When I first booted up Palworld, I spent my first 10 hours running around catching Pals, building a tiny base, and making do with flimsy cloth armor that broke if I so much as looked at a high-level Foxparks. It wasn’t until I tried to build my first large storage chest that I realized I had no idea how to get the leather required for the recipe. If you’re in the same boat, you’re not alone. Mastering how to make leather in Palworld is one of the most important early-game skills you can pick up, and it will make every part of your playthrough far smoother.
Step-by-Step: How to Make Leather in Palworld
Making leather is far simpler than most new players realize, once you have the right structures unlocked. First, you’ll need to reach level 6, which is when you unlock the tanning rack recipe from the technology tab. Building a tanning rack only requires 20 wood, 10 fiber, and 5 stone, all resources you can collect from the starting spawn area in just a few minutes. Once the rack is built, you only need two hides to craft one piece of leather.
You can craft leather manually by interacting with the tanning rack, but that’s a huge waste of time if you have Pals available to help. Assign a Pal with handiwork skill to your base, and they will automatically process any hides you store in nearby chests into leather while you’re off exploring or farming other resources. Just make sure you don’t toss hides when you’re first starting out— I made that mistake my first playthrough, and I had to spend an hour re-farming hides when I finally unlocked the tanning rack.
Best Spots to Farm Hides for Leather Production
You can’t make leather without hides, so knowing where to farm large amounts of hides fast will cut down your production time significantly. The best spots depend on what level you are, but there are solid options for every stage of the game.
For early-game players still stuck with low-level gear, stick to the starting grassy biome near the Plateau of Beginnings. Lamballs and Cattivas spawn in huge packs here, and each one drops 1 to 2 hides when defeated. They only have a few hundred HP, so you can take out a whole pack in under a minute with a basic club or low-level fire Pal.
Once you hit level 15 and have a decent mount, head to the northeastern desert biome. Arsoxes and Eikthyrdeers spawn in large groups here, and each drops 3 to 5 hides per kill. If you bring a strong Pal with AoE attacks, you can farm 50+ hides in 10 minutes flat. Just avoid hunting any Pals marked as endangered, as that will lower your Pal points and lock you out of some late-game rewards.
Top Tips to Speed Up Leather Production
If you’re building a large base or crafting a full set of gear for your whole party, you’ll need hundreds of pieces of leather, and waiting for one tanning rack to process all your hides can get tedious fast. These small tweaks will help you get all the leather you need in a fraction of the time:
I used to only have one tanning rack for my first 20 hours of play, and I’d regularly have a backlog of 300 hides waiting to be processed. Once I added 3 more racks and assigned a level 3 handiwork Anubis to run them, that backlog was gone in 12 minutes. It’s a tiny change that makes a massive difference.
Most Useful Items You Can Craft With Leather
Leather is one of the most versatile resources in the game, and you’ll use it from the early game all the way to endgame builds. If you’re wondering if it’s worth spending time farming extra hides, these are the most valuable items you can make with your finished leather:
Leather armor sets are the first big upgrade you can get over basic cloth armor. They give twice as much defense, and they also provide a small amount of cold resistance, which lets you explore the lower snow biomes long before you can craft metal or fur armor. The full set only costs 40 leather to make, so it’s a very affordable upgrade for new players.
Leather is also required for large storage chests, which hold 3 times as many items as basic wooden chests. If you’re tired of having 20 small chests scattered across your base, you’ll need dozens of pieces of leather to upgrade your storage system. You’ll also use leather for most mid-game saddle recipes, including the Chillet saddle that lets you glide across the map to cut travel time in half. Even late-game, you’ll need leather for high-tier weapon grips and base defense structures, so it’s always a good idea to keep a stock of 50 to 100 pieces on hand.
If you take nothing else away from this guide, remember that leather is a core resource that you’ll rely on for almost every part of your Palworld playthrough. Taking 10 minutes early on to set up a dedicated tanning area and find a good hide farming spot will save you hours of frustration later when you need leather for important upgrades. Once you master how to make leather in Palworld, you’ll be able to expand your base, take on higher level bosses, and explore far corners of the map far faster than players who skip this simple step. If you have your own go-to hide farming spot, drop it in the comments below to help other players out!