If you’ve spent hours wandering Enshrouded’s early Springlands biome chasing deer and boar, only to have stacks of raw leather sit uselessly in your storage chests, you’re not alone. Most new players hit a wall when they want to upgrade from flimsy cloth rags to sturdier, damage-resistant gear, and the missing piece is almost always the tanning station. I spent three hours running in circles my first playthrough trying to figure out how to get tanning station Enshrouded, missing one tiny material requirement that held me back for ages. This guide breaks down every step, no vague wiki entries or outdated patch notes to sift through.
How to Get Tanning Station Enshrouded: Core Unlock Requirements
A lot of new players assume they need to grind skill points to unlock this station, but that’s not the case at all. You do not need to spend skill points to unlock the tanning station—it’s a craftable item available exclusively through the Carpenter NPC once you rescue them. Rescuing the Carpenter is the first non-negotiable step, as they are the only NPC that can craft this station for you. You can find the Carpenter trapped in a small ruin just north of the first Ancient Spire in the Springlands, guarded by a handful of low-level bandits that are easy to take down with a stone bow or club. Once you bring them back to your base, you’ll need to collect the following materials to craft the station:
- 10 x Wood Planks: crafted from 30 regular wood at any basic workbench, no extra upgrades needed
- 6 x Copper Bars: smelted from 18 copper ore at a Smelter, which you’ll unlock shortly after setting up your first base
- 4 x Linen: made from 12 flax fiber at a Spinning Wheel, also available as loot from abandoned farm chests across the Springlands
- 2 x Raw Animal Hide: dropped by deer, boar, or neutral wolves found roaming open fields and river banks
Once you have all four materials in your inventory, talk to the Carpenter, select the crafting menu, and the tanning station will appear as an available craft. It takes 60 in-game seconds to build, and you can place it anywhere in your claimed base area right after.
Where to Find All Required Materials Fast
You don’t have to wander for hours to collect all the materials for the tanning station, even if you’re a brand new player with no base upgrades yet. Wood planks are the easiest to get—just chop any medium or large pine or oak tree near your base, avoid small saplings since they only drop one wood each. The best flax farming spot is just west of the first Ancient Spire, where you’ll find a cluster of 15 to 20 flax plants that respawn every 10 in-game minutes. You can farm enough flax for 4 linen in less than 5 minutes if you run the loop a couple times. Copper ore is abundant in the small abandoned mine north of the starting survivor camp, with 20+ copper veins that have no high-level enemies guarding them except a few level 2 wolves. Raw hide is easiest to farm by hunting deer near the river east of the starter base—they run fast, but one clean hit from a stone bow will take them down before they can escape into the trees. Don’t waste time hunting Shroud creatures for hide, their corrupted hide won’t count for the basic tanning station recipe.
Optimal Placement for Your Tanning Station
Placement might seem trivial at first, but a bad spot can slow down your crafting workflows a lot later on. First, make sure you place it within your base’s claimed area, otherwise other players on public servers can destroy or steal it. Keep it within 10 tiles of your Carpenter and Spinning Wheel to cut down on travel time when you’re crafting large batches of leather for armor or building upgrades. I made the mistake of placing my first tanning station next to my Smelter, and it caught fire 10 minutes after I built it, so keep it at least 5 tiles away from open flames like campfires, Smelters, or torches mounted on nearby walls. If you’re playing multiplayer, place it in a shared, central area of your base so all teammates can use it without needing to build their own separate stations. You can move it any time for free using your construction hammer, so don’t stress if you pick a less-than-perfect spot on your first try.
What You Can Craft With Your Tanning Station
The tanning station is way more useful than just a way to turn raw hide into leather, and it unlocks some of the most helpful early-game upgrades you can get. The core function is processing 1 raw hide into 1 standard leather in 30 seconds, but you can use that leather for a ton of different recipes. Leather Armor sets that give 30% more damage resistance than cloth armor are the most common first craft, and they’ll let you explore lower-level Shroud areas without taking constant damage. You can also craft leather pouches that add 8 extra slots to your inventory, which is a game-changer for long exploration runs where you want to collect as much loot as possible. Other useful crafts include leather bindings for upgraded copper tools, saddles for your first mount, and even decorative leather rugs if you’re focused on building a custom base. Later on, when you rescue the Blacksmith NPC, you can upgrade your tanning station to process corrupted Shroud hide into reinforced leather for endgame armor sets that hold up against the toughest bosses.
Once you figure out how to get tanning station Enshrouded, you’ll notice a huge jump in your overall survival capabilities, from better combat defense to more inventory space for long trips outside your base. Don’t skip collecting flax early on, that’s the one material most new players forget to farm until they’re already ready to build the station. If you run into issues where the Carpenter isn’t showing the tanning station recipe, double check that you’ve completed their first small quest to build a basic workbench, sometimes the recipe unlocks only after you finish that request. You don’t need to grind for hours to get this station built, even completely new players can collect all required materials in under 20 minutes if they follow the farming spots we listed.