This question might be a bit complicated, so please bear with me whilst I try and explain with a long post.

My character (sword and shield warrior) is currently level 22, and I've decided to try and learn Blacksmithing and Enchanting for him. Things are going ok so far, and I've managed to get smithing to around level 45 and can make Dwarven armor, and enchanting to level 50.

Eventually, I'd really like to have some of that really cool-looking Daedric armor - though I guess that I'd have to be really high level,with an absolute tonne of gold and resources before I could even think about it.

My initial methods for leveling smithing just involved gathering lots of iron ore, and making iron daggers. This seemed to work pretty well for a while, but then I noticed that level-ups seemed to get less frequent. I'm assuming therefore that the things you make to level up suffer from diminishing returns in direct relation to your smithing skills?

Checked a few guides online, but they all seem to contradict one another and it's very hard to get a clear solution - hence this post.

My last dozen-or-so- smithing levels have involved using a transmute spell to turn the iron ore into silver - and then gold, and making gold necklaces. This has been very effective - but it takes a long, long time and a lot of patience. I've not put a single point into magika, and I'm scared to 'waste ' valuable perks by putting them into the transmute tree - therefore each transmute is a laborious process of waiting for magika ro regenerate to full, transmuting... waiting again... etc... I can live with this, but I suspect it won't last.

So, to come to the point - Eventually I guess that gold necklaces are going to suffer from the same diminishing returns, and I'll stop getting level-ups from them. After this occurs, I'm very unclear about the best things to start making in bulk for pure leveling purposes - most of the stuff beyond Dwarven Armor, seems to involve quite obscure ores and materials, that are much rarer in the game. It strikes me that making these higher level items in bulk would be difficult - to say the least!

Plenty of other players seem to have done it though, judging from the Youtube vids.. therefore they must have some basic, obvious method. My question is, what are people making (in bulk) beyond smithing level 50 to help level them up? Is there some nice, cheap, plentiful item you can make that I'm not aware of... Or do people just grit their teeth, settle down for a logn haul, and scour the world for scores and scores of ultra-rare materials as the months go by?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.