Conan Exiles Building Materials Guide: All Recipes & Tiers

Conan Exiles building materials are a ladder, not a menu: you start with sandstone, graduate to reinforced stone, insulated wood and hardened brick, then end the game in black ice and stormglass — and every step requires a specific crafting chain that trips up new players. This guide covers the materials players actually search for — hardened brick, insulated wood, hardened steel, steel bars, and the leather tiers — with the exact recipes, the workstations that make them, and the harvest tricks that speed the whole thing up.

Here's what you'll learn:

• The full material ladder, from sandstone to tier-3 endgame builds
• How to make hardened brick (Brick + Stone Consolidant) and where the Consolidant comes from
• The insulated wood chain: bark → dried wood → resin → insulated wood
• Steel: iron bar + steelfire, and steelfire from tar and brimstone
• Hardened steel bars (steel bar + black ice) and why they gate the mid-game
• Leather tiers: hide → leather → thick leather → hardened leather
• The pickaxe vs hatchet question, settled once

The Building Material Ladder

Every building piece in Conan Exiles has a material tier, and the tier determines health, resistance to damage (purges, PvP raids, explosions) and what it takes to craft it:

The knowledge tree gates this: Apprentice Mason unlocks sandstone, Journeyman Mason unlocks insulated wood and the next masonry steps, Master Mason finishes the masonry chain. For the full metal chain that feeds weapon and armour crafting, our building materials companion on the interactive map points you to the iron and coal clusters you'll be hauling constantly.

Per the official Hardened Brick wiki page, hardened brick is described as "bricks, cut from sections of sandstone" that "provide more strength to structures and can be buttressed with iron and steel to create sturdy walls and strong defenses."

How to Make Hardened Brick

The recipe is deceptively simple — two ingredients, one station:

1. Make Brick — smelt stone in any Furnace-family station (Furnace, Improved Furnace, Charcoal Kiln, Heat-Efficient Furnace). Brick is the base masonry component.
2. Get Stone Consolidant — the binder. It's crafted at the Alchemist's Bench from stone-based components; it exists specifically to harden brick into the building material.
3. Combine — put 1 Brick + 1 Stone Consolidant in a Furnace-family station. The official wiki lists the Charcoal Kiln, Furnace, Improved Furnace, Heat-Efficient Furnace and Fuel-Efficient Furnace as valid stations.

Hardened Brick is a tier-2 building material with noticeably more health than sandstone, and it feeds the reinforced masonry recipes used in serious base walls. The crafting speed scales with the smelter thrall you place on the furnace, so a named T4 smelter thrall pays for itself on any big build.

Insulated Wood: The Community Favourite

Insulated wood is the material most mid-game players actually build with: it's cheap, it survives purges far better than sandstone, and the ingredients are everywhere. The chain has three steps:

1. Bark — harvest trees with a pickaxe (a pickaxe on a tree trunk gives bark and resin; a hatchet gives wood). You want a decent pile of bark and resin before starting.
2. Dried wood — put regular wood + bark in a Dryer (a drying rack you build from 20 shaped wood + 10 twine, fuelled by bark). Wood and bark in, dried wood out.
3. Insulated wood — at the Carpenter's Bench, combine 1 Dried Wood + 1 Resin per insulated wood. The official wiki confirms the recipe is crafted at the Carpenter's Bench family and requires the Journeyman Mason knowledge.

Steel and Hardened Steel: The Metal Chain

Metal progression gates everything from weapons to high-tier building reinforcements:

• Iron Bar — ironstone + fuel in a Furnace.
• Steel Bar — the official wiki's Steel Bar page is explicit: "The crafting of steel requires Iron and Steelfire, a peculiar additive made from Tar and Brimstone." So: 1 Iron Bar + 1 Steelfire at a Furnace or Blacksmith's Bench.
• Steelfire — Tar + Brimstone, made at a Furnace. Tar comes from hides or oil, and brimstone is the bottleneck — we have a dedicated brimstone locations guide for exactly that farm.
• Hardened Steel Bar — 1 Steel Bar + 1 Black Ice at a Furnace (the wiki's Hardened Steel Bar page confirms the recipe). Black ice is harvested with a pickaxe in the northern frost biome around the Temple of Frost.

Hardened steel is the material that unlocks the mid-game power spike: hardened steel weapons and tools, tier-2 crafting stations, and — as covered in our golem weapon guide — the best weapon tier you can actually craft for a golem's arm.

Leather Tiers: Hide to Hardened Leather

Leather isn't a building material, but it is a building block — every armour piece, most saddles and a pile of recipes need the leather chain:

The wiki's Hardened Leather page describes it as used "to create armors at an Armorer's Bench" — it's the mid-tier armour material before you reach epic/legendary armours. Hide comes from skinning animals (a skinning knife or cleaver maximises yield), and thick leather specifically needs the bigger predators: bears, rhinos, elephants, sabretooths and the like.

The Gold Building Blocks Question

"Gold building blocks" searches usually mean one of two things: the gold bar decorative building pieces (bars smelted from gold ore at a Furnace, used for gold-tier decorative pieces and some recipes), or gold-themed building sets from DLCs and mods. There is no separate "gold" material tier — gold is decorative, not structural. If you're on a modded server, gold building sets are one of the most common mod additions; our best mods guide lists the ones worth subscribing to.

FAQ

How do you make hardened brick in Conan Exiles? Smelt stone into Brick in a Furnace, craft Stone Consolidant at the Alchemist's Bench, then combine 1 Brick + 1 Stone Consolidant in any Furnace-family station. Hardened Brick is a tier-2 building material with much more structural health than sandstone.

How do you get insulated wood in Conan Exiles? Three steps: harvest bark and resin by pickaxing trees, dry wood in a Dryer (wood + bark fuel) to make Dried Wood, then combine Dried Wood + Resin at a Carpenter's Bench. You need the Journeyman Mason knowledge to unlock the recipe.

What is the strongest building material in Conan Exiles? The tier-3 endgame sets: Black Ice (Exiled Lands), Stormglass (Isle of Siptah), and the reinforced tier-3 combos from the DLC building sets. Below them, Hardened Brick and Insulated Wood are the best tier-2 options, with Insulated Wood the community favourite for value.

Is the pickaxe better than the hatchet in Conan Exiles? Neither is strictly better — they harvest different things. The pickaxe gets stone, ore and bark (and resin from trees); the hatchet gets wood and hide. The trick is that the pickaxe is the tool for the insulation chain, so keep both in your hotbar and swap by resource.

What are gold building blocks in Conan Exiles? Gold building pieces are decorative structures made from gold bars smelted from gold ore — they share the health of their mechanical tier and add no defensive value. Gold-themed building sets also come from DLCs and mods on private servers.

Related Guides

• Conan Exiles Brimstone Locations
• Conan Exiles Thralls Guide
• Conan Exiles Best Weapon for Golems
• Conan Exiles Gameplay Guide
• Conan Exiles Interactive Map Guide
• Conan Exiles Best Mods Guide

Official resources: Steam store page · Official wiki — Hardened Brick · Official wiki — Insulated Wood · Official wiki — Hardened Steel Bar · Official wiki — Steel Bar

Last Updated: August 13, 2026