Do I need to ascend the perk trees in order?

Do I need to take each child perk along the perk tree in addition to meeting the skill requirements for perks?

For instance, the smithing perk tree is split into two sections: The left, which features light armor (Elven, Glass) and the right, which features the Heavier armor (Orcish, Ebony).

The Capstone Perk in the tree, Dragon Smithing, has "feed-in" lines from both Glass Smithing and Daedric Smithing.

Do I need to need to take Glass Smithing and Daedric Smithing if I want to learn the Dragon Smithing perk? Either or? Neither (as long as I have 100 smithing)?

Solution 1:

In the case of your example, it's either/or.

You need to move up the perk trees in order, but you don't need to clear every branch.

You also don't need to max multi-rank perks to move past them. One point is sufficient to move on.