How to get leather in V Rising to upgrade your Castle Heart

V Rising leather
(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)

V Rising leather can be crafted after killing Keely, one of the earliest bosses in the game. Using the rewards obtained you can then set build a tannery that will let you turn animal hide into leather. You will have to go on a bit of a killing spree to get what you need, but considering the aggression shown by wolves in Farbane, you've probably had to fight a few of them already. Let's take a look at how to get leather in V Rising, the details of the Tannery, and how you can use leather to upgrade your Castle Heart. 

How to get Leather

  1. Use the Blood Alter to locate the Keely the Frost Archer boss
  2. Track Keely to find and defeat her
  3. Return to your Castle and build the Tannery
  4. Leather!

This is the basic process to craft Leather in V Rising. Essentially, boss killing aside, you're really just setting up a very basic production line in your own castle. And, in much in the same way that once you have the Sawmill, there's little effort to getting planks, this is well worth getting sorted. Just click the stages above you want to check out, or scroll down to see them in order!

How to get leather in V Rising

V Rising castle heart leather upgrade

(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)
V Rising Paper

V Rising Paper

(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)

Want to research more? Check out our guide on V Rising Paper and how to get it!

You'll need V Rising leather when you reach the objective to upgrade your Castle Heart. This requires 12 Copper Ingots and 12 leather. The copper is easy thanks to the Furnace in your build menu and as long as you have the right resources you can build it and fill it with copper ore to make ingots - by this point you will have levelled up enough to break apart the large copper rocks you've seen around for ore. (And hold onto the regular rock you collect too, as you'll need it later to make V Rising Stone Bricks.)

The leather, however is more of a mystery with nothing in the build menu to make it and only find animal hides to be found in the world. So how do you get it? 

Consult the Blood Altar

V Rising blood alter tannery

(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)

To get leather in V Rising check the Blood Alter and look for a boss called Keely the Frost Archer. She's level 20, which if you've taken down the wolf and got to this point, you should be too. She'll have the tannery as a reward for defeating here so select her and follow her trail to find her on the East side of the Farbane Woods on the V Rising map.

Defeat Keely the Frost Archer

V Rising Frost Archer

(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)

Defeating Keely is fairly easy, with time your only enemy. She can take a while to beat and is prone to resetting if she gets too far away. Because it can take some time there's a risk of getting caught in the daylight which obviously makes the battle a lot harder. So get there at night, ideally travelling through the day to get the most time in the dark to battle her. 

When you reach the bandit camp, try to use the entrance on the east side as you'll find less bandits and should find Keely patrolling. You'll want to avoid getting the whole camp after you, so use Shadowbolt to hit and lure any enemies away from a distance to deal with them one at a time, until you can take the Frost Archer on alone. 

There are a few options to fight her. You could let all the animals out of the surrounding cages, and get out the way to let them do a fair amount of damage. Keely kills them pretty easily, but there's a lot of them around and over time they'll whittle down a fair percentage of her health.

Whether you use that to soften her up or not she's not to hard to kill, it just takes time. She has two main attacks, a triple freeze arrow shot that will slow you with one or two hits, but completely stop you if all three connect. She also fires arrows into the air for a large damage area, marked out by red circles. However, both have long obvious windups that are easy to dodge. The best V Rising best weapons can help here if you need an upgrade.

When she's dead, head back to your castle to get some leather action on. 

Build the Tannery

V Rising Tannery construction

(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)

Defeating Keely will unlock the recipe for the Tannery. You'll need 8 planks and 160 animal hides to build it. The planks shouldn't be a problem at this point as the Sawmill was a previous objectives, so gather the resources you need and get tanning. Keep in mind that this requires your Castle Heart to be fueled with V Rising Blood Essence, so make sure you have enough to go around.

Use the leather to upgrade the Castle Heart

V Rising leather

(Image credit: Stunlock Studios)

Once you have the 12 copper ingots and, crucially, the 12 leather you can finally upgrade the Castle Heart and unlock the next stages of progress. That will get you a mirror crafting recipe that will let you customise your vampire, and open up the next objective you need to progress. We recommend checking out our page on the V Rising Whetstones, which'll likely be your next priority.

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Leon Hurley
Managing editor for guides

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for guides, which means I run GamesRadar's guides and tips content. I also write reviews, previews and features, largely about horror, action adventure, FPS and open world games. I previously worked on Kotaku, and the Official PlayStation Magazine and website.