If you’ve ever been one-shot by a random Shroud stalker while out gathering iron ore, you know how crucial decent defense is in Enshrouded. One of the first reliable defensive upgrades you can craft early game is padding, and learning how to make padding in Enshrouded will save you dozens of frustrating trips back to your home base to retrieve your lost gear. I’ve put over 120 hours into Enshrouded across early access and full release, so I’ve tested every method of crafting this essential item to find the fastest, most resource-efficient routes for new and returning players alike.
What You Need to Make Padding in Enshrouded: Core Crafting Requirements
You don’t need any advanced crafting stations or rare drops to make padding, which is part of what makes it such a great early-game upgrade. All you need is a basic level 1 workbench, which you unlock within the first 30 minutes of starting a new save, and three common materials you can find right in the starting meadow and forest regions. The full material list is below:
- 5 Plant Fiber: Gathered from tall grass, small bushes, and wild foliage across the starting meadows. You can collect 20+ pieces in 5 minutes just running through open grassy areas.
- 2 Cloth Scraps: Found in looted chests, dropped by low-level bandits, or crafted from excess plant fiber at a spinning wheel once you rescue the Weaver NPC.
- 1 Resin: Harvested from pine trees in the northern forest regions, or looted from abandoned camp storage boxes scattered across the starting map.
There’s no special recipe unlock required for padding, either. It shows up in your workbench menu as soon as you place the station, so you don’t have to spend skill points or complete quests to access it. I recommend gathering these materials on your first resource run after building your starter base, since you’ll be collecting wood and plant fiber anyway. Don’t waste gold buying padding from wandering traders – it costs 3 times more than the value of the raw materials if you craft it yourself.
Step-by-Step Process to Craft Your First Set of Padding
Crafting padding is straightforward, but there are a few small shortcuts that can save you time if you know them. First, make sure all your required materials are either in your personal inventory or stored in a chest connected to your workbench. Enshrouded’s shared storage system pulls resources from all linked chests automatically, so you won’t have to carry materials around with you if you keep them stored near your crafting area.
Next, interact with your workbench and scroll to the Armor Basics tab. Padding will be the first item listed in this section, so you won’t have to dig through multiple menus to find it. Select the recipe, and you’ll see a preview of the item and its stat bonuses pop up on the right side of your screen. Click craft, and the padding will be added to your inventory in less than a second.
If you’re playing co-op with friends, you can stack the recipe to make up to 10 pieces of padding at once, as long as you have enough materials for each set. I made the mistake of forgetting to check my connected storage on my first playthrough, so I spent 10 minutes gathering extra plant fiber I already had stored in a chest right next to my workbench. Double check your storage first to avoid wasting time on unnecessary farming runs.
Best Ways to Use Padding for Early and Mid-Game Survival
Basic padding gives you +8 physical defense and +2 Shroud resistance, which might not sound like a lot at first glance, but it’s a 60% defense boost over the basic cloth tunic you start the game with. That extra defense means you can take 2 extra hits from low-level bandits or Shroud creatures before you need to heal, which makes a huge difference when you’re exploring unmarked caves or gathering resources in low-level Shroud zones.
For early game players, padding should be your first armor upgrade before you craft any new weapons or building upgrades. You’ll be able to stay out exploring longer, and you won’t lose all your gathered resources every time you run into a random enemy patrol. It’s also light enough that it won’t slow down your stamina regeneration, so you can still run, climb, and swing your axe as fast as you could without armor.
For mid-game players, padding works as a great backup armor piece if your metal or leather armor breaks mid-exploration. It’s so cheap to craft that you can keep 2 or 3 spare pieces in your inventory for emergencies, without taking up too much weight space. The only downside to padding is that it has very low fire resistance, so you shouldn’t wear it if you’re exploring the volcanic biomes or fighting fire-based enemies like the Flame Warden.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Making Padding in Enshrouded
I’ve seen dozens of new players waste resources and time making padding the wrong way, so these tips will help you skip the frustration I went through on my first playthrough. The first and most common mistake is wasting all your early resin on padding before you craft your glider. The glider also requires 1 resin to craft, and it’s far more useful for fast travel and resource gathering than extra defense early on. If you only have 2 resin on hand, make the glider first – you’ll get more resin faster once you can fly to higher pine tree groves.
Second, don’t craft more than 2 pieces of padding before you unlock leather armor. Leather armor has twice the defense of padding, and you unlock it once you rescue the Hunter NPC, which usually happens within the first 5 hours of play. Any extra padding you craft after that will just take up storage space, unless you want to give it to new players joining your co-op world.
Third, don’t discard your old padding as soon as you get better armor. Once you unlock the Blacksmith NPC, you can add basic iron armor plating to padding to boost its defense to match basic leather armor, for half the material cost of making new leather armor. I kept my upgraded padding set for my first 20 hours of play, and it worked just as well as the leather armor I could have crafted, saving me dozens of cow hides I used instead to make backpack upgrades.
Padding is one of the most underrated early-game items in Enshrouded, and even veteran players often overlook how useful it is for both solo and co-op play. Taking a few minutes to learn how to make padding in Enshrouded will make your first few hours of exploration far less frustrating, and give you a reliable defensive backup you can use for the rest of your playthrough. Next time you’re out gathering plant fiber and resin, grab an extra set of materials to craft a spare padding piece – you’ll thank yourself the next time your main armor breaks mid-dungeon run.