Forging: what determines an item's category?

[0Prime0]

No doubt I am missing the obvious, but what determines an item's category when crafting at the forge or tanning rack? I'm thinking of iron, steel, misc, and so on. I have custom items I want to group together, but some appear under another category.

[Jennifur68]

Typically what I do is use the same weapon type to create my forms...so if I use ebony for the greatsword I'll use ebony for the rest of the weapons...this keeps it simple. But in the recipe form you can change the smithing perk required to forge the item. So for example lets say I made an iron sword and a dwarven dagger and used the weapon appropriate forms when I made them but later decide I want both in the elven catagory in the forge because I made them about the same damage as elven weapons. I'd just load the weapon .esp into the creation kit as the active file, open the recipe and change the smithing perk to elven and save my modified .esp then do the same with the second one.

[Dudeman325]

Changing the perk required for the recipe doesn't change which crafting category it appears in. From what I can tell, the item's material keyword (Such as WeapMaterialSteel or ArmorMaterialEbony) determines both the crafting category, as well as the perk that is used for improved tempering. Edited December 4, 2012 by Dudeman325

[IsharaMeradin]

the keyword assigned determines what category recipes appear in.

 

Creation Kit wiki page about it and the various possible keywords

http://www.creationkit.com/Customizing_Crafting_Categories

[Jennifur68]

I stand corrected but I could have sworn thats how I changed it before when I was experimenting.

[0Prime0]

Many thanks everybody. That really helped me out!