Completing Prerequisite Criteria
Gather as much money as you can. Crafting mass amounts of items is an expensive endeavor; in practice, your total cost will end up totaling close to 10,000 gold. To offset this intimidating figure: Complete early-game story quests and side quests. Not only do these have cash rewards, but they also afford the opportunity to pick up sellable items. Spend as little money as possible. You shouldn't have to buy anything during the early stages of the game; enemies will provide the bulk of your weaponry and armor options. Pick up every moderately valuable item you can carry. This includes extra weapons, armor, gems, and so on. If you get close to reaching your maximum carry weight, you can always fast travel back to town to get rid of your surplus items. Sell anything you don't absolutely need. You can do this at any General Store, or you can sell style-specific items at relevant stores (for example, weapons and armor at armory shops).
Kill every dragon you see. As your character levels up, dragons will become harder to fight; in order to make gathering dragon bones and scales--the crafting components of Dragon armor--less of a challenge, kill as many dragons as you need to as early as possible in the game while the dragons are still at a lower level. To craft Dragon armor (including a shield), you'll need a total of 12 dragon scales and 6 dragon bones; this figure goes up if you decide you want to make weapons or scaled armor as well. Dragons drop 1 to 3 of both scales and bones when they die. Since one of the early story missions entails killing a dragon, do the first few story quests. Dragons tend to appear as you wander through the world, so refrain from fast-traveling to distant objectives. Provoke every dragon you see. Use sporadic ranged attacks to weaken dragons; attacking them head-on early in the game will get you killed.
Refrain from spending perk points. While perk points will obviously help you in combat, your primary objective is to level up your Smithing as quickly as possible. To that end, you'll want to spend what precious perk points you have on the Smithing tree alone until you obtain the Dragon Smithing perk.
Save your game often. You're bound to die a few times as you progress; having multiple saves you can load will make trying to complete the prerequisites here far less frustrating. You can also set the game's difficulty to "Novice" in the "Gameplay" tab of the Settings menu to make it easier.
Leveling Smithing up to 100
Learn about quickly leveling up Smithing. To level up your Smithing attribute quickly, you will need to craft multiple items. The cheapest (and quickest) way to do this is by crafting iron daggers; each dagger requires the following components: One iron ingot One leather strip
Travel to Whiterun. If you haven't done this due to the story yet, do so now. Whiterun has several distinct advantages over the other early-game establishments: It has an easily-accessible smithing and crafting station. You can purchase a home right next to the smithing area for 5000 gold. Whiterun is relatively safe from dragon attacks (especially early in the game). Your smithing station is part of an armor and weapons store that stocks new iron and leather every 48 in-game hours. You can purchase a pickaxe and use it to gather iron ore from deposits scattered around Whiterun's outer wall.
Gather resources for a power-leveling session. Depending on your character's starting Smithing level, you will have to craft between 500 and 550 daggers. This means you'll need to purchase as much iron and leather as possible: Assuming you exclusively purchase iron ingots and leather, the wholesale value of the resources needed to craft 550 daggers comes out to about 9,763 gold. You can lower this number by purchasing/smelting ore as often as possible and mining when ore veins replenish. Economically-speaking, it's better to purchase leather in its whole form, not strips. You can use the tanning station next to the smithing station to convert leather into large quantities of strips. When buying iron, purchase both ingots and ore; you can smelt one iron ore (using the smelting station right next to the smithing station) to create an iron ingot. The bulk of the iron and leather you purchase will probably come from the store next to the smithing station; however, Belethor's General Store occasionally stocks iron and leather. To get stores to refresh their inventory, you'll need to wait (or sleep) for 48 hours in-game. To do this, press your designated "Wait" button and move the slider to "24 hours", allow the timer to count down, and then repeat the process again. There are iron ore deposits all around Whiterun's outer walls; taking a pickaxe to these will afford you some ore that you can smelt. Keep in mind that iron ore veins only replenish themselves once every 30 in-game days. If you encountered the Embershard Mine when emerging from Skyrim's opening act (it's a ways to your right as you leave the cave), you can fast travel there to mine ore and pick up leather. Doing so will also kill some in-game time, meaning stores will refresh sooner.
Walk over to the smithing station. This is to your immediate left when standing a few feet from the Whiterun gate; when fast-traveling to Whiterun, you need only walk a few paces forward and then take a right.
Tap your action button. Make sure you're standing in front of the smithing station when you do this; you should see an option entitled "[Action Button] Use Blacksmith Forge". The action on Xbox 360, for example, is A. If you bought leather, you'll want to use the tanning rack to create leather strips before using the forge; this is located to the left of the forge, closest to the street.
Select "Iron".
Select "Iron Dagger".
Tap your action button. This will craft one iron dagger; repeat this step for as many iron ingots as you have in your inventory. After you've depleted your iron supply, you'll need to wait for 48 in-game hours to resupply from shops in the area. You can sell your crafted iron daggers to the owner of the store next to the smithing area.
Repeat the smithing process. You'll need to do this until you reach Smithing level 100; keep in mind that this may take several hours of real-life time. As your Smithing level increases, your overall level will gradually increase--thereby earning you a perk point for every level gained. Do not spend these points until you reach Smithing level 100, since you'll likely need all of them to reach the Dragon Smithing perk.
Unlocking the Dragon Smithing Perk
Make sure you've reached Smithing level 100. To do this, open your Character Menu and select the "Skills" section, then navigate to the "Smithing" perk tree. This tree should say "Smithing 100".
Unlock the "Steel Smithing" perk. Press your action button while Steel Smithing is selected to do so. To reach Dragon Smithing, you will need to have 5 or 6 perk points available, the first of which goes to Steel Smithing. If you go up the left side of the perk tree (which covers light armor and weapons rather than heaver armor and weapons), you will only need 5 perk points.
Unlock the next perk. On the left side of the perk tree, this is "Elven Smithing"; on the right, "Dwarven Smithing". While being able to craft the heavier armors on the right might cater to your playing style, the "Advanced Armors" perk on the left will allow you to make heavier versions of any armor.
Unlock any following perks. These include: Orcish, Ebony, and Daedric Smithing (right side of the tree) Advanced Armors and Glass Smithing (left side of the tree)
Unlock the "Dragon Armor" perk. Once you do so, you will be able to craft the basic Dragon Armor.
Creating Dragon Armor
Access the forge in Whiterun. You'll need to press your action button while facing it.
Select the "Dragon" tab.
Select "Dragonplate Armor". This is the default style of Dragon armor, though you can scroll through the "-bone" armor to get to the lighter "-plate" armor if you like.
Press your action button. This will craft a set of Dragon armor for your character's torso.
Craft the rest of the Dragon set. Doing so includes crafting the Dragonplate (or Dragonbone) Boots, Gauntlets, Helmet, and Shield (optional), all of which are beneath the Dragonplate Armor entry. If you're crafting Dragonplate armor, you'll need to have iron ingots in addition to the other prerequisites.
Exit the forge.
Open your Character Menu. Now that you've created Dragon armor, it's time to equip it!
Select "Items". This is the option to the right.
Select "Apparel".
Select a piece of Dragon armor.
Tap the action button. This will equip your selected piece of armor. You have successfully created and equipped Dragon armor! Feel free to repeat this process for the rest of the armor pieces.
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