Conan Exiles Thick Hide Guide

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Emily Parker

Emily, or Zoe if you’re on her discord, is a Conan Exiles guide contributor and long-term fan. She’s been raiding bases since its release, mixing in some Rust, Archeage, Apex Legends, Hearthstone, Don’t Starve, and Horizon Zero Dawn. Video games have been a core aspect of her life since she was a child with an N64. When she needs a break, she’ll switch genres and start a new kind of adventure, though survival games have always been a favorite.

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There’s no argument that Conan Exiles is a difficult and often frustrating game. The enemies and environment are unforgiving. If you’re not getting pulverized by one, you’re getting smacked around by the other. Funcom offers little to no guidance on the matter, or any matter to be honest.

Worst of all, if you manage to play the game well and start to succeed, a glitch will snap your neck in the end. You must have a thick hide to enjoy this game, but what if I told you you’ll also need a Conan Exiles thick hide to enjoy this game?

Thick hide is an important progression resource. While you could technically go the entire game without farming the stuff, it would be a difficult journey. Thick hide will allow you to craft better armor, saddles, and beneficial items. Getting it is no easy task, but can be enjoyable if you go into the adventure well-informed.

TL:DR: The Thicker the Better

Thick hide drops from large beasts in the exiled lands like rhinos, elephants, gorillas, and bears. Try heading to the savannah in G7 and farming rhinos and elephants for thick hide.

You’ll need to use a skinning knife on their corpse to collect the hide. This area is great for farming loads of thick hide because there is a dense population of rhinos and elephants and they also drop pelts.

Pelts can be turned into more thick hide at the tanner’s bench. Thich hide and pelts are very heavy, you should consider bringing a thrall or animal companion to help carry these stacks back to your base for you.

After your mission is accomplished, add the thick hides to your tannery to start crafting thick leather. Thick leather is useful in crafting heavy armor, epic armor sets, and valuable saddles.

How to Farm Thick Hide: Skinning Knife

You must use a skinning hide on the corpse of an appropriate creature to harvest the most thick hide and pelts. The better your skinning knife, the more hide you’ll harvest from each corpse.

This is not so important in early game, where hide drops easily across the map, but when you are traveling long distances for animals that drop thick hide, it’s wise to craft the best tier skinning knife that you can.

You can also add a tool upgrade kit to harvest even more thick hide per corpse. These work similar to upgrading your tool, but require far fewer resources to accomplish.

They can be crafted at the tinker’s bench and serve as a boost to your current tool if you’re not ready to upgrade, or a way of maxing out a hardened steel skinning knife.

Where to Find Thick Hide

Thick hide can be found on large creatures that roam the Exiled Lands. Gorillas, rhinos, elephants, bears, and even frost giants can all be skinned for thick hide. While you can get thick hide from all of these creatures, if you intend to get the thickest hide possible, you should farm the creatures that also drop pelts.

Pelts can be converted to more thick hide and they drop from bears, rhinos, and elephants, making these the best creatures to grind lots of thick hide from.

The next criteria you’ll want to look at is resource density. The more of these animals grouped in one spot the better for farming thick hide. This makes the savannah biome around Swagger Rock in G7 the best place to farm thick hide. This area is swamped with rhinos and even has a pack of elephants to hunt.

You’ll want to be at least level 30 with heavy armor and a decent animal companion or thrall before you head into the savannah. Even if your follower isn’t super helpful in the combat department, thick hide is heavy and they’ve got inventory space.

Combat with Elephants and Rhinos

If these colossal beasts are giving you trouble, there are a couple of things you can do to prepare yourself for fighting in the savannah. The first issue you’ll want to address is how to deal with all the dang tigers, and the best way to do that is to use them to your advantage.

You’ll notice the savannah is bordered by a cave wall, and the tigers usually hang out in this area. Due to my hard-headed nature, I’m often in the savannah severely under-leveled and quickly learned that the only good thing about all these tigers is that they also hunt rhinos and elephants.

If you clear a spot on the wall for you and your crew, you can safely wait for a tiger to engage a rhino and then sweep in when the fight is almost over. It’s best to start with the rhinos, the elephants are much more difficult to take down, even with the help of a tiger.

The second consideration you’ll have when facing a rhino or elephant is the beast themselves. They have a high stun attack pattern and high armor. Seriously, every single one of their attacks is a knockback or stun.

Depending on your play style, you can either stack damage over time to help and dodge their slow attacks, or craft a lance or pike to stay out of range or even on horseback. It’s easiest to dodge their charge, so I always plan to pile on damage at the end of that particular attack.

There are plenty of baby rhinos and elephants in the area if you’d like to raise an animal companion version and create some true chaos in the savannah.

Loads of Thick Hide: The Midnight Grove

For more thick hide than you can carry, consider a run through the domain of Jhebbal Seg, or the midnight grove. You will need to either be max level with decent gear and a good thrall to take advantage of the treasures found in the midnight grove or have a collection of friends to accompany you.

The midnight grove is predominantly known as the only location to harvest shadespice, but if you don’t need this resource for raising greater animal companions, consider skinning the bosses and mobs for loads of thick leather.

The midnight grove is a location outside of the Exiled Lands, and you will need to be teleported there by a werehyena in E8. This priest of Jhebbal Seg will either sell you a potion to transport you to the dungeon or teach you to create one yourself.

The midnight potion does not last for very long in your inventory, so make sure you are ready to go when you purchase or craft one.

How to Make More Thick Hide: The Tanner’s Table

When you learn the tanner’s feat at level 10 it will come with two very important benches. Technically, you can get away with only crafting the tannery for a while, to produce leather from bark and your hides, but eventually, you will want to construct a tanner’s table. It will only require 100 wood and is a very helpful station for managing your leather operation.

The tanner’s table can convert gossamer into silk, vines into twine, and several regular hides into thick hide. Arguably its most valuable function is to turn pelts into hide.

You cannot process a pelt or skin at the tannery, it must be turned into either hide or thick hide first. The type of pelt will determine which type of hide it will be processed into at the tanner’s table, but if the animal you got it from was dropping thick hide, its pelt will turn into thick hide.

How to Use Your Thick Hide: Thick Leather

Thick hide is used to make thick leather at the tannery. You will need bark to fuel your tannery, but after that just add the thick hide and it will start crafting into thick leather.

This leather is used for a myriad of projects, but your first endeavor will likely be using it for heavy padding. Heavy padding is required to make heavy armor at the armorer’s bench, which will be your last armor set before you start searching out epic armor recipes.

Thick leather is also required for many epic armor sets, so don’t worry if you farmed way more than you needed for your heavy armor.

Thick leather is used for high-tier saddles as well, so make sure to carry some over to your saddle-making table if you have a mount.

Hide Your Kids, Hide Your Wives

So now that you know the drill, will you be venturing to the savannah to try your hand at slaying elephants and rhinos? If you can manage to keep the fights one on one, their attacks are not so difficult to dodge and a good thrall is a big help to draw off aggro. With an iron or steel skinning knife, your pack will be full of thick hide in no time.

You can choose instead to farm the bears in the highlands and frozen north, but I wouldn’t recommend messing with frost giants or gorillas. The pelts that bears, rhinos, and elephants drop are too much of a bonus to mess with other creatures.

Of course, you could always take on the huge challenge of running the midnight grove for more thick hide than you and your thrall can carry. When you’ve finished processing it all through the tannery, you can finally make yourself a whole new set of armor.

Thick Hide FAQs

Recommended Reads:

• Conan Exiles Resin Guide
• Conan Exiles Oil Guide
• Conan Exiles Hardened Brick Guide
• Conan Exiles Dry Wood Guide
• Conan Exiles Shadebloom Guide