcish, just slightly heavier. Steel is easier to acquire than moonstone and quicksilver (for elven) or orichalcum (for orcish), so it might be an alternative path to armor upgrades if you're lacking materials.
• There are no weapons to be made from dragonbone. Dragonbone (plate) is not quite as strong as daedric, but again dragon bones and scales are far more plentiful than daedra hearts.
• 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.
• You cannot go any further from Dragon Armor. It may appear as if it is a circle, but it doesnt behave as one. If you want to max Blacksmithing regardless of your character go up the Tree to the RIGHT. Skip Elven, Advanced and Glass in favored of the Ebony and Daedric path It takes 1 more perk point but you get access to best weapons as well as best armor.

Since there are no perks for artifacts and the default craftable items of leather, hide, and iron, they can only be upgraded to Flawless quality as opposed to Legendary, even with 100 Smithing skill.

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If you have tips and suggestions on how to go about crafting in Elder Scrolls V Skyrim, recommend them in comments, and we will improve this guide with your suggestions. I will definitely like more crafting locations.

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