Hi all, so I finally got to playing Skyrim and I'm loving it, I also purchased the Dawnguard DLC because I love crossbows, however I just spent around 4 hours doing all the smithing quests (to learn to make your own crossbows) and hunting down an item and a potion with +smithing on them... only to find that they don't get improved beyond the crossbow you can buy from the vendor....

I play on Xbox and I am sad.

Edit: I even tried putting a perk into dwarven smithing so I could improve my xbow "twice as much" as the perk says, but nope, I can only take it to superior... (and I use light armor so this wasted perk point hurts)

The level you can take armor to depends on your smithing skill, in order to improve to say Legendary you will need a very high smithing skill. It also helps to get bracers and rings with smithing fortification enchant when you are at a lower to mid smithing skill level. If you like dwarven you will also want to add the artifact that is the subject of a quest found in Riften, it gives +15% to smithing/improving dwemer armor and armor fortification (Also Dwemer).

For this quest:

The crossbows can be improved to Legendary - I've done it. You may need to increase your smithing skill some more, get more clothing items with fortify smithing enchantments, and get stronger fortify smithing potions before you can improve them that much. But it can be done.

There's also the Silver Blood Family Ring for the quest "No one Escapes Cidnha Mine." Damn two long titles in a row, I feel like my punctuation looks bad starting every word with a capital.

About not being able to improve the crossbow. Have you enchanted it? Will need the Arcane Blacksmith perk to improve it if you have already enchanted.

If you got Dragonborn, Dumner shoes have chest/torso enchantments.