Totally worth it.

Its fun to level. Just mine and buy all the iron and leather you can find and create iron dagger and leather bracers. You see the secret is that it doesnt matter what you make, you will still get skillups even if you make the crappiest stuff.
Not only do you get to make your own armor, you can improve it and that of your companion. Improving weapons and armor gives a HUGE bost at max improvement. It's also totally worth it to skill enchantment at the same time as you can put cheap enchantments on the weapons you make for more skillups and levels.

If you put the time in, you can get a full set of daedric or glass armor WAY before you can find those things in the wild.

you can mine ore yourself if you have mining pick on you



also, i've found my smithing skill increasing by 2 levels whenever i've done any crafting (so far i've made 2-3 weapons and made another 4-6 items have the 'fine' suffix)
same is true with enchanting.

this is probably cos they're at low levels for me (i.e. 15-25) so need very little done to lvl them up

I think people need to stop thinking in terms of min-maxing, and more of the role-play and fun.

Here we have some people who like the idea of making your own weapons and armor, and then selling them.

Though I wish it was possible to personalize your weapons and armor by naming them or adding custom designs.

You can rename weapons via the enchanting table.

I found smithing to be great! I got it to 100 faster than any other skill, with Enchanting in the 70's and Two handed at 80. But smithing is easy to level (just craft Iron Daggers or Hide Leather in bulk). You can then enchant those items too if you have soul gems and sell them to vendors. I found the smithy at Whiterun to be the best spot as both vendors carry a lot of various ore/money and restock quickly. But I've been way ahead of the curve in of NPCs on max difficulty due to crafting. Got my entire light dragonbone set on as well as giving Lydia a complete Heavy Dragonbone set. Now need to upgrade her stuff ... more dragons I must kill!

Not only is it easy to level on making leather armor, its also a money maker.
Kill game, make leather and then sell the improved leather.

I made a set of Dwarven armor and weapons, and then made it exquisite (2 level upgrade) and used it for the longest time. The armor rating was really high. Then I unlocked Orc armor and special armor (plate steel namely).

So far orc weapons seem sub par compared to dwarven (so does anything else I have seen or made) but looks to be on level with or better than the steel plate armor I made, steel plate is about 30 points more armor than dwarven and seems lighter. (also upgraded to exquisite).
Not only is it neat knowing you made that armor, you can have a matching set easily that is improved over normal armor.

I noticed that a improved iron armor is on par with the next level armor until you improve it.

Leather is easy to get, and the shop in Whiterun sells enough bars and ore to level smithing fast. Mine is in the 60's.

Plus the idle animations are killer.

well, i am a battle mage and i didn't think i would do smithing, but i bought like 15 iron ore one time and just hit x over and over on dagger, and my level shot up so fast it was crazy, now im at level 90 blacksmithing, and i got from 81 to 90 in about 15 mins. all you have to do is buy iron/steel ingots from any blacksmith, then buy the leather straps, wait 48 hours buy them again, go to any forge make like 50 iron daggers. repeat, id say at level 1(if you have the money) you can reach level 90 blacksmithing in a max of 90 mins, easily less if you just keep doing it.

also all the armor i found in stores are dwarven at the best, i have full ebony armor(epic) and 2 ebony weapons(epic) all from smithing which i never planned to do. so thanks to that i have the best armor i can get my hands on.
im level 27 also still havnt seen full ebony laying around.

Yes, it is well worth it. When you level armor and weapons up too their legendary quality they are extremely powerful.

Well I'm around level 40 and have had 100 smithing for 2 days now and I'd say it's probably one of the best skills there is, maybe even over powered at the moment. It is ridiculously fast and easy to level up (just make tons of iron daggers) and lets you create high level armor long before you get to a high level charcter. Making items and then upgrading them to Legendary quality gives you some incredibly powerful stuff.

Smithing is a MUST for anyone playing a rogue or warrior or anyone that using armor or weapons.

My 15th level character is now wearing a full set of Exquisite Elven armor and using an Exquisite Dwarven sword. If it wasn't for Smithing I'd still be wearing plain leather armor and a steel sword.

I don't know why people are saying it's fast to level up. I've played over 30 hours so far and I haven't come across a single ore node. My smithing is currently 40. Even if you spend a lot of gold on ingots the vendors only sell enough to make a few pieces and then they run out, forcing you to wait until the next day or so. Personally I think it's a chore to level and I won't be doing it again unless someone posts a vid on YouTube showing a fast way of doing it. I mean, straight after I got enough skill for dwarven armor, I went to a dungeon and guess what, some guy dropped an elven axe and a dwarven shield. Wasn't even worth the bother.

Are you carrying a pick axe? Find a mine (they are everywhere). Find a pick axe (they are laying all over mines). Find the striped rocks and click on them (you'll see the option to mine). That should gain you at least 2 ingots plus maybe a gem.

Now find a smelter. Most large cities have them and many mines have them nearby. Smelt the ore into ingots.

Now at the anvil you can turn the ingots into armor and weapons. At the workbench you can upgrade armor and weapons using ingots.

its easy to level this is what you do
1. go to a smith, whiterun is good cause it has 2.
2. buy all the iron and steel ingots they have an enough leather strips for both.
3. make iron and steel daggers until your out of materials.
4. wait 48 hours. repeat until level 100. you can hit 100 in 90 mins or less if you dont do anything, id say about 40 mins if you stay focued.

I've been all over the place, found not a single node anywhere. Yeah, I've got a pickaxe. All the ingots I've used are ones I've found in dungeons etc. I also had to buy some.

Edit: kill4satan, how much gold is that going to cost me? Right now I have about 6000 gold and I don't want to waste it seeing as it's not easy to come by.

as I wander around I find ore deposits quite often. I just chose now to carry a pick axe because they take up too much weight. I've been working on Blacksmithing. I'm about 30 now.

Just look for some striped rock. Could be on the floor on low on the wall. You have to get up close to it for the mining option to appear. All mines have them so I you didn't find any then you just missed it.

Really easy to level, just buy leather and leather straps in bulk and make [censored] loads of leather boots (the one that costs the least leather to make), or use iron ingots and make iron daggers. Also you can use the companion blacksmith training, then steal the gold back of him.

I havent done much smithing yet so I wouldnt know, but I thought it was confirmed that when making armour we could change the appearance (choose from a number of different pieces for areas of the armour)

So smithing doesnt have any customization?

How do the perks affect how you can improve the weapons and armor? My smithing is level 40 without any perks and I can improve steel, iron, dwarves etc the same amount

Well, it says you can improve them "twice as much". So I'm guessing you can normally improve things to Fine, Superior, or Honed. Then if you get the Perk you can further improve them to Exquisite, Flawless, or Epic.

I'm smithing on mine now it's not to hard to level and later on the ores don't seem so expensive seeing as how I have about 20 grand right now.

I even saw in a video that someone had found a deposit in the wild, not in a mine! :nod:

No.

There are some good deposits at