How can I smooth a sculpt like a normal person?

Support Materials and Textures
1

I’m in sculpt mode. All I want to do is simply smooth a little region of the mesh. For some reason this is highly impossible with the “smooth” tool. I don’t want to add, I don’t want to subtract, I just want to smooth, that’s it.

For some reason, only the add/subtract draw tool applies smoothing, but when I switch to the smooth tool, it does literally nothing. How can I make the smooth tool do what everyone expects it to do?

2

Turn up the strength, and look up some basic sculpting tutorials

3

I turned up the strength to 10, I made sure there’s no textures active on it, my stroke and falloff is normal.

4

Apply the scale of the object in object mode, check the face orientations, and clear all face sets and masks