I remember my first 10 hours in Enshrouded: I’d built a cozy little cabin at the edge of the Revelwood, had a full chest of iron ingots, and was ready to upgrade my base from a rickety wooden shack to something that felt like an actual home. The only problem? I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to make glass for windows. I ran around mining every shiny rock I saw, killed multiple shroud creatures, and even checked every merchant in my base before I realized I’d skipped a key unlock step. If you’re stuck figuring out how to get glass in Enshrouded, you’re not alone—most new players miss the key prerequisites you need to unlock the recipe first. This guide walks you through every step, no fluff, so you can get the glass you need for building, crafting stations, and decorative items fast.
What You Need Before You Can Craft Glass in Enshrouded
You can’t craft glass right when you start the game, no matter how many resources you collect. There are two core prerequisites you have to hit first, and if you skip either, the recipe won’t show up in your crafting menu at all. First, you need to rescue the Blacksmith from his vault in the first starting area. I know a lot of players rush to explore the shroud before rescuing all the early NPCs, but the Blacksmith is the only one who unlocks the smelter recipe, which you need to make glass.
Second, you need to unlock the Smelter crafting station by turning in the required materials to the Blacksmith once he’s settled in your base. The smelter requires 20 stone, 5 copper ingots, and 10 wood logs to craft once you unlock the recipe, so make sure you have those materials saved up before you rescue the Blacksmith. I forgot to collect copper ingots on my first playthrough, so I had to run back to the starting mines for 20 minutes right after I rescued him, which was a huge waste of time. The smelter isn’t just for ore—you’ll use it for all heated crafting, including glass, metal ingots, and even some advanced building materials. You don’t need any advanced NPCs like the Alchemist to make basic glass, that’s a common myth a lot of new players fall for.
Step-by-Step Process to Get Glass in Enshrouded
Once you have the smelter set up, making glass is straightforward, but it’s easy to mix up the required materials if you’re used to other survival games. Follow these steps every time to avoid wasted resources:
- First, collect at least 2 units of Sand per piece of glass you want to make. Sand spawns along river banks, lake shores, and the desert biome in the southern part of the map—look for light tan, loose ground that you can pick up with your pickaxe, not solid sandstone blocks.
- Next, gather 1 unit of Wood Logs or 2 units of Twigs per smelter run to use as fuel. I prefer logs, since they last longer and let you smelt 8-10 pieces of glass before you need to refuel, which cuts down on overall resource use.
- Interact with your smelter, select the glass recipe from the menu, and add the required materials to the input slots. Each piece of glass takes 30 seconds to smelt, so you can work on other base tasks like tending to crops or upgrading your tools while you wait.
- Once the smelting process is done, collect your finished glass from the output slot, and store it in a chest inside your sealed base to keep it safe from shroud damage if your base is near a shroud zone.
That’s really all there is to the core crafting process, but if you want to make large batches of glass fast, there are a few tweaks you can make to cut down on farming time. For example, if you unlock the Advanced Smelter upgrade later in the game, you can cut smelting time for glass in half, and you’ll get 2 pieces of glass for every 2 sand units instead of 1. That upgrade is a game-changer if you’re building a large base with lots of windows, or if you’re crafting multiple alchemy stations for your base and other players on your server.
Fastest Ways to Farm Required Materials for Glass
The biggest bottleneck for most players when making glass is finding enough sand, especially if you’re still in the early game and haven’t unlocked the desert biome yet. I’ve spent hours testing different farming routes, and these are the spots that give you the most sand per minute, with the lowest risk of running into hostile mobs. First, the river that runs through the western edge of the Revelwood has miles of sandy banks that are completely safe, no shroud creatures and very few hostile wolves. You can get 50+ units of sand in 10 minutes here without any risk, which is perfect for new players who don’t have high-tier gear yet.
If you have a glider unlocked, head to the small lake just north of the first Blacksmith vault—its entire shoreline is sand, and you can farm 100+ units in 15 minutes if you don’t get distracted by nearby iron ore veins. If you have a pickaxe with the resource gathering bonus enchantment, you’ll get 2-3 times more sand per hit, which cuts farming time in half. I enchanted my iron pickaxe with this bonus early on, and it’s saved me hours of farming time for every resource, not just sand.
For players who have access to the desert biome, the entire northern edge of the desert has unlimited sand, and you can farm hundreds of units in half an hour if you bring a high-tier pickaxe. Just watch out for the sandworms that spawn in the deeper parts of the desert—they hit hard, and they’ll knock you off your mount if you’re not paying attention. Don’t waste your time looking for sand in mountain areas or shroud zones, it doesn’t spawn there at all, and you’ll just end up wasting durability on your pickaxe for nothing. You can also occasionally find glass as loot in chests in abandoned villages and vaults, but it’s rare, and you’ll never find enough to cover a large building project, so crafting it is always the better option.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Making Glass
I’ve made all of these mistakes myself, so I can tell you exactly what to skip to save time and resources. First, don’t try to use sandstone to make glass— a lot of new players mix up sand and sandstone, but sandstone is a separate building material, and it won’t work in the smelter for glass. You need loose, collectible sand, not the solid sandstone blocks you find in desert cliffs. Second, don’t smelt glass one piece at a time. The smelter uses the same amount of fuel for a full load as it does for a single piece, so you’ll waste a ton of wood if you only smelt 1 or 2 pieces at once. Wait until you have at least 20 units of sand saved up, then smelt it all in one run to cut down on fuel use.
Third, don’t store glass in chests that are left outside in the shroud. If your base is partially covered by the shroud, any glass left in unprotected chests will slowly degrade over time, and you’ll end up losing half your stock before you even use it. Keep all your glass in chests inside your sealed base, or in chests that are placed outside of shroud zones. Fourth, don’t forget that you can also make stained glass once you unlock the Carpenter NPC, but you still need regular glass as a base material for that. A lot of players skip making basic glass because they want stained glass for their base, but you can’t make stained glass without the regular version first.
If you’re playing on a multiplayer server, don’t leave your smelter running with glass inside when you log off. Some servers have PvP enabled, and other players can steal your finished glass if you’re not around to guard it. If you’re playing on a public server, always collect all your crafted items before you log out, or lock your smelter if your server has that feature enabled.
At the end of the day, figuring out how to get glass in Enshrouded is way simpler than most new players make it out to be, as long as you remember to unlock the smelter first and farm sand from the right spots. Once you have a steady supply of glass, you can upgrade your base with windows that let in natural light, craft the alchemy stations you need to make high-tier potions, and even build decorative items to make your base feel unique. If you’re still struggling to find sand, try sticking to the Revelwood river banks first before you head out to the desert—they’re safe, easy to access, and you’ll have more than enough sand for your first few batches of glass in no time. I’ve used this method to make over 500 pieces of glass for my own base, and it never fails to save me time compared to running around looking for rare loot chests.