Smithing perks are a trap and nobody realizes it

[TamrielTactician]

I've been doing a bunch of playthroughs lately and I keep falling into the same pattern where I dump like 8 perks into the Smithing tree before I hit level 30, and honestly? Total waste. You don't need half of them.

Like, Steel Smithing and Iron Smithing are basically mandatory if you want to craft early gear. Fine. But then everyone says you HAVE to grab the Elven and Dwarven perks, and I'm realizing that's only true if you're actually planning to craft a ton. Most of my characters just... find gear. Or buy it. By the time I'm level 40 I have better stuff than anything I could've crafted 20 levels ago anyway.

The real trap is thinking you need to unlock every material tier. You don't. Pick one or two that match your playstyle and call it done. My current character is a two-handed warrior and I literally only grabbed Steel Smithing and Daedric Smithing. Everything in between I just... skipped. Daedric stuff carries you to endgame easy, and yeah I had to buy some mid-tier gear off merchants but that's like 500 gold total. Not a problem.

What's actually broken is if you're doing an Alchemy loop build - then you WANT those perks because you're crafting 200 iron daggers anyway. But for a normal playthrough? Dump those points into Destruction or Block or literally anything else. You'll have more fun.

Anyone else feel like the "optimize your crafting" guides miss this?

 

[DragonbornVet]

They're not wrong about the trap, but the OP is kind of missing why people recommend those perks in the first place. It's not about having the "best" gear - it's about the perk-to-power ratio being absurdly good compared to combat trees.

Like, yeah, if you're just looting and buying, you don't need Smithing. But the math is brutal: you dump 5 perks into Smithing and suddenly every piece of gear you find is worth 50% more to sell, plus you can upgrade literally everything you pick up to legendary. That's not really about crafting 200 iron daggers - that's about not having to choose between your favorite sword and actually having money. One perk in the tree (the one that lets you improve gear) basically trivializes inventory management for the rest of the game.

Destruction and Block are fun, sure, but they don't scale as cleanly. Block caps out pretty fast. Destruction needs a ton of perks to feel good - you're looking at Impact or the frost stagger perk, augmented perks, maybe Regen, Stability... suddenly you've spent way more than 5 and you're still not as efficient as someone who grabbed the weapon upgrade perk.

The OP's Daedric-only approach is legit though. That's a valid speedrun to endgame. But I'd push back on the "it's a trap" framing - it's more that Smithing is so efficient it makes other trees look bad, which is a different problem.