On my first character I used the iron dagger spamming way to level up my smithing, but it felt kinda cheaty, so for my next character I am thinking of just making weapons and armor out of minerals I mined myself from mines and ore veins around the world.

Is this a viable way to level a warrior character? If so do mineral veins respawn? I mean, I haven't found one ebony vein in my playtime so I figure that when I do find one it would be good to be able to go back to it later to get more.

I just installed a smithing mod where you could craft arrows and unenchanted unique gear (with the right materials of course). I found it perfectly balanced (economically and combat-wise) and there's so much to make it feels quite natural when you level up, especially when you mass craft arrows because you actually use them, unlike our friend Iron Dagger.

Yes mines respawn, just like plants and stuff.

I'm not sure if there are ebony mines but you do find ebony ingots in chests and get them from quest rewards. That's only relevant if you don't want to just spam leather bracers though because leather is really easy to get. So far I've managed to get up to 80 smithing using only stuff I've gathered myself and I haven't made any iron/steel/leather since I was at 40 smithing. I did dwemer from 40 to ~65 and Orc from 65 to 80 with some jewelry and upgrading stuff mixed in.

Not sure if/how I'll get from 80-100 with ebony/deadric stuff but that's my plan right now.

iirc the veins are replenished after 30 in-game days. In all of my travels I have found 1 mine that contained 2 veins (ebony ore). I Could probably count on one hand plus a few fingers how many times I've seen ingots as loot. there were a few randoms as well but location? I never bothered with them. It was just plain easier to be a jeweler, make money, and buy mats.

-218 hours in.

It is... but really tedious. If you travel all over and know the major mines, that'll help you get to dwarven then you could raid dwarven ruins for their scraps which you can smelt into ores.

Probably not feasible in master difficulty though, as those dwarven ruins can be pretty harsh for low level characters on master.

Veins take about a month to respawn, or so I heard. I know that the graphic of veins respawn in about 2 weeks, but those are not mine-able. There is only one true ebony vein mine in this game, which is by an orc stronghold, but it has about 32 ores in it.

I can't see why you wouldn't be able to do it, but it would probably take quite a bit of effort to make all of your equipment without buying anything. If you're looking to level smithing in a more "honest" way than iron dagger spam, you could always try Dwarven ruins. Nearly every dwarven ruin I go to, I usually walk out with stacks of Dwarven Plate metal which I then smelt into ~30-40 Dwarven metal bars, plus standard dungeon loot.

Although you still need iron for most of the stuff you make with dwarven, but iron ore isn't hard to find yourself.

Yes there are ebony mines. I dig up some in Falmer city and from one of the mines in an orc settlement,cant remember which one tho. Btw, good luck with daedra hearts.

If you go to all of the iron mines (the most plentiful) and then clean out a few dwarven ruins you can easily level without purchasing a single ore

If you purchase the house in whiterun and add an alchemy table theres normally a satchel on the table with one deadra heart inside and the apothicary in whiterun has one every so often so theres your deadric weapons at least if you dualwield like i do also do the asura deadric quest and visit the dawnstar museaum doing that chain can net you enough to make your full deadric set if your lucky.