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This wikiHow teaches you how to level up efficiently your Skyrim Smithing skill to 100. 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.


  1. 1
    Understand how this method works. Gold rings require only one resource—a gold ingot—and there is an entry-level spell that you can use to turn iron ore, which is the cheapest and most widely available ore, into gold ore. This makes gold rings the easiest, quickest, and cheapest item to craft in large batches while leveling efficiently.
    • By crafting numerous gold rings, your character's Smithing will level quickly.
    • You can sell the gold rings for significantly more than you spent on the iron ore to make them, meaning that you turn a profit.

    Gold rings are also better than iron daggers insofar as they don't require leather strips, and they won't weigh you down if you make 100 of them at once.

  2. 2
    Obtain the Transmute Mineral Ore spell. You can find the Transmute Mineral Ore spell tome on a table next to a bed in the Halted Stream Camp, which is northwest of the Whitewatch Tower (or roughly north of Whiterun).
    • To learn the Transmute Mineral Ore spell, simply find its book in the "Books" section of the inventory and select it.

    There is no level cap on Transmute Mineral Ore, so you'll be able to use it right away if you have the Magicka for it

  3. 3
    Make sure that you have enough Magicka. Most characters start out with 100 Magicka, while the cost of transmuting ore without any buffs or magic-altering equipment is 88 Magicka. This means that you'll be able to transmute, but only barely; if possible, find clothing that raises your Magicka (or reduces alteration spell costs), or select Magicka as the attribute to improve when leveling up.

    Completing missions for the College of Winterhold story arc will reward you with Magicka-boosting apparel and items. One way that you can bypass the Magicka issue is by "waiting" for an hour every time your Magicka is depleted. This will recharge fully your Magicka in a fraction of the time that literally waiting would consume.

  4. 4
    Travel to the Whiterun blacksmith. Whiterun is the first large city to which you travel. When you arrive at Whiterun, you'll spawn just inside of the city gates; the blacksmith's place is the first building on the right.
  5. 5
    Buy iron ore. There are a couple of places in Whiterun from which you can buy iron ore:
    • Warmaiden's - The shop into which the blacksmith shop is built. Speaking with Ulfberth War-Bear in the shop will allow you to purchase items.
    • Adrianne - Often found outside working the furnace, Adrianne holds different (albeit smaller) stock than Ulfberth.
    • Belethor's General Goods - Found to the right of the main staircase in the courtyard with the well. Belethor runs a general store that typically stocks a few pieces of ore.

    Once you've made enough of a profit from crafting gold rings, you'll be able to buy gold and silver ore from the Warmaiden's shop as well.

  6. 6
    Turn all of the iron ore into gold ore. Equip the Transmute Mineral Ore spell, use it once to turn a piece of iron ore into silver ore, and then use it once more to turn the silver ore into gold ore. Repeat until you have no more iron or silver ore.
    • As mentioned above, you may have to "wait" between transmutations before you can cast again.
  7. 7
    Craft gold ingots. Go over to the smelter behind Warmaiden's, select it, and select the Gold option until it becomes greyed out.

    Each gold ingot costs two gold ore, so you'll have half as many gold ingots as you had ore.

  8. 8
    Create gold rings. Once you have your gold ingots, all that's left to do is create the rings themselves. Open the forge, select JEWELRY, find the Gold ring option, and select it until it's greyed out.
    • Each gold ingot creates two gold rings.
  9. 9
    Sell your rings to Belethor. Once you've exhausted your gold ingots, you can sell the rings for a profit. Warmaiden's won't buy non-combatant apparel from you, but Belethor will.
    • If your rings' value exceeds Belethor's budget, buy some items (e.g., more ore) to balance out the cost.
  10. 10
    Wait for 48 in-game hours. This will allow the merchants' inventories and budgets to reset. From this point, you can repeat the whole cycle: buy as much iron (and silver, and gold) ore as possible, transmute everything to gold ore, smelt gold ingots, and use the ingots to craft rings.

    As you level up during this process, you'll have the opportunity both to spend skill points on perks and to improve hard attributes (e.g., Magicka, Stamina, and Health). Consider placing points in Magicka and Alteration to make your transmuting easier.


Community Q&A

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  • Question
    Is there any cheaty way of getting to level 100 on Xbox One?
    Phoenix Wheatley
    Phoenix Wheatley
    Community Answer
    One easy way to level any skill is to simply find a master level skill trainer, knock them down and pickpocket the gold back while they are getting up. It is impossible to get caught if you pickpocket like this, however it will not raise the pickpocket skill.
  • Question
    I have an incredibly high bounty in Dawnstar and can't enter the city without being attacked by everyone. Any good simple resolutions for PS3?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Just pay off your bounty or go to jail. Drawing then sheathing weapons in front of guards prompts them to arrest you.
  • Question
    How do I knock people down?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    You can do a power attack with a two-handed weapon or use your fists to punch them. You can use a paralysis enchantment as well.
  • Question
    Can this method work on an Xbox 360?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Yes, the only problem I found is that there seemed to be less iron than in the PC version.
  • Question
    What does reload mean?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Reloading means going back to your last save.
  • Question
    Does the Shop Respawn method work in Skyrim remastered?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    All locations (except safe locations) will respawn within 10 to 30 in-game days. It's part of the system.
  • Question
    What smithed weapon uses the most materials?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Daedric weapons in general probable use the most materials. At a normal forge, it costs an ebony ingot, one Daedra Heart, and leather strips. In the Atronach Forge, it costs one Sigil Stone, an ebony weapon of choice, a Daedra heart, a dwarven centurion core, and a black soul gem (empty or filled).
  • Question
    What is the simplest enchantment to add to the rings to increase that skill as well?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Fortify Magicka has the highest and can raise your speech skill, but if you enchant one with Fortify Alchemy and then use the restoration glitch to create extreme-level Fortify Smithing potions, you can then just craft an iron dagger and it becomes god-level, which raises your smithing skill a lot.
  • Question
    Can I use a very powerful potion to instantly just forge and get level 100 smithing?
    Community Answer
    Unfortunately, no, the closest thing to that would be using 100 books that raise your smithing level. And after clearing all dungeons in Skyrim I have only found 73 of those books.
  • Question
    What should I do if I killed most of the vendors for iron and now can't mine any?
    Community Answer
    I don't think there is anything you CAN do, unless you do the chest glitch in white run, because for some reason even if you killed the vendor their shop chest will still refill every 48 hours or so.
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      • You can mine iron ore from various mining camps (marked on the map by an image of a pickaxe) if you don't want to buy it. You'll need a pickaxe to do so.
      • In Riften, you can encounter down by the docks a character named "From-Deepest-Depths"; speaking to her at level 14 or up will result in her handing a lexicon to you. Following the quest to return the lexicon grants you a permanent 15 percent increase to the rate at which Smithing improves.
      • While Whiterun is the best place to level up Smithing in the beginning of the game, you can level up Smithing in any blacksmith's quarters.



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      About This Article

      Written by:
      Tech Specialist
      43 votes - 86%
      Co-authors: 19
      Updated: September 5, 2021
      Views: 569,833
      Article SummaryX

      1. Get the Transmute Mineral Ore spell from Halted Stream Camp.
      2. Buy iron ore.
      3. Transmute iron ore into gold ore with Transmute Mineral Ore.
      4. Create gold ingots at a smelter.
      5. Craft gold rings with the gold ingots.
      6. Sell the rings for a profit.
      7. Repeat this process until level 100.

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      Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 569,833 times.

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      • Anonymous


        Apr 9, 2016

        "Good to know that with newest patch, crafting daggers is not such a good idea like it was before. Reloading..." more
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