6. I must be the only moron who thinks smithing fucking sucks. Everyone always goes on about how it's OP, but I just don't see it. You have to go out fight some looters or whatever, then you smelt their stuff, then you wait a bunch, then you make some two handed swords as those are the only ones that cost anything, and even then, they only sell for about 2k bucks. Who cares? In the time it takes to do all that you can flip some jewels and get a fat profit, or sack a town or a few armies and get like 50k in loot. Last time I played, I got smithing all the way to around 70, which was long and boring, and even then it barely was worth it, because I paid more in wages while waiting for stamina (even with the perk that cut the cost of waiting in towns) than what I got from smithing (and yes, I know about the orders, those usually suck too asking you to make shitty clubs and daggers for 500 big ones, and when the stars align just right, you maybe get 4-5k for a sword. Wow).
I hope they fixed this, but you get to the point where you can make and sell two handed swords that sell for easily over 90k (more than all the available gold in any town). And you don't even need more than like the 4th tier metal or so, not even the final 2 tiers of metals. A couple battles against lords will give you enough resources to craft like 5 or more swords (probably more if you are really minmaxing sword resources that take lower tier metals but still produce high damage swords). Not that you need to battle to get loot. You will make more than enough to just buy weapons, melt them down, and forge them into more valuable two handed swords.
You do need to get to like 100-125 smithing (I forget exactly how much) or so to get the perk to smelt the needed metals, but since exp gained seems to be a factor of how expensive the sword is, you will quickly level up to that just making the biggest and highest damage two handed swords you are able. Plus, on the way to the final goal your sword values will be rapidly rising. So long before you get to the 90k+ you will be making 10k, 30k, and 40k swords, which will already let you make a ton of cash really fast.
The most tedious part of that isn't even the smithing (using all your companions and family for the smithing helps deal with the smithing fatigue). Most of your time in the process is spent travelling around to 8-10 different towns to be able to sell the swords you made.
I really hope they have fixed this. I like the idea of making my own gear, but it really lowers the difficulty of the game when you can just crank out a couple swords and easily solve any money issues you might be having.
I haven't played in something like 3 or 4 months. In the version I played, they had tried to nerf smithing somewhat (halved the rate your skills increased from free smithing) but you still raised your smithing skill insanely fast just smithing the biggest and highest damage two handed sword you had the metals and blueprints for.
They really just need to fix their formula for weapon value to make it so two handed swords aren't so valuable. Currently, making a much higher quality one handed sword that uses the highest tier metals and is a masterwork with bonuses from legendary smithing will sell for only a fraction of what two-handed swords you can mass produce using lower tier metals sell for. Because the two handed sword has bigger numbers attached to it, so is much more valuable.