Skyrim Smithing Guide: Fastest Way to Level 100

Smithing is one of the comfiest skills to max in Skyrim, mostly because the grind pays for itself. Ever since patch 1.5, XP for anything you forge scales with what the item is worth instead of just how many things you crank out. That one change killed the old iron dagger spam and made jewelry and Dwarven bows the new route. So the plan here is simple: dirt cheap materials early, perks in a smart order, Daedric and Dragon sets at the end, and an enchanting loop that turns the whole push into a gold machine.

Cheapest Leveling Materials

How the XP math works

Every forge craft gives roughly 3 times the item's value to the 0.65 power, plus a flat 25 XP on top. Two things follow from that. Cheap items in bulk beat one pricey item from the same materials (five iron daggers from five ingots hand you about 192 XP, while one iron armor from those same five ingots gives about 94). And anything with a fat price tag, like jewelry, punches way above its material cost.

Tempering counts too. Improving gear at a grindstone or workbench gives XP based on the value you add, at a rate close to forging. Past skill 40 with the Dwarven perk, tempering a stack of Dwarven bows is real XP on top of the crafting XP, and it only costs one ingot per bow.

Gold rings, the early workhorse

The cheapest fast route is iron ore turned into gold jewelry:

1. Grab the Transmute Mineral Ore tome from Halted Stream Camp, a bandit camp with a mine just north of Whiterun. The tome sits on the table at the back of the mine near the boss bed. The mine holds 16 iron ore veins plus one corundum vein.
2. Cast Transmute over and over. Each cast converts one ore, iron to silver or silver to gold, and it does silver first. Spam the spell and you'll end up with all gold. You'll grind Alteration along the way, which is free levels.
3. Smelt two gold ore into one gold ingot, then forge gold rings. One ingot makes two rings at 75 gold each.
4. Sell the rings, buy more iron ore from blacksmiths (2 gold base each), wait 48 hours for stock to reset, do it again.

Two plain gold rings work out to about 51.5 XP per ore, against 38.4 for an iron dagger made from the same ore. With the Warrior Stone active and a rest bonus, roughly 1,486 rings takes you from 15 to 100. That's 743 gold ingots, which sounds awful but goes fast once it's a loop. You probably won't do only rings anyway.

Gems crank this way up. A gold diamond ring is worth about 137 XP per ore, and a gold diamond necklace hits 163. Save every gem you stumble on for the forge.

| Item | XP per ore | | --- | --- | | Iron dagger | 38.4 | | Silver rings (2 per ingot) | 34 | | Gold rings (2 per ingot) | 51.5 | | Silver garnet ring | 53 | | Gold necklace | 46 | | Gold sapphire ring | 98 | | Gold diamond ring | 137 | | Gold diamond necklace | 163 |

One sneaky tip: leave the boss at Halted Stream Camp alive when you clear it. Kill him and the camp goes on a 30-day respawn timer instead of 10 days, and those iron veins are your fuel line.

Leather bracers when you're broke

Before Transmute, or between ore runs, leather bracers are the cheapest filler around. One leather plus two strips makes bracers worth 25 gold, and hides are free if you hunt. A wolf pelt tans into one leather, a bear pelt into four. Blacksmiths always carry 10 to 27 leather and 12 to 33 strips, so buying works too. Done raw with no bonuses, it takes about 1,858 bracers to go from 15 to 100, so it's slower than jewelry. Fine as a top-up, not the main plan.

Dwarven bows, 30 to 100

At skill 30 with the Dwarven Smithing perk, switch to Dwarven bows. Each bow costs two Dwarven metal ingots and one iron ingot. Dwarven metal can't be mined, but Dwemer ruins are stuffed with smeltable scrap:

| Scrap piece | Weight | Ingots from smelting | | --- | --- | --- | | Bent Dwemer scrap metal | 2 | 3 | | Small or large Dwemer plate metal | 2 | 3 | | Large decorative Dwemer strut | 15 | 2 | | Large Dwemer strut | 20 | 3 | | Solid Dwemer metal | 25 | 5 |

Bent scrap and plate metal are the real prize, 2 pounds for 3 ingots. Solid Dwemer metal is the opposite, 25 pounds for 5, so skip it unless you're fast traveling out with a follower pack mule. One annoying trap: plain unbent "Dwemer scrap metal" doesn't smelt at all in an unpatched game. Don't haul a mountain of it home.

A single big ruin like Mzulft can hand you 100-plus ingots, and it takes about 465 bows (930 Dwarven ingots, 465 iron) to run from 30 to 100 with the Warrior Stone and a bed. Temper each bow afterward for bonus XP.

Turn the buffs on first

Whatever you craft, craft it boosted. The Warrior Stone gives 20% more Smithing XP, and sleeping gives 5 to 15% depending on the bed (10% for one you own, 15% with a spouse in it). With Dawnguard, the Aetherial Crown can hold the Lover Stone alongside the Warrior Stone for 35% combined. The Ancient Knowledge reward from the Unfathomable Depths quest is supposed to add another 15%, but it's bugged in an unpatched game (the Unofficial Patch fixes it). Oh, and Nords, Orcs, and Redguards start at Smithing 20 instead of 15, which is a free head start.

Best Perks to Grab First

The tree looks like a circle but it's really two branches off Steel Smithing that meet again at Dragon Armor. The right side is the heavy armor line, and it's the one leveling routes use because the Dwarven bow grind lives there.

| Perk | Skill needed | Why you want it | | --- | --- | --- | | Steel Smithing | none (15) | Take it immediately. Cheap, and steel tempers twice as well. | | Dwarven Smithing | 30 | The bow grind perk. Non-negotiable. | | Orcish Smithing | 50 | Pure gate on the way to Ebony. Craft nothing. | | Arcane Blacksmith | 60 | Lets you improve enchanted gear. Grab it before the endgame loop. | | Ebony Smithing | 80 | Another gate, but ebony bows give about 5x the tempering XP of Dwarven ones. | | Daedric Smithing | 90 | Daedric gear, the best heavy armor and weapons in the base game. | | Dragon Armor | 100 | Dragonplate, Dragonscale, and with Dawnguard the Dragonbone weapons. |

A few things people miss:

• The left branch (Elven 30, Advanced Armors 50, Glass 70, Dragon 100) reaches Dragon Armor with one fewer perk. The catch is that your best forgeable weapon tops out at glass, and picking up Daedric Smithing later still means walking the heavy branch anyway.
• Dragon Armor only needs Daedric Smithing or Glass Smithing, not both. Coming up the heavy side gets you Daedric gear plus Dragonplate at 100. Light armor folks usually take the glass route for Dragonscale.
• Perk quality gates are gentler than they look. With the matching perk you can temper an item to Legendary at skill 91 instead of 168 without it. That's most of the payoff of a high Smithing skill in one number.
• Don't dump points into both branches to be safe. The whole tree only holds 10 perks, and you'll want the spare points in your weapon and armor skills.

So who actually takes Elven Smithing? Mostly light armor purists and folks who want Advanced Armors early (steel plate is heavy armor hiding on the light branch) plus the shorter trip to Dragonscale. Everyone else should walk Steel into Dwarven and straight up the right side.

Daedric and Dragon Armor

Here's what the endgame sets actually cost at the forge. Daedric gear is the matching ebony item plus one Daedra heart apiece, and dragon gear runs on bones and scales.

| Full set (5 pieces, with shield) | Materials | Set value | | --- | --- | --- | | Daedric | 5 Daedra hearts, 17 ebony ingots, 10 leather strips | 7,650 | | Dragonplate | 13 dragon scales, 6 dragon bones, 10 leather strips | 5,075 | | Dragonscale | 26 dragon scales, 14 iron ingots, 7 leather, 4 strips | 3,600 |

A Daedric cuirass on its own takes one heart, five ebony ingots, and three strips. A Dragonplate cuirass takes three scales, two bones, and three strips. Every Daedric piece tempers with one ebony ingot. Dragonplate is pickier: the cuirass and shield temper with a bone, and the boots, gauntlets, and helmet temper with a scale.

Hunting Daedra hearts

Hearts are the bottleneck, at 250 gold each if you're buying. Your options:

• Enthir at the College of Winterhold reliably sells two, restocking every 48 hours.
• Babette in the Dark Brotherhood sometimes carries up to six.
• Most apothecaries have roughly a 1 in 5 shot at stocking one to four.
• Free ones lying around: two in Nightcaller Temple, one in the Jorrvaskr living quarters, one in Sinderion's field laboratory in Blackreach.
• Best renewable source: finish Pieces of the Past, then revisit the Shrine of Mehrunes Dagon. Four Dremora spawn there every 10 days, and every one of them drops a heart.
• With a Sigil Stone in the Atronach Forge, one black soul gem plus one human heart cooks up a fresh heart.

Dragon gear and the armor cap

Bones and scales come off every dragon you kill, so by skill 100 you're probably sitting on a pile. Dragonscale is the best light armor in the base game, full stop. Dragonplate is second-best heavy behind Daedric, but once tempered both blow past the 567 displayed armor rating cap, so the base-rating gap barely matters in play. Dragonplate's real edge is weight: a full set is 79 pounds versus 96 for Daedric.

With Dawnguard installed, the Dragon Armor perk also unlocks Dragonbone weapons, the hardest hitting weapons in the game. And if you're crafting dragon gear to sell, make Dragonplate cuirasses and temper each with a bone. That's the biggest value jump per material you can forge.

Ebony supply

Daedric crafting eats ebony, 17 ingots for the set before you temper anything. Gloombound Mine at the Orc stronghold of Narzulbur, east of Windhelm, is the usual farm spot. Ebony ingots also run 150 gold base if you'd rather just buy them, and Enthir sells his hearts a short walk from an arcane enchanter anyway.

Enchanting and Smithing Loop

This is where the grind turns into a machine. The loop runs like this:

1. Forge cheap items: gold rings, iron daggers, Dwarven bows.
2. Temper them at the grindstone or workbench.
3. Enchant them with a high-value effect using filled petty soul gems.
4. Sell the results for way more than the materials cost.
5. Buy more ore, ingots, and soul gems. Wait 48 hours. Repeat.

The money engine is Banish. Weapons "of Expelling" start showing up on vendors and in loot around the low 20s, so disenchant one when it appears. Then put Banish on cheap iron daggers with petty gems. A dagger with maybe 10 gold of materials in it sells for several hundred, and that price climbs as your Speech improves. Until Banish shows up, Turn Undead or Damage Stamina on daggers already sells for more than the parts cost.

Two mechanics make the loop silly:

• Enchanting XP is flat. You get the same sliver of XP per enchant no matter the effect, the soul gem, or the price. Petty gems and daggers level Enchanting just as fast as grand gems on glass swords. So never burn big gems on grind items.
• Fortify Smithing gear stacks with potions when tempering. Enchant a chest piece, gauntlets, ring, and necklace with Fortify Smithing, drink a Fortify Smithing potion, and your effective skill at the workbench shoots way past 100. That's how a Dwarven bow hits Legendary damage while your real skill still reads 80.

You need Arcane Blacksmith (60 Smithing) for the version where you temper gear after enchanting it, so grab that perk before you lean on this loop hard.

And it's not just Smithing climbing. One lap around Whiterun levels Smithing (forging and tempering), Enchanting, Speech, and Alteration from all those Transmute casts, and it funds itself the whole way. There's an extreme version built on Fortify Restoration potions that breaks the game's math entirely, but that's an exploit, and the clean loop is plenty fast.

Selling Excess Gear Efficiently

Speech XP is based on the value of each item sold, one transaction at a time. Sell a stack of 40 rings in a single click and you get XP for one ring. Sell them one by one (in the same barter session, no need to close the menu) and every single ring counts. It feels dumb. Do it anyway.

Your price cut depends on Speech. At skill 15 you sell at about 32% of an item's value, at 100 it's 50%, and somewhere around 65 to 71% once the Haggling perks are in. Early on, a 1,200 gold Banish dagger fetches maybe 400. Still pure profit on a 10 gold dagger, so no complaints.

Vendor gold is the real limit

Merchants run out of money before you run out of loot, so pick a circuit. Whiterun is the classic because everything sits in one place:

| Merchant | Gold | Buys | | --- | --- | --- | | Adrianne and Ulfberth, Warmaiden's | 1,000 | weapons, armor, ore, ingots, hides | | Belethor's General Goods | 750 | everything | | Eorlund Gray-Mane, Skyforge | 1,000-2,500 | weapons, armor, ore | | The Drunken Huntsman | 750 | weapons, armor |

Note that Adrianne and Ulfberth share one 1,000 gold pot, since it's the same shop whether she's outside at the forge or he's behind the counter. Warmaiden's plus the surrounding plaza gives you a smelter, forge, grindstone, and workbench within a short walk, plus an arcane enchanter up in Dragonsreach. Vendor gold and stock reset every 48 hours, so go clear a dungeon and come back.

So where does the really expensive stuff go once Whiterun is tapped out? The Ragged Flagon. Join the Thieves Guild and fences start at 1,000 gold, and Tonilia's pot grows to 4,000 as you finish guild quests. Fences also buy anything, stolen or not, which nothing else in the game does.

A few more levers:

• Investor (70 Speech) drops 500 gold into a shop to permanently fatten their purse. Hit Warmaiden's and Belethor's first.
• Master Trader (100 Speech) adds 1,000 gold to nearly every merchant in the world. Late game, this is the perk that ends vendor-gold problems for good.
• Mind the weird 32,767 gold cap baked into merchant code. Push a shopkeeper past it and they stop paying you. You basically can't get there honestly, so don't lose sleep.

Last trick, and it's a good one: Balimund in Riften is an Expert Smithing trainer who runs The Scorched Hammer with 1,000 gold on hand. Pay him for five training sessions, then sell him your bow stack to pull most of that gold straight back out of his pocket. Training gets close to free, your Smithing jumps five levels, and the vendor gold problem solves itself in the same conversation.