Crafting plays an important role in The Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim. You find many Armor and Weapons in the game are generated randomly, so the best way to acquire good equipment is to create it yourself. Whether you’re making basic iron armor or more advanced armor that’s made from dragon bones, you’ll likely need leather and leather strips.
Acquiring leather in Skyrim isn’t that difficult, and a lot of Blacksmith in-game sells some. But if you want to improve your Smithing skill or you can make a whole new set of armor, you might need more leather than you can buy. However, you can make leather and leather strips by hunting animals and using tanning racks.
Types of Animal Hides
To make leather in Skyrim, In the first step, you have to hunt down animals and collect their hides. Not every animal or enemy will drop a hide or pelt when it’s defeated. But regular animals like goats, deer, and bears will.
Below are the Animals that will drop hides in-game
- Foxes
- Goats
- Deer
- Snow Foxes
- Wolves
- Ice Wolves
- Vale Deer
- Cows
- Bears
- Horses
- Cave Bears
- Snow Bears
- Sabre Cats
- Snow Sabre Cats
- Vale Sabre Cats
Players can also buy these items from general stores, and sometimes giants also drop random hides. Hunting parties also sell these hides to players who are interested in buying. It’s crucial to remember that netches are not included in the list for special reasons. Netches were added to Skyrim in the Dragon Ball DLC. After defeating them, they’ll drop netch leather.
How to use Tanning Racks
To turn these animal hides into leather, you need to use the tanning rack. Tanning racks are the most common crafting station in Skyrim. These stations are mostly found near Blacksmith shops. Such as, in Whitrun, there’s a tanning station located just around the side of Warmaiden’s Smithy.
The players can turn the hides into leather by choosing them from the crafting menu. The hides that a player has in his inventory will show up on the list, and each hide will yield a different amount of leather. Usually, the bigger the animal, the more leather its hide will produce. It can be up to a maximum of four pieces. However, the players can use the tanning stations to turn leather into leather strips. One piece of leather can produce four leather strips.
Producing leather can be a simple way to get easy money. Pelts from rare and dangerous animals, such as cave bear pelts and snow bear pelts are more expensive when sold directly. However, a cowhide is worth 10 gold when sold directly. And the 3 pieces of leather it produces also go for 10 gold. Additionally, the leather strips are worth 3 gold each, so converting lather into a strip increases the total value by 2 gold.
The only thing to keep in mind is, that the leather weighs more than the pelts used to make it. So, it’s suggested not to craft leather out in the fields, especially when your inventory is close to full. Making leather doesn’t affect anything in-game, but it’s an easy way to make some money.
