Hello everyone. I'm normally just a lurker around here but picked up the game after a few months away and I'm looking for a specific feature in a smithing mod. The thing I don't like about vanilla smithing is you can walk right into any town at level 1 and start grinding away at a blacksmith if you've got the materials. And once you level up, you automatically have knowledge of advanced armors with the skill points invested in the right perks. Thats very unrealistic. I'm lookin g for something that makes smithing more difficult to get into. Perhaps having to complete various quests in order to unlock specific armor types. Or perhaps collecting certain finite skill books, hidden away in dungeons and other remote corners of skyrim, that unlock advanced smithing knowledge. Are there any mods along these lines? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Most people do not spend time making a mod that stops you from doing something that is your choice to do. The smithing changes a couple of patches ago makes it so that you need to do a lot more smithing to gain levels, and you need to make expensive items to level up with any real magnitude.

One thing you can do, unless you want to cook one of these up yourself is get a mod that makes the materials heavier and you need more Ore so it's harder to spam the smithing, like this one:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/6077/?

This one makes a bunch of changes, including adding level requirements to some of the smithing activities. If nothing else, you can see how that was done in this mod to make a mod yourself that adds the level requirements

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/17465/?