Understanding Skyrim's Item IDs for Modding Work
If you've ever opened the Creation Kit and tried to reference iron ingots or iron bars for a quest script or a mod, you've probably run into the frustration of tracking down the correct form IDs. Skyrim doesn't make this obvious at first. The game uses hexadecimal form IDs that differ depending on whether you're dealing with the base game, the Dawnguard DLC, the Hearthfire expansion, or the Dragonborn add-on. Most people don't realize this until they spend hours chasing a broken reference in their script. The Iron Bar Skyrim Id you're likely looking for depends on exactly which object you need. In the base game (Skyrim.esm), the iron ingot is form ID 00018347. If you're specifically working with a smelted iron bar used in smithing, that's 00017502. But here's where it gets messy. When Dragonborn DLC content is loaded, several of these IDs shift because Bethesda layered new records on top. The ID doesn't change, but the master file it pulls from does.
Iron Bar Skyrim Id Reference List
I keep a spreadsheet for this because it saves time during development. Here's what I maintain as accurate: Iron Ingot (Skyrim.esm): 00018347 — this is the raw material you get from smelting iron ore, and it's the primary ID used in most crafting recipes. Iron Bar / Small Coin variant: 00017502 — this appears in certain dialog triggers and is sometimes used interchangeably in legacy scripts.
Dragonborn Nordic Linterium: 0C045F6E — this is NOT iron, but it's a common point of confusion. Solstheim introduced a whole separate tier of smelting recipes and the IDs for those are in the Dragonborn.esm master file. Nordic Blacksteel Ingot: 0C045F70 — another one that shows up frequently in Dragonborn-related mods, and beginners often mix this up with regular iron. The thing nobody tells you about these IDs is that the leading zeros matter in some contexts and not in others. When you're calling a function in Papyrus, 00018347 and 00018347 are identical to the compiler. But when you're referencing them in the CK's object window or through console commands, the leading zeros get stripped and that's where most people hit errors. I learned this the hard way when a quest script I wrote would compile fine but never trigger during testing. The quest ref was set to 18347 instead of 00018347, and the CK quietly accepted it. The script silently failed. Took me three days to trace it back.
Get the Full Details
There's a workaround for this. If you're building anything that needs to work across multiple DLC installations, use the GetBaseObject function in Papyrus instead of hardcoding the ID. Something like let itemRef := Game.GetFormFromFile(0x00018347, "Skyrim.esm") This loads the correct record regardless of which DLC the player has installed. It's slightly slower than a direct reference, but the performance hit is negligible unless you're calling it every frame, which you shouldn't be doing anyway.
Another pitfall worth mentioning: if you're modding for Skyrim Special Edition or Anniversary Edition, the base IDs stay the same, but the plugin load order affects how conflicts are resolved. A mod that overrides the iron bar record will get a different assigned ID depending on whether it loads before or after other mods. This is standard Bethesda engine behavior, but it trips up a lot of people who assume the ID they see in the Creation Kit is permanent. It's not. The ID you see is only valid in your local session. If you ship that mod to someone else with a different load order, your references can break. The practical solution is to avoid hardcoding IDs in your mod's scripts whenever possible. Use references instead, or define your own forms in your ESP and reference those. The CK auto-assigns a unique ID to any record you create in your plugin, and that ID is stable across all installations of your mod. It's a small thing but it saves a tremendous amount of debugging later. If you need to look up IDs quickly without opening the CK, the UESP wiki has a searchable database atUESP.net. It's not perfect — occasionally the IDs listed there haven't been updated after a game patch — but it's the best free resource available. I cross-reference it with my own build before shipping anything.
