If you’ve spent hours running around Enshrouded trying to craft better building pieces or upgrade your workbench, you’ve probably hit a wall when you realize you don’t have enough clay. We’ve all been there: you’re ready to build that perfect cliffside base, or craft that new cooking pot to make stat-boosting meals, and the game hits you with a “missing lumps of clay” notification. That’s why we put together this guide breaking down exactly how to get lumps of clay in Enshrouded, no guesswork or wasted runs required. We tested every spawn spot and farming method over 20 hours of gameplay to pull only the most reliable, time-efficient tips for new and experienced players alike.
Top Reliable Spawn Locations for Lumps of Clay in Enshrouded
Clay spawns follow a very predictable pattern, so you won’t have to search random areas to find it if you know what to look for. It almost always spawns along the shorelines of freshwater sources, as soft, reddish-brown mounds half-buried in mud, and it never spawns in dry, mountainous or desert areas away from water. You don’t need any special tool to harvest clay early on—a basic stone pickaxe works just fine, though a copper or iron pick will make harvesting twice as fast, saving you time on longer runs.
The best early-game spot is the small, shallow pond 200 meters west of the first starting Flame Altar in the Springlands. There are no hostile enemies in this area, so you can farm 15 to 20 lumps of clay in 5 minutes without any risk, even at level 1. Once you hit level 5, head to the large lake south of the Blacksmith’s first spawn point in Revelwood, where you’ll find over 40 clay nodes spread across the entire shoreline. You will run into level 8 wolves and stray bandits here, so bring a basic sword and a stack of healing berries to avoid getting caught off guard. For late-game players, the oasis areas north of the Kindlewastes desert entrance have giant, high-yield clay deposits that drop 3 to 4 lumps per node, though you will need heat resistance gear to stay in the area for more than 10 minutes without taking damage.
Fast Farming Methods to Stockpile Lumps of Clay Quickly
Once you know where to find clay, you can use these small hacks to cut your farming time in half, so you can get back to building or progressing through the main story. The biggest trick is to stop harvesting single nodes and leaving, which wastes time on slow respawns. Instead, clear every clay node along an entire shoreline first, then fast travel to a completely separate Flame Altar at least 500 meters away, wait 10 minutes, then fast travel back. All nodes will have fully respawned when you return, so you can repeat the run as many times as you need to fill your inventory.
If you’ve unlocked the Farmer NPC from the early-game rescue quest, you can get passive clay rewards without even leaving your base. Turn in excess dandelions, berries, and wheat to her when she puts up crop requests, and she will give you 2 to 5 lumps of clay as a bonus reward every time, alongside farming seeds. For co-op players, split up along opposite sides of a lake or river to harvest nodes at the same time, so you can collect 3x as much clay in the same amount of time as you would playing solo.
- Clear entire shorelines of clay nodes before leaving to trigger full respawns faster
- Keep a dedicated clay harvesting loadout with a high-durability pickaxe and 20 empty inventory slots
- Turn in excess common crops to the Farmer NPC for passive clay rewards every 15 minutes
We used this method to farm 150 lumps of clay in 30 minutes when we were upgrading our base to adobe, and it worked every single time without fail. Just make sure you don’t fill your inventory with extra stone or wood mid-run, or you’ll have to make an extra trip back to storage to empty your bags before you can finish harvesting.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Hunting for Clay
A lot of new players waste hours looking for clay in the wrong places, so we’re breaking down the most common mistakes to skip the frustration. First, don’t bother looking for clay in mountain areas or deep inside the Shroud—most early-game clay spawns are outside the Shroud, right out in the open along shorelines, so you don’t have to risk your corruption timer just to get basic building materials. Don’t waste your durability on clay nodes when you’re carrying a full inventory, you won’t get extra drops, and you’ll have to repair your pickaxe much sooner than you need to.
Another common mistake is mixing up clay nodes with regular dirt mounds. Dirt mounds are light brown, drop only dirt when you hit them, and spawn everywhere, while clay nodes have a distinct reddish tint and are only found near water. If you hit a node and only get dirt, you’re probably hitting the surrounding mud around the clay deposit, so adjust your crosshair to aim at the darker, redder part of the mound to get the clay drops. Clay drops are not affected by item luck buffs, so don’t waste luck potions or food buffs on clay farming runs, save those for rare ore runs or boss fights where you need rare drops.
What Can You Use Lumps of Clay For In-Game?
Clay is one of the most versatile early to mid-game materials in Enshrouded, so it’s worth farming a big stockpile early instead of only getting what you need for one craft at a time. The first use most players will run into is crafting core crafting stations: you need 10 lumps of clay to make a Cooking Pot, and 25 lumps to make a Smelter, both of which are required to progress past the first hour of gameplay. You also need 40 lumps of clay to upgrade your Flame Altar to level 3, so you can unlock more fast travel points and expand your base building range.
Clay is also the main material for adobe building pieces, which are 3x more durable than wood, completely fire-resistant, and perfect for building bases in the Kindlewastes where wildfires and fire enemies can burn wooden bases to the ground in seconds. You can also refine clay into ceramic tiles for high-tier building decorations, or craft clay pots to grow rare herbs and crops that need extra moisture to survive. Smelter and Cooking Pot upgrades later in the game also require extra clay, so you’ll never end up with more of it than you can use, even if you farm a few hundred lumps early on.
Next time you’re stuck trying to craft a new station or upgrade your base, you won’t have to wander aimlessly looking for resources now that you know how to get lumps of clay in Enshrouded. We recommend spending 10 minutes farming the Springlands pond spots as soon as you unlock the stone pickaxe, that way you’ll have a big enough stockpile to get you through the first 10 hours of gameplay without having to stop for more. If you have a favorite clay spot we didn’t mention, drop it in the comments below to help other players out.