Smithing, alchemy, and enchantments
Each of the three main class types in Skyrim are attuned to a specialty craft: Mages are proficient at enchanting items, thieves at using alchemy to create potions and poisons, and warriors at blacksmithing to create superior weapons and armor.
The trick is to store up large batches of crafting items and then do them all at once. Mainly because the items required can be a bit of a burden on your limited inventory space, and doing small orders every time you come to town is more trouble than it’s worth. You’ll also want to seek out and use any bonuses available to you to increase the experience you gain from these activities.
For blacksmithing, you’ll want to find and hang on to leather scraps and any ore or ingots you find. You don’t even have to make anything that you want, you can just upgrade equipment, build new items, or prep leather and metals to gain experience. As you rank up your blacksmithing skill you’ll be able to unlock the ability to create better items, such as glass or eventually even the almighty dragon armor. This is the true value in the blacksmithing skill, as these types of armors don’t typically appear until you’re a much higher character level. Gaining access to them as soon as possible will give you a massive advantage in battle.
For alchemy, you’ll want to grab any and every ingredient you come across in the world. Whether it’s hanging moss, random flowers, or even butterflies, do not discriminate. Alchemy ingredients tend to weigh less than other items so you can carry more of them, but they do add up. Again, it’s best to store them all away until you’re ready to cash in a huge order. Alchemy is a little less straightforward than blacksmithing though. You’ll need to mix eligible ingredients together to create a potion. Each ingredient has four unknown values. You can learn the first one by consuming one of that ingredient, but you’ll have to learn the rest by trial and error or purchasing recipes from alchemy shop owners. Potions weigh more than their individual ingredients, so make sure you store away or better yet sell off any that you don’t need. You can always make more later. I found that invisibility potions and Damage Magicka Regen poisons bring in the most cash.
Finally, the mage’s specialty: enchanting. Enchanting is the art of adding special attributes to armor and weapons. To do this, you’ll need to learn an enchantment by experimenting on an enchanted item with the bonus you want. Let’s say you want to create a helmet that boosts your health regeneration, so you’d need to find a glove or ring that has health regeneration on it. Then you disenchant it, destroying the item in the process, and now you can enchant any valid item with health regen. You’ll also need soul gems, which are sold or found all over the world, but the trainers at the College of Winterhold are the best source. Buying empty soul gems is cheaper, but you’ll have to go out in the world and use Soul Trap to kill enemies and fill the gems. So now you have an enchantment, an item, and a soul gem. The size of the soul gem determines the power of the enchantment, but until you’re level 100, just use crappy items and the smallest soul gems. You’ll need roughly 300 enchanted items to max out the skill (I lost count, sorry), but you’ll make a decent amount of money selling everything off as you go.
Once you’ve reached level 100, that’s when the fun starts. In the Enchanting skill tree, you can unlock the Master ability to put two enchantments on a single item. You can also upgrade your Enchanting skill to dramatically increase the power of enchantments. Whether you want to drain health, increase your magicka pool, or even just have a pair of clothes that allow you to carry 100 extra pounds of loot while also giving you bonus stamina, you can now make some seriously powerful and useful items. Not to mention, anything you double-enchant will sell for considerably more than normal. Obviously, the sooner you achieve this the better, so be sure to stockpile those cheap items and soul gems whenever you get the chance.
Make sure you have activated the corresponding standing stone before doing a large batch of crafting. If you have potions or special items such as rings and amulets that increase your craft skills, make sure you have those equipped as well.