Smithing (Skyrim)

The art of creating and improving weapons and armor from raw materials. ""Is your armor made of... dragon bones? By the gods, what I wouldn't do for a set of that.""

- Guard

Smithing is a skill in and is one of the six skills that falls under The Warrior play-style. Smithing is the art of refining raw materials and combining them into new and/or improved pieces of armor or weaponry. It is one of the three crafting skills in Skyrim, falling under The Warrior, with parallels to Alchemy for The Thief and Enchanting for The Mage. As such it is affected by The Warrior Stone and, as with all skills, is affected by The Lover Stone.

Mechanics
Smithing is a multistage process with the number of stages depending on what items are being crafted and how raw the materials are. The process can be started at any intermediate stage if the right materials are found, but every stage requires input materials, knowledge of the recipe, and its own tool. Input materials can be found in the world or purchased from vendors. Knowledge of new recipes can be acquired only through perks but some are available automatically. The tools list below roughly outlines the end-to-end process from the most raw stages to the most refined stages.

Tools
These tools, required for various stages in the smithing process, can be found in any main city and most villages. They are also frequently found in forts and dungeons or outside mines. See the individual tool pages for more specific locations.
 * Smelter - Used to change ores or scraps into ingots.
 * Tanning Rack - Used to create leather/leather strips from animal hides.
 * Forge and Anvil - Used to craft armor, weapons and jewelry from ingots and other materials.
 * Workbench - Used to improve armor and shields with ingots or leather.
 * Grindstone - Used to improve weapons with ingots.

Racial bonuses
Nord, Redguard, and Orc characters gain a +5 boost to Smithing at the start of the game.

Leveling
The following actions raise the Smithing skill:
 * Crafting an item at a Forge. Skill gain is dependant on the value of the item being crafted.
 * Improving a weapon at a Grindstone. Larger skill gains based on the strength of the improvement made.
 * Improving an armor or shield at a Workbench. Larger skill gains based on the strength of the improvement made.

Books


The following is a list of books that raise the Smithing Skill, locations can be found on the relevant book's page:
 * Cherim's Heart of Anequina
 * Heavy Armor Forging
 * Light Armor Forging
 * The Armorer's Challenge
 * The Last Scabbard of Akrash
 * Oghma Infinium - choosing the Path of Might increases all Warrior skills, including Smithing, by 5.

Related quests
The following Quests increase or help to increase the Smithing Skill:
 * Retrieve Queen Freydis's Sword for Oengul War-Anvil in Windhelm
 * Retrieve Night Falls on Sentinel for Rustleif in Dawnstar
 * Retrieve The Last Scabbard of Akrash for Ghorza gra-Bagol in Markarth
 * Find Rjorn's Drum for Giraud Gemane in the Bards College in Solitude will award the player with one level of every Warrior governed skill, including smithing
 * Discerning the Transmundane can award the player with five levels of every Warrior governed skill, including smithing.
 * Unfathomable Depths will grant the player Ancient Knowledge which increases the rate of skill gain for Smithing by 15%.

Growth curve
The smithing skill levels according to an exponential curve. This means each level costs more than the previous one.

Perks
The following chart lists the perks that become available to the player as the skill is leveled up. In spite of the shape of the perk constellation implying otherwise, perks explicitly list their prerequisites (e.g. Daedric Smithing requires Ebony Smithing be taken first).

* Dragonbone weapons can only be created if is installed.

Improvement
The table shows what quality improvement an item will achieve based on smithing level and if the smithing perk for the item is taken or not.

Items can still be improved once they reach Legendary, but the description will not change.

Each additional quality level beyond Legendary improves Armor by 3.6 and other items (weapons, helms, boots, etc) by 1.8.

Alchemy and Enchanting can improve results significantly via the Fortify Smithing effect allowing for greater improvements at a given level than the table shows. Combining both Alchemy and Enchanting to improve one another and then combining both to improve Smithing as much as possible can be very powerful. The relevant Alchemy Tips page or Enchanting page have more information on how to get the most out of those skills.

The improvement of armor and weapons requires one smithing material per item improved. These items can be obtained by Tanning, Smelting, or other in game means of obtaining items.

Material requirements
The table shows the different kinds of weapons and armor that you can make and what you need to make them.
 * Nord Hero Weapons can be made after completing "The Companions" quest chain and only at the Skyforge.

Notes and tips

 * Damage reduction from armor is capped at 80% damage reduced or 567 armor. No matter how much armor is shown on the character page damage reduction will never improve beyond this point by adding additional armor.
 * Completing "The Companions" quest chain allows the Dragonborn, when using the Skyforge (only the Skyforge can be used), to produce "Nord Hero" armor and weapons.
 * The Notched Pickaxe is a unique weapon with an enchantment that can be learned which improves smithing (unless you've already reached 100).
 * To maximize skill gain, activate The Warrior Stone and sleep in a bed to obtain a Rested Effect (unless you're a Werewolf).
 * The Transmute Mineral Ore can be used to improve Iron Ore to Silver Ore and finally Gold Ore. It is a time and Magicka intensive process using a base cost of 88 magicka but can significantly improve money yields and alteration, while improving smithing.
 * All items created to level Smithing can be improved with enchantments which will greatly increase the value of the resulting items. See the Enchanting page for details on which enchantments improve money value the most for each item.
 * When improving an item at a Grindstone or Workbench the Fortify Smithing will yield additional experience as well as improve the sale value of the item being improved.
 * All Mines and Dwarven Ruins provide reasonable amounts of raw materials for Smithing if time is taken to collect and return them to a smelter, and smiting dwarven bows are an excellent way to level smiting.
 * This tactic is only effective if you have the Dwarven Smithing perk. In Dwarven Ruins, you will find different kinds of Dwemer metal scraps, which vary in size. A large majority of these can be transferred into Dwarven Metal Ingots (Sometimes multiple, depending on the weight of the dwarven scrap metal piece that you are smelting). This can make for an efficient levelling style for smithing levels 30-60.
 * The quickest way to level up smithing via Dwarven smithing would be to make Dwarven bows (2 Dwarven metal ingots, 1 iron ingot) as iron ingots are cheap and most dwarven ruins can yield 200-300+ Dwarven metal ingots if all metal is taken. Then upgrade all created bows with one Dwarven metal ingot. This will also provide a large amount of money and speech xp. To grab as much metal on one trip: followers, the Steed Stone, and the extra pockets perk can make smithing the easiest skill to raise.
 * The metal that you can pick up (in order of best weight:ingot acquired ratio to worst) is Large Dwemer Plate Metal and Bent Dwemer Scrap Metal at 2 weight and 3 ingot return, Solid Dwemer Metal at 25 weigh and 5 ingot return, Large Decorative Dwemer Strut at 15 weight and 2 ingot return, then Large Dwemer Strut at 20 weight and 2 ingot return.

Bugs

 * If you improve a weapon on Grindstones, and then go in to your inventory and look at the damage difference (the number in brackets in either red or green, depending on whether that weapon has a positive or negative improvement on the weapon's damaged that you're holding) you will notice that the difference is based on the weapon's damage difference before you improved it. To resolve this, either equip another weapon, or unequip your current weapon.
 * Occasionally while using the Blacksmith Forge, the animation your character performs whilst you decide on what armor you're going to make glitches. The following is a long and drawn out explanation of what very rarely happens: First, the metal strip that has been placed in the furnace is already attached to the player's arm. If the player then makes a move to pick out a strip of metal from the furnace, the arm grasps at thin air. The player will then turn to the Anvil to begin using the hammer on the metal's hot end. But the hot end is up by the player's elbow, and the cold bit is near the Anvil, but not actually on the Anvil. The hammer hits the Anvil's surface while the cold metal is around the bottom. Finally, the player puts the cold end of the metal into the cooling trough, and it hisses as though something hot just got put into cold water.
 * Only seems to occur when a shield is equipped.
 * When attempting to use any of the smithing stations (including the Tanning Rack and Smelting Ovens) at any location, the attempt will fail. The game goes into the third person camera and stops, but after a second or two, you can move again. To resolve this, try restarting the system
 * There are times when if you put on Smithing trinkets(when you use the workbench), you will find that the amount of improvement you can put on an armor's rating will go down from the amount of improvement you may see before equipping the smithing trinkets. (So save before improving armor so as to be able to get the maximum improvement you can with or without the trinkets.)
 * It is possible that this is due to Armor perks that award a bonus for either a matching set or all the same type of armor (ie light). When I put on my Heavy Armor blacksmithing gloves, my overall armor drops because I'm no longer awarded the 25% bonus for light armor.
 * Sometimes you can't improve items beyond the the current improvement level.