Why use iron for smithing rather than leather/ hide?
I have had this question for a long time .
Why use iron for smithies rather than hide which is also very cost efficient. You get to fill petty/lesser gems when you hunt animals for hides to enchant.
Is there a variation in the skill experience point I receive ?
Every time I go out for hunting I have had good returns always I get some thing like 10 deer hides , 2 Sabre cat pelt , and some wolves. If I encounter a bear then bear pelt aas well as goat skin.
I understand this is a bit time consuming as we having to travel a long distance, but still micro managing the weight cap you can fast travel back home.
Best Answer
What you craft really depends on what you have access to. Thus, it depends on where you are in the game and what resources you have. The more valuable the item crafted, the more skill points you receive. Thus, there are many factors. One is how much time you want to spend leveling the Smithing skill. Another is how much money you have.
If you want to "live off the land" so to speak, then crafting leather items from hides you hunt is a pretty good deal. As you mention, animals are plentiful. However, from a time-to-skill-experience perspective, it's not that great. Hunting takes a lot of time. But hey, maybe that's fun time for you, so that's fine.
I make a lot of money off of potions, so money's not really a problem. I think I can count the number of times I mined for iron or hunted for hides on one hand.
When trying to powerlevel my Smithing skill, I tend to throw money at the problem. Thus, I will travel between holds and buy all of the shopkeeper's inventory I can afford that could be used for crafting. I then lumber my overencumbered character over to the smithing tools and then craft the most expensive things I can as fast as possible. Then I sell the results at a profit. I can then fast travel to another shopkeeper and buy up all their stuff and repeat the process.
When doing this, it used to be the Iron Daggers were the way to go. I'd still probably recommend them if Iron and Leather are the most you can afford or the best you can do. At 1 strip and 1 iron bar, a single Iron Dagger is relatively easy to craft.
If you have more Leather than Iron, you can make Leather armor as well. It's a very good armor to craft for selling for profit. It just takes more Leather, which the shopkeep might not have lying around this particular day. Usually after buying but before crafting, I'll come up with a plan as to how much Leather I'm going to make into strips, and what I can make from the resulting materials. Thus, at low levels at least, I'll make plenty of both Leather and Iron gear.
Different items crafted from the same materials have different values - the ratios are not constant. Thus, it pays to know how much it costs to make something versus how much you can sell it for. You will find that there are better and worse ways to invest your raw materials - some things (like almost all the Hide armor bits) cost more than they're worth!
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Does making leather increase Smithing?
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 improvement of armor and weapons requires one smithing material per item improved....Improvement.Smithing CategoryCrafting MaterialLeatherLeatherHideFurVampireDG36 more rowsWhat item increases Smithing the most in Skyrim?
while most people say that iron daggers and leather bracers are the best way to up your smithing, that was patched and now, i have found that making dwarven bows and armor are the best for experience (unless you can craft glass then glass bows are better but the materials are harder to find).Are iron daggers The best way to level Smithing?
If you're further along in the game, completing a certain quest will add another 15% bonus to your Smithing XP gain. Making iron daggers and leather bracers is still good way of leveling up in early stages. It's quite useful when your level is low.What is the fastest way to improve Smithing in Skyrim?
While the easiest way to do this used to be by smithing iron daggers, a patch removed this glitch and changed Smithing leveling to scale with item worth rather than item quantity. This means that the fastest way to level up your Smithing attribute is by crafting gold rings.Blacksmithing - Iron smelting and forging a poor bloom
More answers regarding why use iron for smithing rather than leather/ hide?
Answer 2
You can craft 1 iron dagger for 1 leather strip and one iron bar. Then smelt the dagger back to one iron. So yes after visiting some mines and kill some bandits wearing iron equipment all you do is gather leather, but for strips only. I am pretty sure smelting back is possible in vanilla skyrim but i played vanilla for a very short time.
However, i installed a mod that extends smelting back a lot.
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