Skyrim Smithing Tip

This is not a huge tip, but if you are looking to get into smithing and have a very low skill level, this will help you. All you need to do is go to the smith just inside the Whiterun gate. Her name is Adrianne Avenicci and if you go to her and talk to her, she will give you the opportunity to learn about smithing from her. She will give you materials and tell you to make things with them and them bring them back to her.

This provides a great way to learn how smithing works as well as actually gain experience and level up if you are a low level. The best way to level your smithing up is always by crafting items and she gives you the opportunity to do this without spending any money on it yourself.

Also, once you've done this part, a great way to keep earning experience is to go out on the plains near Whiterun (or other places) and kill animals. When you kill things like deer and elk and even smaller things, you get their hides which you can use on the tanning rack to create leather. With this leather, you can create hide or leather armor. This is by far the cheapest way to create armor pieces to gain experience.

The following is a table that shows what skill levels are necessary to get weapons and armor to various quality levels with and without the smithing perk. It also shows what increase in damage or armor rating this yields after crafted.

Quality	Skill Required		Increase Yielded
	Without Perk	With Perk	Armor	Other
Fine	14	14	+2	+1
Superior	31	22	+6	+3
Exquisite	65	40	+10	+5
Flawless	100	57	+13	+7
Epic	134	74	+17	+8
Legendary	168	91	+20	+10

For example:
Your smithing skill level is 42 and you have the dwarven smithing perk - you can improve dwarven items to exquisite quality. However, if you don't have the perk, then you can only improve dwarven items to superior quality.