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.

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 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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.