Skyrim - Crafting Materials

Crafting materials are everything a smith, an enchanter or an alchemist consumes in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Forty-six of them are catalogued here, from Iron Ore at 2 gold to Dragon Bone at 500.

Almost all of it feeds one of two chains. The metal chain runs ore to ingot to gear: mine a vein with a pickaxe, smelt at a smelter, forge at a forge, then improve what you made at a grindstone or a workbench. The leather chain runs in parallel and starts with a dead animal: hides tan into Leather at a tanning rack, and each piece cuts into four Leather Strips, which nearly every recipe at a forge asks for.

Everything else is gathered rather than made. Dragon parts, chitin and hearts come off whatever was carrying them, and the Hearthfire building stock is quarried from deposits that never run out.

Two things catch people out. Smelting and tanning grant no Smithing experience at all, so hours at a smelter raise nothing: only forging and tempering do. And a material in your pack is not a material you can use, because the Smithing tree gates what each metal can become. Ore is minable at level 1 whatever your skill.

Groups

Ores

Ore is the start of the metal chain. It is mined from veins with a pickaxe in your inventory, three pieces per vein at one piece per three swings, and each piece carries a ten per cent chance of a gem alongside it. A depleted vein respawns with the rest of its location.

Two ores make one ingot at a smelter, with three exceptions worth knowing. Iron Ore is one for one. Steel takes one corundum and one iron together rather than two of anything. Stalhrim is mined like ore and never smelted at all.

Nothing gates the mining. An ore vein gives up the same three pieces at level 1 as it does at level 50, so a low level character can stockpile Ebony Ore long before the perk that turns it into armour is affordable. The two Creation ores are the odd ones out: Amber grows in hollowed stumps and Madness Ore cannot be mined anywhere.

Name	Image	Weight	Value	Source	Item ID	Add-on
Iron Ore		1	2	Iron Ore Veins	00071CF3	Skyrim
Corundum Ore		1	20	Corundum Ore Veins	0005ACDB	Skyrim
Orichalcum Ore		1	20	Orichalcum Ore Veins	0005ACDD	Skyrim
Silver Ore		1	25	Silver Ore Veins	0005ACDF	Skyrim
Quicksilver Ore		1	25	Quicksilver Ore Veins	0005ACE2	Skyrim
Moonstone Ore		1	30	Moonstone Ore Veins	0005ACE0	Skyrim
Malachite Ore		1	30	Malachite Ore Veins	0005ACE1	Skyrim
Gold Ore		1	50	Gold Ore Veins	0005ACDE	Skyrim
Ebony Ore		1	60	Ebony Ore Veins	0005ACDC	Skyrim
Amber		1	75	Hollowed Stumps, Khajiit Caravans	xx000BC6	Creation Club
Madness Ore		1	110	Boss chests, Khajiit Caravans	xx000BC9	Creation Club

Ingots

An ingot is what a smelter turns ore into, and what a forge turns into armour and weapons. Thirteen of them exist, from Iron at 7 gold to Ebony at 150.

Which ones you can use is decided by the Smithing tree rather than by the metal. Smelting itself needs no perk and grants no experience, so an ingot in your pack is not the same as an ingot you can forge with.

Ingots are also the tempering currency. Improving a weapon at a grindstone or armour at a workbench costs one ingot of the item's own metal per improvement, so a smith needs a running stock rather than a one off batch. Dwarven Metal is the exception to the whole chain: no Dwarven ore exists, and the ingots come from scrap salvaged out of Dwemer ruins.

Name	Image	Weight	Value	Source	Item ID	Add-on
Iron Ingot		1	7	1x Iron Ore	0005ACE4	Skyrim
Steel Ingot		1	20	1x Corundum Ore + 1x Iron Ore	0005ACE5	Skyrim
Dwarven Metal Ingot		1	30	Dwemer Scrap Metal	000DB8A2	Skyrim
Corundum Ingot		1	40	2x Corundum Ore	0005AD93	Skyrim
Orichalcum Ingot		1	45	2x Orichalcum Ore	0005AD99	Skyrim
Silver Ingot		1	50	2x Silver Ore	0005ACE3	Skyrim
Quicksilver Ingot		1	60	2x Quicksilver Ore	0005ADA0	Skyrim
Refined Moonstone		1	75	2x Moonstone Ore	0005AD9F	Skyrim
Gold Ingot		1	100	2x Gold Ore	0005AD9E	Skyrim
Refined Malachite		1	100	2x Malachite Ore	0005ADA1	Skyrim
Ebony Ingot		1	150	2x Ebony Ore	0005AD9D	Skyrim
Amber Ingot		1	150	2x Amber	xx000BC7	Creation Club
Madness Ingot		1	150	2x Madness Ore	xx000BC8	Creation Club

Leather

Leather runs a chain of its own, parallel to the metal one and starting with a dead animal rather than a vein. Hides and pelts tan into Leather at a tanning rack, one for one, and each piece of Leather cuts into four Leather Strips.

Strips are the binding in nearly every recipe at a forge, which makes them the most used material in the game and the one people run out of first. Every blacksmith carries 12 to 33, so buying is usually faster than hunting.

Leather is one of the few materials used to both build and improve gear: it forges light armour and it also tempers fur, hide, leather and shrouded sets at a workbench. Goat Hide is the single exception to the tanning ratio, needing two hides for one Leather, and Netch Leather skips tanning altogether and goes straight onto the forge.

Name	Image	Weight	Value	Source	Item ID	Add-on
Leather Strips		0.1	3	1x Leather at a Tanning Rack	000800E4	Skyrim
Goat Hide		1	5	Goats	0003AD8E	Skyrim
Leather		2	10	Hides at a Tanning Rack	000DB5D2	Skyrim
Deer Hide		2	10	Deer and Elk	0003AD90	Skyrim
Netch Leather		2	10	Betty and Bull Netch	xx01CD7C	Dragonborn
Bear Pelt		3	50	Bears	0003AD52	Skyrim
Cave Bear Pelt		3	60	Cave Bears	0003AD53	Skyrim
Snow Bear Pelt		3	75	Snow Bears	0003AD54	Skyrim

Wood

Most of this group arrived with Hearthfire and is consumed at a drafting table and carpenter's workbench rather than at a forge. None of it raises Smithing.

Clay and Quarried Stone behave nothing like an ore vein: the deposits never run out and give four samples per three swings instead of one, so a single deposit beside a building plot will supply an entire house. Sawn Logs never enter your inventory at all, which is why you cannot drop or sell them.

Firewood is the exception and the reason this group matters to a fighter. It is in the base game, chopped at a woodcutting block, and once Dawnguard is installed one piece with a metal ingot makes 24 arrows or 10 bolts. Before that, arrows could not be crafted at all.

Name	Image	Weight	Value	Source	Item ID	Add-on
Sawn Log	File:Skyrim Sawn Log.webp	0	0	Wood Mills	xx00300E	Hearthfire
Straw	File:Skyrim Straw.webp	1	1	General goods merchants	xx005A68	Hearthfire
Clay		1	1	Clay Deposits	xx003043	Hearthfire
Quarried Stone		1	2	Stone Quarries	xx00306C	Hearthfire
Glass	File:Skyrim Glass.webp	1	5	General goods merchants	xx005A69	Hearthfire
Firewood		5	5	Woodcutting Blocks	0006F993	Skyrim

Creature Materials

These are the materials with no vein and no recipe. You get them by killing the thing that carries them, so supply is a question of where you hunt rather than how high your Smithing is.

Dragon Bone and Dragon Scales are the top of the tree and gate the strongest craftable gear in the base game, which ties your armour progress to the main quest whether you wanted that or not. Daedra Heart does the same for Daedric equipment and is scarcer still.

The rest are narrow. Chaurus Chitin improves Falmer gear and nothing else. Chitin Plate and Heart Stone only matter on Solstheim. Carry what your recipes need and leave the rest: most of it is heavy for what it sells for.

Name	Image	Weight	Value	Source	Item ID	Add-on
Chitin Plate		1	5	Ash Hoppers	xx02B04E	Dragonborn
Ectoplasm		0.1	25	Ghosts	0003AD63	Skyrim
Chaurus Chitin		4	50	Chaurus	0003AD57	Skyrim
Heart Stone		1	100	Heart Stone Deposits	xx017749	Dragonborn
Dragon Scales		10	250	Slain dragons	0003ADA3	Skyrim
Daedra Heart		0.5	250	Dremora, fixed locations	0003AD9B	Skyrim
Dragon Bone		15	500	Slain dragons	0003ADA4	Skyrim

Stalhrim

Stalhrim gets a group to itself because it does not fit any of the others. It is mined like ore but never smelted. It needs an Ancient Nordic Pickaxe and takes six swings per sample where a vein takes three. It exists only on Solstheim, in nineteen deposits.

It is also the only material in the game that changes what an enchantment does. Frost damage and resist frost are 25 per cent stronger on Stalhrim, and Chaos Damage picks the bonus up too because one of its three elements is frost. Nothing else gives a material bonus to enchanting at all.

Two gates stand in front of it: the Ebony Smithing perk at 80 Smithing, and the quest A New Source of Stalhrim. Tempering works from the perk alone.

Name	Image	Weight	Value	Source	Item ID	Add-on
Stalhrim		1	200	Stalhrim Deposits	xx02B06B	Dragonborn

Crafting Materials