If you’ve spent even an hour running through Enshrouded’s misty valleys and overgrown forests, you’ve probably already run into a wall where you can’t build a better workbench, repair your favorite axe, or expand your base without a steady supply of wood planks. I spent my first three hours in the game hoarding raw wood and wondering why I couldn’t turn it into the planks I saw in every crafting recipe, until I stumbled through the steps I’m breaking down here. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to speed up your resource production, this guide walks you through every part of how to make wood planks in Enshrouded, plus hacks to cut down on farming time.
What You Need First to Make Wood Planks in Enshrouded
You can’t make wood planks with just raw wood and a basic campfire, even if you have 100 pieces of wood sitting in your inventory. That’s the mistake I made on my first playthrough, and I wasted two hours scrolling through every workbench menu looking for a plank recipe that didn’t exist. You’ll need to hit a few small milestones first before you can start producing planks consistently.
Before you can craft your first plank, make sure you have all of these prerequisites checked off:
- At least 10 pieces of raw wood collected from chopping trees or scavenging fallen branches around your base
- A fully placed basic workbench (unlocked automatically after you build your first campfire and place 3 wood walls for your starter shelter)
- Rescued Carpenter NPC from the first Forgotten Vault in the Springlands region, located a 10-minute walk south of your starting camp
- 20 stone, 10 raw wood, and 2 metal scraps to craft your first Sawmill, the only station that can turn raw wood into planks
Rescuing the Carpenter is the fastest hurdle to clear for most new players. The vault only has 4 low-level scavenger enemies, and you can take them out with a basic stone club if you dodge their swings. Once you free him, you just need to build a small 3x3 house with a bed, chest, and torch to get him to move into your base permanently. He’ll give you the Sawmill recipe for free as soon as he’s settled in.
Step-by-Step Process to Craft Wood Planks
Once you have your Sawmill placed down near your base, the actual crafting process is pretty straightforward, but there are a few hidden tricks to speed up production you might not notice on your first try. First, make sure you place the Sawmill on flat ground, not on a slope or second floor of a base, because it won’t work if it’s not properly level. I learned that the hard way when I built my first Sawmill on a raised platform and couldn’t get it to turn on for 20 minutes.
Interact with the Sawmill to pull up its menu, and you’ll see two slots: one for input, one for output. Put your raw wood in the input slot, and the Sawmill will automatically start converting it to planks. Each wood plank takes 2 pieces of raw wood to make, and the base production time is 5 seconds per plank. You can queue up as many planks as you want, as long as you have enough raw wood in the input slot, and you don’t have to stand around waiting for them to finish.
Assigning the Carpenter to work at your Sawmill cuts production time by 30% and gives you a 10% chance to get an extra plank per craft, so that’s the first thing you should do once you place the station. You don’t have to pay him or give him any extra supplies to work, just open the NPC menu, select assign, and pick the Sawmill from the list of available stations. I usually queue up 200 planks before I head into the Shroud to farm essence, so I have a full stack waiting for me when I get back to base.
If you haven’t rescued the Carpenter yet, you can sometimes find small stacks of 5-10 wood planks in chests at abandoned farmhouses or logging camps around the Springlands, but that’s not a reliable long-term source. Rescuing the Carpenter takes less than 20 minutes, so it’s always worth prioritizing if you’re planning to build any permanent structures.
Best Ways to Farm Raw Wood for Planks Fast
If you’re planning to build a large multi-story base or craft high-tier tools, you’ll need thousands of wood planks in Enshrouded, so setting up a dedicated farming route early will save you hours of grinding later. Not all trees are created equal, and some spots give you way more wood per minute of chopping than others.
Oak trees in the northern Springlands give twice as much raw wood as smaller pine or birch trees, making them the best source for plank production. A full-grown oak tree drops 8-12 pieces of raw wood per chop, compared to 3-5 from a pine tree, so if you can find a cluster of oaks near your base, that’s your go-to farming spot. Just watch out for the occasional wolf pack that spawns near oak groves, they’ll attack you mid-chop if you’re not paying attention.
Upgrading your axe to a copper axe as soon as you hit level 5 also cuts chopping time in half, so it’s worth spending the 15 copper bars and 5 wood to make one early. I used a stone axe for my first 10 hours of play, and switching to a copper axe cut my wood farming time by almost 60% immediately. If you find a logging camp point of interest, there are usually stacks of pre-cut wood lying around that you can pick up for free without chopping, so mark those on your map when you see them.
Try to avoid chopping trees inside the Shroud unless you have a bright torch or lantern equipped. The mist attracts wraiths that can sneak up on you while you’re mid-swing, and I lost a full stack of 100 raw wood once when a wraith ambushed me and I had to run away without looting the trees I’d just cut down. Stick to trees in the open, well-lit areas of the Springlands for the safest, fastest farming.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Making Wood Planks
Even after you unlock the Sawmill and get a steady supply of wood, there are a few common mistakes that can slow down your production or waste the planks you’ve already worked hard to make. I’ve made all of these at least once, so you don’t have to.
The improved Sawmill unlocks at level 15 and reduces raw wood consumption by 25%, saving you hours of farming time long-term. A lot of players stick with the basic Sawmill for their entire playthrough, but the improved version only costs 50 stone, 30 wood, and 10 iron bars to make, and it pays for itself in less than an hour of production. If you’re making more than 100 planks a week, it’s 100% worth the upgrade.
Don’t store all your planks in a single chest far away from your build sites. I keep a stack of 50 planks in my inventory at all times, and a small chest with 200 planks next to every build area on my base, so I don’t have to run back and forth to the Sawmill every 5 minutes when I’m mid-build. It’s a small change, but it cuts down on wasted travel time a lot.
Never use wood planks as fuel for furnaces or campfires -- raw wood is 3x more abundant and works exactly the same. I see a lot of new players throw planks into their furnaces when they run out of coal, but that’s a huge waste of resources. Keep a separate stack of raw wood or sticks next to your furnaces for fuel, and save your planks for building and crafting only.
One of the most frustrating errors new players make is waiting until they need 50 wood planks in Enshrouded for a new workbench to start building their first Sawmill. Get your Sawmill set up as soon as you rescue the Carpenter, even if you don’t need planks right away. That way you can queue up production while you’re doing other tasks, and you’ll have a stockpile ready when you need it.
Wood planks are one of the most used materials in the entire game, so figuring out a steady production system early will save you a ton of frustration as you expand your base and unlock higher tier gear. If you follow the steps we laid out, you won't have to scramble to find planks mid-build or miss out on crafting upgrades because you skipped unlocking the Sawmill. Even if you're only playing a few hours a week, setting up a dedicated wood farming route and a couple of Sawmills will give you all the stock you need to make wood planks in Enshrouded whenever you need them.