The purpose of this guide is to get you to level 100 Smithing from the very start of the game. 0 starting gold, and no investment in any skill besides Smithing and whatever you use to get passed about 10-15 enemies. There are many guides out there, and while those are all good, the issue I have is that most of them rely entirely on the transmute mineral ore spell, or buying/selling/smithing items that cost just a few gold ad nauseam.

To cast that spell enough times in order to get enough gold ingots to get Smithing up to 100 requires a lot of Magicka, and a lot of waiting for Magicka Regeneration, especially if you try to do it early in your game. While the transmute mineral ore spell has its place in this guide, the spell is supplementary, not a requirement. This way, you can get to level 100 without standing around waiting for your Magicka to regen a million times over.

Going shop to shop, buying raw materials for X gold, smithing them, and then sell back for X+1 gold is also incredibly tedious, especially once shops start running out of material. That method also increases your Speech skill quite a bit, but again the amount of time you have to spend on that method to see full results is a bit silly, and definitely doesn't lend itself to a fun or entertaining time.

Additionally, some of us play with mods that remove/change transmute, or change the economics of the Speech skill, making significant progress in either method much more difficult. In those instances, those guides/methods are effectively useless; or at the very least, the process is even slower and more boring.

In fact, considering how much time you might spend on those efforts at an early level, the steps in this guide might even be faster in some cases, and especially in modded games that remove or change transmute, or change how the Speech skill works. This method relies entirely on gathering all the necessary material from just 3 locations, one of which is a dungeon, with 2 quests, that is easily accessible and beaten. So, without further ado, let's get into it.

Let me be clear: You are not here for the Transmute Mineral Ore spell. You are here for the iron ore. Halted Stream Camp has 52 iron ore if you mine out every rock and collect every piece sitting on the shelves, and it's only guarded by some easy bandits. You might as well collect the book in case you need to boost yourself up to Smithing level 30 later in the guide, but we're really here for the iron. You can also stop by other iron mines, but they don't have nearly as much iron as what's in Halted Stream Camp. The next highest that's still close by is Embershard just outside of Riverwood, which has ~24 iron ore.

Specifically, we are here to talk to Calcelmo. He'll rattle off something angrily at you when you first talk to him, but ask him enough questions and he'll give you a quest to kill a giant spider in Nchuand-zel, the Dwemer ruins just 20 feet away from him, in exchange for a key to his museum.

Don't loot too much yet, as we're gonna need a whole lot of carry weight for these next two steps. Go kill the big spider Calcelmo talked about, Nimhe. She can be difficult, but not much worse than the one in Bleakfalls Barrow. Once she's dead, Calcelmo’s quest will update, but don't leave yet. You should find a dead body wearing imperial armor in front of a door covered in cobwebs. Read the note on the body to start an additional quest which we are also about to clear, then cut the cobwebs and go through the door.

There are a couple falmer in the first room of the actual ruins that may be an issue. Kill or sneak past them, either is fine. When you first get to the giant bridge, just to your right should be a ledge. You can actually jump on to this ledge, but only if you are crouched/sneaking and spam the jump button while walking against it, as this seems to be an oversight by Bethesda (it just works). Walk down the sloped path to the door immediately on your right, The Control Room. Congratulations you are at the end of the dungeon.

You may have to kill or sneak past some extra falmer, but oftentimes you should be able to just run past them. The whole point of this dungeon is activating the Dwemer Animunculi to kill all the falmer, so get to the end of the Control Room and flip the big lever to complete the quest. The robots will kill the falmer, but they'll also attack you if they notice you, so keep your distance.

Start grabbing every last scrap of Dwemer junk that can be melted into Dwarven Metal Ingots. There's a lot, but you'll hopefully not get over-encumbered until you are about to leave the Ruins and go back to the Excavation Site, where all the dead spiders are.

Once you leave the Control Room, the dwarven robots should be fighting the falmer out in the rest of the ruins. If you sneak, none of them should notice, not even the big mean steam machine in the center. For extra safety while looting all the metal, you could help kill all the falmer and then pick off the weakened robots after, but it's really not necessary.

Go back out to the Excavation Site and grab all the scrap in here. There's also four iron ore veins to mine in here, so get those (there's pickaxes too in case you had to drop yours back in the ruins). This will certainly encumber you, if you aren't encumbered already, so you can make multiple trips to the smelter and forge instead if you prefer quicker travel. Either way, head back out to Calcelmo. He'll give you the key to his museum on the other side of the keep, plus some extra reward for telling him about the dead exploration team in the dungeon.

Now go over to the museum with the worst guards in all of Skyrim and rob every scrap of melt-able metal. They have some serious tunnel vision, so you can get away with a lot. When you're done with all that, go to the nearest smelter and melt all that metal down into ingots. There is enough metal in Nchuand-zel alone to make ~400 Dwarven Metal Ingots, but we're only looting the Control Room and the Excavation Site, so it's closer to around 200, plus however much you steal from the museum.

Get the Dwarven Smithing perk. If you aren't at Smithing level 30 yet, you should have enough extra gold and loot to buy some materials. Focus especially on buying up more iron. Forge whatever you can to get your Smithing to level 30. This is where Transmute Mineral Ore can give you a small burst of XP, as you likely also have a few of gems from mining to make into fancy jewelry, but really you should have enough basic materials to quickly get your Smithing just high enough to get the Dwarven smithing perk.

Turn all of your iron ingots and Dwemer Metal ingots into Dwemer Bows. They cost two Dwarven and one iron to make and have a base value of 270 gold. With all the iron from Halted Stream Camp, Nchaund-zel, and buying up a little from the blacksmith, plus most of the Dwarven metal from Nchuanzel and the museum, you will be able to craft enough bows to jump you all the way up to level 80 in Smithing. Guaranteed.

With that, you can now craft ebony, and that brings us to our last stop.

East of Kynesgrove, there's a mine filled with ebony. The only issue is that, normally, to get to this mine that's high on the side of the mountain range, you have to go through the Orc stronghold Narzulbur. But this is Skyrim, so just climb the nearby slopes to the right of the settlement until you're high enough to just walk over to the mines.

The orcs inside the mines will say the usual “you shouldn't be here,” but nothing really happens if you just walk through casually and mine up all the ebony. As far as I can tell, this is just the default dialogue for any stronghold orc if you aren't allowed inside the strongholds yet. The mines aren't considered a part of the stronghold for some reason though, so go nuts and mine up all the ebony you can.

There is a section that has some kind of gas, so don't walk around with a torch or cast any fire spells. The orcs are also facing the walls mining, so taking any ore on the shelves or carts without getting caught is easy. If you can't mine a spot because an orc is there, just equip your pickaxe and hit the veins manually. Just don't hit the orcs on accident while mining.

The forge outside isn't considered part of the stronghold either so take your time grabbing the ore and ingots around the place. You should have a total of at least 50 ebony ore once you've scoured the place. Ebony bows only require 3 ebony ingots to craft and nothing else, and they have a base value of 1440 gold. With that much ebony, you should be able to craft enough bows to bring you to Smithing level 100. Congratulations!

Thank you for reading. If you thought this was helpful, please share this guide with others. This is literally the first/only guide I've ever written, and I've only now finally gotten the courage and inspiration to post this after watching the Spiffing Brit do his charity Livestream on YouTube this year for Jingle Jam, and seeing him struggle.

On that subject, this also makes for a great way to make money in Skyrim, quickly buying iron from traders, forging dwarven bows, then selling those back to traders for a way higher margin than buying all the materials raw and selling them back. Getting ebony smithing is the most lucrative as ebony is the most readily available high-tier crafts.

All of this is doable from the very start of the game, so if you do this from the get-go, you've likely not collected any dragon scales or daedra hearts to make any of the highest tier weapons and armor anyway. If that's the case, you might as well make yourself some ebony equipment, as you only need 13 ingots to make a full suit (17 if you get a shield), plus a few more for whatever weapon(s) you like. The bow has the best resource-to-value ratio of all the ebony items, so you may not hit 100 if you make a full suit instead, but if you are at the beginning, you can always come back later to get what few levels are left in the Smithing skill.

This is literally the first thing I do in 99% of my playthroughs, since Smithing is unequivocally the easiest skill to level up at the very start of the game, or at least the easiest that doesn't have you just sitting there casting one spell for 3 hours while staring at a wall. You don't even need to spend money buying spell books or materials, as all of them are free if you mine them yourself which only takes a few minutes.

Obviously, there's plenty of mods out there that change a lot about the Smithing skill. Worse case is whichever one is used in the Constellations collection on Nexus, as it doesn't let you melt Dwemer stuff without making some weird powder which requires fire salts and gold. In most cases though, I've found that this method still holds up so long as you stick to the general principle of collecting and smithing iron stuff, a lot of dwarven bows, then ebony.

If you don't like stealing from the museum, you can always scour the rest of Nchuanzel that we skip and never touch, just be careful as I don't know how the dungeon changes after you flip that lever, beyond what happens in the Control Room and the ruin's entrance, so there could be more dangerous robots below.

Speaking of Nchuanzel; that skip with crouching and jumping on top of that ledge? Yeah, that's been there since the PS3. It even works with the unofficial patch mod, even with all the other stuff they've fixed. I've never seen anyone else post about it, even on the wiki's. If the unofficial patch folks know about it, I hope they never fix it. It's my favorite little personal discovery and I want it to stay there.

Drem Yol Lok, Dovahkiin. May The Wind Guide You.