Best Way to Get Leather in Minecraft (2024)

Image: Mojang Studios, Microsoft Game Studios via HGG / Koby Gibson Ross

Human Made

My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Minecraft is a game all about gathering resources and surviving in a hostile world. There are many, many different resources that you need in order to make it big in your survival world. One of the most important resources to have is leather, which is needed for bookshelves and enchantment tables.

But just how do you get a hold of a lot of leather fast? What is the best and most effective method for farming leather quickly? We will be answering all of these questions and much, much more in this article for the top 5 best ways to get leather in Minecraft!

5 Best Ways to Get Leather in Minecraft, Ranked From Good to Best

With that introduction done and out of the way, let’s jump right into the main article!

5/5

Looting Chests

The first way to gather leather in large amounts is through looting chests you find in the world. As you continue to explore, you’ll discover tons and tons of naturally generating structures. This includes desert temples, underground dungeons, abandoned mineshafts, and much more. Inside of these structures, you can find chests, which almost always have a good amount of leather inside.

I don’t recommend making this your main source of leather. It’s simply not that reliable for getting a ton of it very fast. You still need to explore the world to find them, and there is too much RNG involved for this to be a reliable source of the stuff. However, it is nice to keep this method in mind when you’re exploring underground mining minerals. It’s a good idea to loot leather from chests in addition to one of the other methods mentioned below.

4/5

Fishing/AFK Fish Farm

A more reliable (but still RNG-based) way to get some leather in Minecraft is by fishing with a fishing rod! When you are fishing in Minecraft, in addition to getting fish, you also have a chance of getting “junk” items. These items include a bunch of different things, such as strings, bones, and yes, even leather! Leather has a pretty small chance of being picked up when you are fishing with an unenchanted rod.

Because of how low this chance is, I don’t recommend this method manually if it’s just leather you’re after. If you really want to make this a viable way to get some leather (and other valuable goods), you should set up an AFK fish farm. This allows your character to fish automatically in the game while you’re AFK!

This is a great way to get some leather passivly, but you have to be AFK while doing it and can’t be doing other things in-game. You can avoid this problem by leaving your computer or console on overnight (just make sure your device won’t overhear). You can find a guide (made by YouTuber Taffy) on how to build an AFK fish farm by clicking the link here.

3/5

Bartering with Piglins

Next up on our guide for the best ways to get leather in Minecraft, we have the option of bartering with piglins! Piglins are a type of mob that can be found abundantly inside the Nether. They are a race of pig-men who have a crazy thirst for gold. They’re usually hostile to the player, but if you approach them wearing gold armor they will be friendly and not attack you.

Once you’ve approached a piglin this way, you can throw out one bar of gold. Doing so will cause the piglin to pick it up and examine it. After a few seconds, he will send out a random item for you to collect! These items can be one of many different things. You can obtain enchanted books, armor, crying obsidian, and more importantly, leather.

Due to the RNG nature of this method, it’s best to set up a piglin trading hall to do lots and lots of bartering deals at once. Having a setup where you can quickly trade with many different piglins will increase the amount of leather you pull in (as well as many additional, more valuable items). You can watch a tutorial (made by YouTuber Shulkercraft) for building a piglin trading hall by clicking on the link here.

2/5

Trading with Villagers

Our next method is trading with villagers! Throughout your Minecraft world, you will discover tons of naturally generating villages built by a strange race of villagers. These villagers don’t just serve a cosmetic function, but they can be interacted with to trade with them! The currency they usually take is emeralds, but you can also trade regular items with them.

In order to do this method, you’ll first need to either find a village that spawned naturally or convert a zombie villager into a regular villager instead. You can watch a tutorial for doing that (made by YouTuber Stein Plays) by clicking here. Then, find a leatherworker villager (or place down a cauldron, which will cause a normal villager to convert into one). Interact with him to open up his trading menu. Start making trades with him and he will level up, unlocking even more trades!

You’ll want to keep doing this until leather shows up as an option. Once you’ve done that, it should be fairly easy to get a good amount of leather with him. Normally they cost emeralds, which you can get easily if they are being offered by another villager in exchange for something like wheat. You can set up a villager trading hall in order to get lots and lots of villagers to trade with at once! You can watch a tutorial (made by YouTuber Moretingz) by clicking here.

1/5

Killing Cows with a Looting Enchanted Weapon

And last but certainly not least, the absolute best way to gather leather in Minecraft is simply by killing cows with a Looting enchanted weapon. This is a pretty obvious and direct method for getting leather, as cows are a natural source of the stuff. While killing cows with a regular weapon is fine, you can increase the amount of stuff you get from them significantly with a Looting enchanted sword!

In order to get a sword with Looting III (the highest tier), you’ll need to craft some bookshelves and an enchantment table. Place down the enchantment table and then put a bunch of bookshelves around the table on all sides. Then, take some lapiz and a regular book and put it inside the enchantment table by interacting with it. Select the Level 3 option on the bottom and there is a chance you’ll get Looting III.

If you don’t get it, no big deal. Keep putting in more books and selecting the Level 3 option until you finally get it. Just keep in mind that it costs XP to enchant a book/weapon/tool. Eventually, once you get Looting III, put it on a sword by placing it inside of an anvil. Now all you need to do is either find cows in the wild, or set up a cow pen where you can breed and then kill them to get large amounts of leather. This is a very easy and straightforward way to get lots of leather quickly!

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Best Way to Get Leather in Minecraft (2024)