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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition

How to Find Building Materials

By
Seren Morgan-Roberts

One of the main aspects of the Hearthfire DLC is building homesteads from scratch. It’s a super fun process and allows you to customize the layout of your home, the furnishings and decorations. However, alongside this new mechanic in the game, a bunch of new materials are introduced and you’ll need lots of them to build fully decked out homesteads. Getting wood, therefore, can feel like a bit of a grind if you don’t know where to find the required materials.

The Lumbermill can supply you with sawn logs, which is a core building material.

How to Get Building Materials from your Personal Steward

To have access to a personal steward, you’ll first need to build a Small House on the plot of land. Then, when you bring a follower (a housecarl can also become a steward) onto the homestead building site, they’ll either automatically ask to be your steward, or you can ask them directly. When they’re your steward they’ll remain at the lot and walk around “overseeing” the homestead.

Having a steward makes life a bit easier, we think!

Having a steward is super important for several reasons: they can help you furnish your house later on, add extra improvements to the homestead and buy building materials for you. The latter aspect is important because it’s one of the easiest ways to grab quarried stone, sawn logs and clay as you can just buy them from your Steward and they’ll appear automatically in the chest next to the carpenter’s bench outside. Below are the steward’s prices:

Materials Cost (Gold)
20 Sawn Logs 200
20 Quarried Stone 100
20 Clay 20

For more information, head over to our guide on the Personal Steward.

How to Get Iron Ingots to Forge Hinges, Nails, Locks and Iron Fittings

To build the actual homestead as well as craft furniture and decor inside, you’ll need a ton of iron! Pretty much everything you need to craft needs nails, iron fittings, hinges and/or locks, so you’re going to be draining all the blacksmiths of their iron ingot supplies. Luckily, iron ingots are relatively cheap and you can also find iron ore veins pretty commonly, in fact you can find two ore veins nearby your plot of land, which you can mine every few days. You can then smelt iron ore into ingots at a smelter, one of which can be found near the Blacksmith’s in Whiterun, or you can build your own on your plot of land. We highly recommend building the smelter very early on, as it’s useful for keeping on top of your iron supply.

(1 of 2) You should prioritise building your own personal smelter

You should prioritise building your own personal smelter (left), so you can mine ore and make ingots yourself! (right)

Even though this is a vital material in the building and furnishing of your home, the Personal Steward does not have any option to buy iron from so unfortunately, it’s down to you to collect stacks upon stack of iron. Below you’ll find the list of iron materials required and their crafting cost.

Item Materials required
Iron Ingot 1 x Iron Ore
Iron Fittings 1 x Iron Ingot
Hinges (2) 1 x Iron Ingot
Lock 1 x Iron Ingot, 1 x Corundum Ingot
Nails (10) 1 x Iron Ingot

(1 of 2) You’re going to need a whole heap of iron ingots

You’re going to need a whole heap of iron ingots (left), to make iron materials for your homestead. (right)

How to Get Quarried Stone

Quarried Stone can be mined infinitely from a minable source nearby your plot of land. All you’ll need is a pickaxe and then you can sit back for a few minutes and let your character afk mine quarried stone. Be prepared to over encumber yourself like hell if you do it this way though as quarried stone weigh a lot and will be deposited into your personal inventory. You’ll need to make the slow, slow walk back to the chest near the carpenter’s table and get rid of it so you can move around again.

You could mine your own stone or buy some from your steward.

Alternatively, if you have money to spare and no time to waste, buy 20 quarried stone for 200 gold from your Steward. There’s no limit to how much you can buy and it’s sent to the chest near your carpenter’s bench, so you can just take as much as you need rather than carry hundreds of rocks in your pocket.

How to Get Sawn Logs

Sawn Logs are best obtained from your Steward. It is by far the easiest and fastest way to get the material. You need a lot of sawn logs too, so choosing the fastest option is definitely beneficial. Alternatively, you can also purchase 20 logs for 200 gold from lumber mill workers across Skyrim. Again though, if you can buy the same amount of logs for the same amount of gold from a Steward, why wouldn’t you?

If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you could cut your own logs. Cutting wood at a chopping block produces firewood which isn’t the same thing. So you’ll need to head over to a lumber mill. There are two separate steps to cutting logs, which makes afk farming logs impossible. You first need to head to the side with the logs and lift them onto the machine. Then you head over to the otherside and turn on the machine. You then have to wait until the log has fully passed through the saw machine before you can load another log. Definitely a tedious task and probably not worth your time when you can buy 20 for 200 gold.

(1 of 2) You can buy logs from a lumbermill or from your steward

You can buy logs from a lumbermill or from your steward (left), or if you’d prefer, you could chop your own wood (not fun though!). (right)

How to Get Clay

Clay is another resource that is a stable of building your homestead. Again, you can buy these from your Steward, and they’re fairly cheap too at only 20 gold for 20 pieces of clay! This is likely to be your main source of clay as it’s quick and easy to obtain, however clay deposits can be found across Skyrim, including one nearby your plot of land.

Clay deposits aren’t infinite, but they might as well be. It takes hours to deplete them and you won’t ever need enough clay to warrant depleting an ore, so you can just mine it for a few minutes and call it a day if you want to save a bit of gold.

There are clay deposits near the homestead that you could mine if you’d prefer not to spend money.

Other Important Materials

Although not core materials, you’ll want a fair amount of the materials below too if you want to actually furnish your house. These items are bought easily and cheaply from general good stores and occasionally found in chests in dungeons.

  • Glass
  • Straw
  • Goat Horns
  • Leather and leather strips

Other materials will be required for specific decorations, this is especially the case for the north wing trophy room which requires specific animal parts to display trophies, but they won’t be needed as frequently as the materials listed above. Straw is used for beds, goat horns for sconces and other lights, and glass is used for display cases. For a more detailed run down of furnishings and their material requirements, head over to our guides on specific rooms to see lists of furnitures available and their cost.

(1 of 3) Lucky for you, most general goods merchants supply Homestead materials, like goat horns.

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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Bethesda Softworks
  • Platforms,
    PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, XB 360, XB One
  • Genre
    Action RPG
  • Guide Release
    11 November 2021
  • Last Updated
    7 November 2021
    Version History
  • Guide Author
    Greg Wright

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Skyrim is the homeland of the Nords, a fierce and proud warrior people who are well suited for the bitter cold and mountainous terrain which defines the land. Now scarred by civil war, Skyrim faces its darkest days with the return of the legendary dragons and their leader, the World-Eater Alduin. The future of Skyrim and even the lands beyond hangs in the balance, as the people await the prophesized Dragonborn, a hero born with the power of The Voice and the only one who can contend with the dragons. You are that Dragonborn; your task is to investigate why the dragons are returning, and discover a way to defeat them. At the same time, you’re free to explore Skyrim at your own pace, uncovering its many wonders along the way.

Version 1.2

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