Leathercrafting / Skinning Guide

While at the lower levels leatherworking may look like a less useful tradeskill, at the higher levels it becomes more valuable. However, I would say that leatherworking isn’t necessarily a money making powerhouse of a tradeskill, it does allow you to make armor kits and obtain leather used for making bags.

How useful is leatherworking?

Leatherworking has arguable use. For Alliance there are plenty of quests that give out nice leather armor up until level 40, then it gets pretty desolate till 60. The Stranglethorn Vale Tiger/Panther/Raptor Masteries really give some awesome leather gear that is rather hard to beat at level 32-34. However when you hit level 40, you’ll wanna upgrade, and aside from Tremours of the Earth at lvl 50 and a nice Felwood quest that gives you some shoulders, you’ll be crafting and wearing most of your gear.

Once you get near level 50, you can pick a grandmastery and then begin making some impressive quality items. Depending on what path you take, you’ll see different bonuses, but most of them will sell well on the Auction House.

Uniqueness of Skinning

The thing I particularly enjoy about Skinning/leatherworking is; unlike other professions, you can control the pace that you gain resources. You know your skins come off beasts, you know there is an endless supply of beasts and all you have to do is kill them to gain resources. If you know the drop rate and your character’s limitations (how fast he can kill and where he can hunt) you can deduce how many skins you’ll rack up in an hour. With mining/smithing there’s always competition and the veins have to respawn to get resources, with tailoring you can only gain resources off monster drops (which is not 100% drop rate) and with Enchanting… well we know that’s a bitch.

Being able to calculate the intake of skins per hour gives you an upper hand and allows this profession a very stress free approach.

Armor Kits

Everyone wants em, you can make em! This is the leathercrafter’s claim to fame. They add up to 40 armor to any head, foot, leg or chest piece of armor that any class can wear. You can sell them, use them or pass them out to guildmates but they are the most useful class-spanning item a leathercrafter can produce.

Making Money

You’ll eventually be faced with the enigma of: 'How do I make money as a leathercrafter?' Unfortunately I’m not the best source of information on this subject since I don’t like creating items to sell. (It weighs heavily on my leveling process.) Other then the obvious means of creating a nice green or blue item found in a recipe and selling it on the Auction House; I will introduce to you an alternate method of making money with your leathercrafter.

There are places in Azeroth that allow you to collect multiple leathers off of one skin. This, coupled with the fact that some items that can produce with that leather sells for between 40-80 silver, makes item creation both quick and lucrative. So lets say you go out and farm some leather in a multiple skin spot. You collect leather so fast that you could quickly create an 80 silver item. You may have to pay around 10 silver for materials to create that item but you can quickly sell it to the vendor for a profit of 70 silver. Sure, you could try your luck at the Auction House, but there are so many other leathercrafters out there selling the same wares as you, you’re gonna have a problem unloading your stuff. So in order to save on time , money, and overall profit just sell your items to the vendor. If you’re doing this with the right items it is possible to make 10-15 gold an hour if you know a good spot to skin . There are most likely better places to grind for leather that would yield greater rewards, but I haven’t looked too much into them. Just keep your mind open to this option and perhaps you can find another means of making money without having to find a demand.

Tiers of leatherworking

The tiers of leatherworking are pretty simple. They basically work off of what kind of leathers you will use when creating items. Leather drops are based on monster level as well as drop percentages, for instance you will not receive a medium leather from a monster below level 17. I would consider 1-16 the first tier as you will only receive light leathers through that period. At level 25 you still have the chance to receive a light leather off a skinning, however as the level of the monster increases, so does your chance of receiving a higher grade of leather.

• Levels 1-16 - Light Leather / Light Hide


• Levels 17-30 - Medium Leather / Medium Hide


• Levels 31-40 - Heavy Leather / Heavy Hide


• Levels 41-50 - Thick Leather / Thick Hide


• Levels 50-60 - Rugged Leather / Rugged Hide


• Levels 61-70 - Knothide Leather / Fel Hide

These levels are approximated and they will vary depending on the kind of monster you kill, however this a roundabout chart that will allow you to get a feel of where and when you’ll get to the next tier.

Where to Grind

Knowing where to grind is the biggest part being a leathercrafter. There are many places in Azeroth that will produce high amounts of leather and there are also bad places. I always like to find humanoids who can be skinned so I could farm both leather, silver, and humanoid loot table drops; which tend to be nicer then beasts. Werewolves, Yeti’s and Dragonkin all fall into this category. I’ve noticed that some of these monsters have much better loot tables then the rest, (e.g. the brown yetis in Hillsbrad have worthwhile loot tables while the snow yeti’s to the north have shite). Either way they both have medium/heavy leather so take your pick on which one to farm.

Other zones that are made for skinning are Shimmering Flats, Badlands, Swamp of Sorrows and the big baddy, Stranglethorn Vale. Since you’ll be staying in Stranglehorn for quite a while, you’ll get a great deal of Medium, Heavy and Thick leathers from the beasts in this zone.

Past 250 Skill

Once you hit 250 skill you’ll need to get the rest of your recipes from the Auction House or find them off monsters. You defiantly wanna find the Wicked Leather recipes, for they allow for quick and painless leveling into the 300 range. Pay attention for them and buy them as soon as possible. It is common to pay 5 gold for a good 50+ level leatherworking recipe.

Dependencies on other Trade Skills

The only dependency you will have on other tradeskill is Engineering. At 250 Engineering can make an item called a Salt Shaker. This allows you to create Refined Deeprock Salt from Deeprock Salt. The reset on creating a single Refined Deep Rock Salt is 3 days. The Salt Shaker is reusable so you’ll only need one of them but if you want to create refined deeprock salt at a faster rate, get a handful of Salt Shakers (each have their own reset time).

Though you aren’t very dependant on other tradeskills, they are dependant on you. High level bags require leather for creation and a lot of weapons throughout all tiers require forms of leather. So you can always find a buyer on the Auction House for your leathers if the price is right.

This can be a benefit and a curse considering you will always be needed, even after you may have started an alt and do not have interest in using your Rogue to farm leather. Cough Cough.

Tribal / Elemental / Dragon Grandmasteries

When you near level 50 you’ll be able to receive a quest to learn one of the three masteries. Each of these masteries have different benefits, but once you have learned one, you will no longer have the option to choose the other two, so you must make your decision wisely.

Elemental Leatherworking Mastery

Elemental deals with creating armor that allows for sometimes high agility and resistances to certain elements, ie: water, fire, etc. Though at the lower levels elemental resistances are not an important factor, trust me when I say you’ll want high fire resistances in the high level instances. The first recipe Helm of Fire gives 17 agility, 10 stamina and 5 fire resistance. Oh, and it also shoots a fireball at monsters upon use (which is just odd). I choose this line, but outside of the Helm of Fire (which I used till level 60) and the Volcanic Leggings I’ve not had much of a use for it. Perhaps they’ll either add recipes to existing areas or new recipes will drop once new content has been discovered?

Also, to gain the items needed to create Elemental gear, you’ll need to kill Elementals (no shit?), which can be a pain. The problem is: these materials are often used by smiths to create some high level weapons, so it’s not as easy to obtain the resources as you may like.
Tribal Leatherworking Mastery
Tribal truly has some cool stuff. While Elemental focuses on protecting you from the elements, tribal focuses on damage output. A lot of the tribal recipes create items not so focused on adding agility but to adding attack power. A lot of diversity and options between tribal recipes make it a very useful mastery to pickup.

To get the resources to create your Tribal items you’ll need to skin certain kinds of creatures such as Devilsaurs in Un’Goro Crater or Frostsabers in Winterspring. Most of these monsters aren’t the easiest to solo and require a few friends to make the process go smoothly.

When undertaking the tribal quest you’ll have to have learned all the wild leather recipes from the Feralas quest located in Feathermoon h2hold.

Dragon Leatherworking Mastery

I’ve not had much experience with the dragon mastery but the thing that’s worth mentioning is it is focused on creating Mail items. This fact makes it more useful for hunters that have chosen leatherworking as a profession. The resources needed to create items in this mastery come from skinning various types of dragons. You’ll need to slay Green Dragons, Blue Dragons, Dragons in instances, etc… (and yes, whelps count as dragons).

Conclusion

Though leatherworking didn’t make me a lot of money, I didn’t focus on using it to do so. I enjoyed skinning as I controlled the flow of resources and it allowed me to plan my leveling schedule around it. I enjoy the recipes in the Tribal Mastery with Elemental as a close second. However, as new content is unlocked I may have more of an interest in Elemental because of the resistances it allows your armor to have.