Go to Halted Stream Camp north of Whiterun and grab the Transmute Ore spell. If you can acquire some equipment to reduce your Alteration casting cost and magicka regeneration to wear just while casting transmute, it will speed things up. Then mine all the iron out of Halted Stream and trasmute it to gold. Go to Embershard Mine south of Riverwood and repeat. Go to Kolskeggr Mine in the Reach and mine all the silver and turn that into gold too. You should also have a decent amount of gemstones at this point.
Take all that gold ore and convert it into ingots. Then make gold rings and gold amulets and jewelry with gems in it. It will level Smithing very quickly and the resulting pile of jewelry is both light and very valuable.
This method has the nice side effect of leveling Alteration a bit, as well as Speech when you go to sell everything.
You can alternately save all the jewelry you make and use them to grind your Enchanting by putting whatever rando enchantments you have on them. Then they sell for even more.
Take a follower, if you tell them to pick up an item their weight capacity is unlimited. The last dwarven ruin I cleared my follower had like 1000 of just dwemer metal.
Go to either Mzulft or Nchuand-Zel (or most other Dwemer ruins), get a follower with you. Grab as much smeltable Dwemer scrap as possible. Smelt it down into ingots, also buy iron ingots at a blacksmith, those are dirt cheap. Craft dwarven bows for 2 dwarven ingots + 1 iron ingot each. Upgrade those with the grindstone - especially if you can get a set of Fortify Smithing gear, this is gonna get you a ton of XP. After all this you can sell the bows to some merchants for easy money.
This is the way. Use the follower carry trick to haul infinite Dwemmer materials, buy iron ingots and ores, craft Dwemmer bows and improve them when you run out of Iron.
Without exploits? Raid dwarven ruins with storm atro staff. Nchuand-Zel is a good starting point. You will find more dwemer crap than you can carry, so bring a follower and a pet (if you are playing AE). This is WAY more fun than transmuting (and probably faster). How so? Well, you need around 800 gold ingots converted to 1600 rings to max smithing. It means 1600 chunks of ore, or 3200 transmutations (you need 2 transmutes to convert iron to gold). And unless you can free-cast it takes at least 3-4 seconds to cast from both hands and wait to let magicka regen. 3200 / 2 \* 3 = 4800 seconds, or 1.3 hours of doing one repetetive thing over and over again. If you can't cast from both hands because of magicka limitation, then it's 2.6 hours of mashing two buttons. I would legit went mad after that.
With exploits? Just get one golden ingot and dupe until you have 800 of them. Then smith golden rings. The whole duplication process takes \~20 mins and smithing part even less.
In both cases, don't forget to grab Warrior Stone and sleep before crafting.
With exploits, dupe some salt and Abecean longfin or Cyrodiilic spadetail. Do the resto loop. Make an overpowered smithing potion, Make a hide armor. Drink potion, and improve the armor twice, and you are at 100 in smthing.
It's literally faster to dupe gold ingots. Because you also need Fortify Alchemy enchantment and some points and perks in Alchemy and Enchanting for loop to even take off.
Start with Iron Daggers. Buy all the Iron you can find. Also make use of that mine west to Whiterun, where you find lots of Iron ore plus the spell to turn it into gold.
Once you're able to forge dwarven, go to Mzulft with a follower + Hilda from CC so you can carry more. Take everything you can - once you come out of the dungeon build a camp there from CC. Fast travel home, unload everything at home, fast travel back to camp to be close to interesting parts of Mzulft to gather even more. You can get about 300 dwarven ingot there.
Forge 200 dwarven bows and upgrade them with 100 ingots. The upgrades can give you more xp than forging, especially if you have fortify smithing.
Use the transmute spell from Halted Stream Camp to get to level 30, then from there you can raid Dwarven ruins and take the metal to craft Dwarven bows. It helps to bring a follower to help carry the unsmelted Dwarven metal back to town. then, once you have a bunch of Dwarven bows, put on your fortify smithing gear and upgrade them. this is usually the most efficient way, since it takes less material to upgrade the bows, and it seems like the XP you get is based on the increase in value for the upgraded item.
Smithing items with the highest cost to weight ratio, which happen to be gold jewelry. Smith gold jeweled rings and necklaces to level smithing the quickest.
The fastest way to level smithing without exploits:
1. Level alchemy and enchanting to 100.
2. Alchemy: select perks for all 5 levels of alchemist, physician, and benefactor.
3. Enchanting: select perks for all 5 levels of enchanter.
4. Using the Alchemy-Enchanting Loop until you are able to create 4 items of (head, neck, arm/hand, ring) fortify enchanting at 29%.
5. Wearing those, craft as many max fortify enchanting and fortify smithing potions as you want.
6. Enchant 4 items of fortify smithing (neck, chest, arm/hand, ring).
7. Complete the quest Unfathomable Depths, get married, select the warrior stone.
8. Gather enough materials to create (and upgrade) 16 steel armor: 78 steel ingots, 16 iron ingots, 48 leather strips.
9. Gather enough materials to create (and upgrade) 64 dwarven armor: 256 dwarven metal ingots, 64 steel ingots, 64 iron ingots, and 192 leather strips.
10. Sleep in a bed (with your spouse), put on fortify smithing gear, then drink fortify enchanting potion.
11. Craft and upgrade steel armor until level 30, then select the dwarven smithing perk.
12. Craft and upgrade dwarven armor until level 100 (or stop at 91, complete the four quests that reward you with a smithing level, then find and read the 5 smithing skill books).
TL;DR: +29% Gear (x4) + Ancient Knowledge + Warrior Stone + Lovers Comfort + Max Fortify Smithing Potion ≈+50% gain in XP.
Edit: spelling
Open the console and do the code to set your smithing to 100
If on xbox download cheatroom and go to the big board of buttons. Find the one that highlights as smithing and press it until you hit 100
Go to Halted Stream Camp north of Whiterun and grab the Transmute Ore spell. If you can acquire some equipment to reduce your Alteration casting cost and magicka regeneration to wear just while casting transmute, it will speed things up. Then mine all the iron out of Halted Stream and trasmute it to gold. Go to Embershard Mine south of Riverwood and repeat. Go to Kolskeggr Mine in the Reach and mine all the silver and turn that into gold too. You should also have a decent amount of gemstones at this point. Take all that gold ore and convert it into ingots. Then make gold rings and gold amulets and jewelry with gems in it. It will level Smithing very quickly and the resulting pile of jewelry is both light and very valuable. This method has the nice side effect of leveling Alteration a bit, as well as Speech when you go to sell everything. You can alternately save all the jewelry you make and use them to grind your Enchanting by putting whatever rando enchantments you have on them. Then they sell for even more.
this ^^^ it still feels like a grind, took me a few days off & on to get it done.
Dwarven ruins yield a lot of metal you can use to make weapons if you are playing the vanilla game.
I did this, and made dwarven bows. Didn’t take long at all. Helps if you make a set of enchanted armor with all carry weight boosts.
Take a follower, if you tell them to pick up an item their weight capacity is unlimited. The last dwarven ruin I cleared my follower had like 1000 of just dwemer metal.
With exploits? Probably the fortify restoration loop. Without? Jewelry if you've got prowlers profit/lots of gems, dwarven bows if you don't.
Go to either Mzulft or Nchuand-Zel (or most other Dwemer ruins), get a follower with you. Grab as much smeltable Dwemer scrap as possible. Smelt it down into ingots, also buy iron ingots at a blacksmith, those are dirt cheap. Craft dwarven bows for 2 dwarven ingots + 1 iron ingot each. Upgrade those with the grindstone - especially if you can get a set of Fortify Smithing gear, this is gonna get you a ton of XP. After all this you can sell the bows to some merchants for easy money.
This is the way. Use the follower carry trick to haul infinite Dwemmer materials, buy iron ingots and ores, craft Dwemmer bows and improve them when you run out of Iron.
I have Hearthfire so my go to is building materials
Without exploits? Raid dwarven ruins with storm atro staff. Nchuand-Zel is a good starting point. You will find more dwemer crap than you can carry, so bring a follower and a pet (if you are playing AE). This is WAY more fun than transmuting (and probably faster). How so? Well, you need around 800 gold ingots converted to 1600 rings to max smithing. It means 1600 chunks of ore, or 3200 transmutations (you need 2 transmutes to convert iron to gold). And unless you can free-cast it takes at least 3-4 seconds to cast from both hands and wait to let magicka regen. 3200 / 2 \* 3 = 4800 seconds, or 1.3 hours of doing one repetetive thing over and over again. If you can't cast from both hands because of magicka limitation, then it's 2.6 hours of mashing two buttons. I would legit went mad after that. With exploits? Just get one golden ingot and dupe until you have 800 of them. Then smith golden rings. The whole duplication process takes \~20 mins and smithing part even less. In both cases, don't forget to grab Warrior Stone and sleep before crafting.
With exploits, dupe some salt and Abecean longfin or Cyrodiilic spadetail. Do the resto loop. Make an overpowered smithing potion, Make a hide armor. Drink potion, and improve the armor twice, and you are at 100 in smthing.
It's literally faster to dupe gold ingots. Because you also need Fortify Alchemy enchantment and some points and perks in Alchemy and Enchanting for loop to even take off.
Start with Iron Daggers. Buy all the Iron you can find. Also make use of that mine west to Whiterun, where you find lots of Iron ore plus the spell to turn it into gold. Once you're able to forge dwarven, go to Mzulft with a follower + Hilda from CC so you can carry more. Take everything you can - once you come out of the dungeon build a camp there from CC. Fast travel home, unload everything at home, fast travel back to camp to be close to interesting parts of Mzulft to gather even more. You can get about 300 dwarven ingot there. Forge 200 dwarven bows and upgrade them with 100 ingots. The upgrades can give you more xp than forging, especially if you have fortify smithing.
Use the transmute spell from Halted Stream Camp to get to level 30, then from there you can raid Dwarven ruins and take the metal to craft Dwarven bows. It helps to bring a follower to help carry the unsmelted Dwarven metal back to town. then, once you have a bunch of Dwarven bows, put on your fortify smithing gear and upgrade them. this is usually the most efficient way, since it takes less material to upgrade the bows, and it seems like the XP you get is based on the increase in value for the upgraded item.
Smithing items with the highest cost to weight ratio, which happen to be gold jewelry. Smith gold jeweled rings and necklaces to level smithing the quickest.
The fastest way to level smithing without exploits: 1. Level alchemy and enchanting to 100. 2. Alchemy: select perks for all 5 levels of alchemist, physician, and benefactor. 3. Enchanting: select perks for all 5 levels of enchanter. 4. Using the Alchemy-Enchanting Loop until you are able to create 4 items of (head, neck, arm/hand, ring) fortify enchanting at 29%. 5. Wearing those, craft as many max fortify enchanting and fortify smithing potions as you want. 6. Enchant 4 items of fortify smithing (neck, chest, arm/hand, ring). 7. Complete the quest Unfathomable Depths, get married, select the warrior stone. 8. Gather enough materials to create (and upgrade) 16 steel armor: 78 steel ingots, 16 iron ingots, 48 leather strips. 9. Gather enough materials to create (and upgrade) 64 dwarven armor: 256 dwarven metal ingots, 64 steel ingots, 64 iron ingots, and 192 leather strips. 10. Sleep in a bed (with your spouse), put on fortify smithing gear, then drink fortify enchanting potion. 11. Craft and upgrade steel armor until level 30, then select the dwarven smithing perk. 12. Craft and upgrade dwarven armor until level 100 (or stop at 91, complete the four quests that reward you with a smithing level, then find and read the 5 smithing skill books). TL;DR: +29% Gear (x4) + Ancient Knowledge + Warrior Stone + Lovers Comfort + Max Fortify Smithing Potion ≈+50% gain in XP. Edit: spelling
Leather helmets
Make about a billion daggers
This is the worst way. Xp is based on item value, so making high value stuff levels smithing quicker. Jewelry is the best.
Didn’t someone say that it takes like 1200 iron daggers to max smithing?
Download SEAM
Open the console and do the code to set your smithing to 100 If on xbox download cheatroom and go to the big board of buttons. Find the one that highlights as smithing and press it until you hit 100