Conan Exiles Thick Leather (Enhanced 2026): Farm Thick Hide and Boost Your Yield

Conan Exiles Thick Leather is made in the Tannery: 1x Thick Hide, Rhino Hide, Elephant Hide or Bear Pelt gives you 1x Thick Leather plus 1x Tar. You can't make it from regular Leather or ordinary animal hides, and that is exactly where most new players get stuck.

This guide is fully checked against the Enhanced state after patch 2.1.0 from August 18, 2026. The recipe, the station and the yield are unchanged, but several side details and build costs from older guides are not. What changed is listed further down in its own table.

⚒️ The Thick Leather recipe

You make it in the Tannery, not at the Tanner's Table. The Tannery is the station that burns fuel: it uses Bark to process hides. The Tanner's Table next to it works without fuel and handles the refined materials.

Ingredient	Amount	Result	Time
Thick Hide	1x	1x Thick Leather and 1x Tar	20 seconds
Rhino Hide	1x	same result	20 seconds
Elephant Hide	1x	same result	20 seconds
Bear Pelt	1x	same result	20 seconds

Important: you don't have to convert the three animal-specific hides first. They go straight into the Tannery. Weight per unit is 0.25 and the stack size is 500 according to the Enhanced item database. Every run also drops Tar, the raw material you later need for any steel.

🩸 The dragon head trick: 5x from a single item

Not every hide gives you just one piece. Trophy heads of large creatures yield a multiple in the Tannery:

Item	Yield	Time
Red Dragon Head	5x plus Tar	20 seconds
Green Dragon Head	5x plus Tar	20 seconds
Rhino King Head	2x plus Tar	20 seconds
White, Black or Grey Rhino Head	2x plus Tar	20 seconds
Elk King Head	2x plus Tar	20 seconds
Mammoth Head	2x plus Tar	20 seconds

The most common misconception: a slain dragon doesn't drop finished material. You get the head, and it has to go into the Tannery, otherwise nothing happens.

🔄 What changed since 2023

Detail	Old state	Enhanced 2026
Station	"Tanner's Table"	Tannery (the Tanner's Table is a different station)
Recipe	1x Thick Hide into 1x product and 1x Tar	unchanged, plus directly from Rhino Hide, Elephant Hide and Bear Pelt
Station build cost	240x Sandstone, 160x Wood, 50x Bark, 25x Twine	200x Stone, 100x Wood, 50x Bark
Knowledge	level 10, 3 knowledge points	level 10, 2 knowledge points, requires Stone Tools
Fuel	not mentioned	Bark, 20 seconds burn time per unit
Stack size	not mentioned	500

The Tannery holds 20 slots. If you want to produce larger amounts, build two stations side by side rather than one with a permanently full inventory.

🗺️ Which animals drop the right hides and where to find them

Animal	Difficulty	Location	Yield
Rhino (grey)	easy	northwestern desert, Shattered Springs	good
Rhino (white)	medium	northern desert	good
Rhino (black)	hard	northern regions	very good
Elephant	medium	savanna, northwestern desert	very good
Bear	medium	northern forest, tundra	good
Mammoth	hard	snow biome, tundra	very good
Gorilla	medium	jungle	low

The locations are community information from player guides, not officially published spawn lists. For rhinos, elephants, bears, mammoths and gorillas, several independent guides agree. Gorillas give a much worse yield than the other big game.

📦 The detour via the Tanner's Table

Two recipes at the Tanner's Table make you less dependent on hunting luck, and hardly anyone knows them:

• 2x Rhino Hide, Elephant Hide or Bear Pelt give you 3x Thick Hide in 5 seconds. That is a real gain: two hides become three.
• 4x Hide plus 1x Twine give you 1x Thick Hide in 10 seconds. A terrible rate, but it works without a single large animal.

In practice: convert rhino and elephant hides at the Tanner's Table first instead of throwing them straight into the Tannery. Two hides become three, and those give you three units instead of two. That is 50 percent more out of the same hunt.

📊 What it really costs

An honest calculation for 40 units, enough for 20x Hardened Leather, roughly one epic armor piece:

Route	You need	Extra
Directly from hides	40x Thick Hide	40 Bark as fuel
Via the Tanner's Table	about 27 rhino or elephant hides	40 Bark, 27 conversions
Via dragon heads	8 red or green dragon heads	8 dragon fights

On the side you get 40x Tar. That is not waste but the basis for Steelfire and therefore for every Steel Bar. Factor the Tar in when you decide whether a farming run is worth it.

⚠️ The most common mistakes

• Wrong station. If you look for the recipe at the Tanner's Table, you won't find it. It is in the Tannery.
• No fuel. Without Bark in the fuel slot, the Tannery stands still even with hides inside.
• Burning hides directly. Convert rhino and elephant hides at the Tanner's Table first, otherwise you give away a third of the yield.
• Selling or mounting trophy heads. A Red Dragon Head on the wall looks nice, but in the Tannery it is worth five units.
• Throwing away Tar. The Tar from every run is the basis for Steelfire. Delete it and you'll farm it twice later.
• Skinning with a sword. Without a skinning knife you get meat instead of hide.

💡 More yield per animal

Skinning knife instead of a weapon. Harvesting corpses with a skinning knife gives you fur and hide, while a sword mostly gets you meat. That higher-tier knives give more material is a widespread community claim we couldn't confirm from an official source.

A Tanner in the Tannery. The Tannery takes a Tanner thrall and works faster with one. A Taskmaster belongs on the Wheel of Pain and does nothing here.

Better tanneries. According to its data sheet, the Precision Tannery works with +360 percent crafting speed but burns a lot more fuel. The Plant-Based Tannery goes the opposite way and extends burn time by 400 percent.

🎯 What you need it for

The Enhanced database lists more than 67 items that require this material: medium and heavy armor, bows, swords, daggers, saddles, repair and modification kits, plus several armorer's benches. The biggest single consumer is the next step in the chain, though: Hardened Leather needs 2 units per piece.

🔗 The chain at a glance

1. Fur or hide → Leather (Tannery)
2. Thick Hide → Conan Exiles Thick Leather and Tar (Tannery) ← you are here
3. 5x Leather, 2x the step-2 product, 1x Alchemical Base, 5x Oil → Hardened Leather (Tanner's Table)

The Oil from step 3 is the real bottleneck of the whole chain. Which heavy armor is worth the material for a melee setup is covered in our Strength build guide.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions about Conan Exiles Thick Leather

What is it made from?
From 1x Thick Hide, Rhino Hide, Elephant Hide or Bear Pelt in the Tannery. Each run gives 1 unit plus 1x Tar and takes 20 seconds.

Why can't I make it from regular Leather?
Because the recipe only accepts thick hides and the hides of large animals. Regular Leather is a dead end here. It goes into Hardened Leather as an ingredient instead.

Does the recipe still apply in Conan Exiles Enhanced?
Yes. Station, ingredient and yield are unchanged after the switch to Unreal Engine 5 and after patch 2.1.0. Only the Tannery's build cost and the knowledge cost changed.

Where do I farm hides fastest?
Beginners hunt grey rhinos in the northwestern desert and elephants in the savanna, advanced players go for mammoths in the snow biome. If you take down dragons, a single head gives you 5 units.

What's the difference from Hardened Leather?
The thick variant is the precursor made from hides. Hardened Leather is made at the Tanner's Table and uses it as an ingredient.

How much do I need for an armor set?
A five-piece epic set needs around 45 to 100 Hardened Leather, so 90 to 200 units of the thick variant, plus whatever the armor pieces themselves require.

Bottom line

Thick Leather in Conan Exiles is no rocket science once two things are in place: the right station and the detour via the Tanner's Table. Start with grey rhinos in the northwestern desert, convert their hides at the table and keep the Tannery running on Bark. Then you'll never run short again. 🗡️

As of: checked on August 28, 2026 against the Enhanced item database (data version Conan Exiles 2.0.0, July 2026), established community databases (there is no official Conan Exiles wiki) and the notes for patch 2.1.0 from August 18, 2026. Animal locations and the yield per skinning knife are community information and marked as such in the text.