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Skinning
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Contents |
What is Skinning?
Skinners harvest the skins (leathers, hides & scales) from beasts primarily of use with the Leatherworking profession but other professions have a few crafted items that require leather too. It can also be taken alone, without Leatherworking, to sell on to other players for a good profit. As it can be learnt at a character level of 1, it's useful for bringing in revenue from the very start of a character's life.
Skinning is a Primary Gathering Profession and therefore counts towards your 2 primary profession limit.
How do I become a Skinner?
You need to seek out a Skinning Trainer. There is usually an Leatherworking trainer closeby too which you'll need for your knife. All Skinning Trainers can train you to all ranks from character level 1.
| Alliance | Horde | Neutral | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trainer |
Jayla, 23, Mystral Lake, Ashenvale |
Dranh, 15, Camp Taurajo, Barrens |
None |
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To train to rank of: |
Cost |
Required |
Potential skinning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Char lvl |
Prof Skill Lvl | |||
| Apprentice | 10c | 1 | - | 75 |
| 5s | - | 50 | 150 | |
| 50s | - | 125 | 225 | |
| 1g | - | 200 | 300 |
- Training costs are reduced by 10% in cities you have an 'Honored' Reputation (will change to scalable cost reduction in 2.3).
How do I get skins?
| Skinning Picture |
| Corpse tooltip |
Depending on the level of the kill you may or may not receive a point in skinning when you skin. The codes are as follows:
Grey = No skill increase.
Green = Unlikely to get a Skinning skill point.
Yellow = Probably get a Skinning skill point.
Orange = Will receive a Skinning skill point.
Red = Can not skin yet, need a higher skill level in Skinning.
As you can see from that list the Persterhide Snarler has only a rare chance of adding a skill point to skinning when skinned (because the text is green). So to level up your skinning skill find beasts that produce yellow or orange 'skinnable' text.
As is the case with fishing if you divide your skinning skill by 5 you should be skinning in an area where beasts are round about that level. So if you have a skinning skill of 100, that would mean you would be best suited to skinning in an area populated by level 20ish beasts.
As your skinning skill level increases you will be able to skin and level in higher level areas from beasts that produce better quality skins. Before you reach your maximum skinning level remember to train to the next rank (as detailed above) because once you hit the cap for that rank you can't level the skill no matter what you skin.
What do I do with the skins?
Skinning is a great money spinner. You are able to sell to Blacksmiths, Tailors and Engineers who use a fair amount of leather but the Leatherworker will require the most and therefore you are able to sell to Leatherworkers who have not taken the skinning skill or can no longer be bothered to collect and store skins. Each server has a different economy so observe the auction house and although you can't see how much a commodity eventually sells for you can see what the highest bids are and the (often ridiculously inflated) 'Buy Out' price and get some idea of the market value of your skins.
The natural pairing with skinning however it to learn Leatherworking yourself so you are able to follow patterns (learnt at a Trainer) and fashion your own items to wear (if you're unable to wear mail items) and to sell on. You can also make armor kits which can be applied to any chest, legs, hands or feet armor to increase armor value and as most characters will go through many outfit changes through their lifespan there's a good market for those also.
Below is a list of all the skins that a skinner can gather and if you follow the links it will show you where the beasts that drop them are located. Marked below some of the skins is deatils of when the skin can be processed into something else through the use of Leatherworking.
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Is there anything else I should know about Skinning?
Etiquette - As skinnable corpses can be skinned by anyone with the skill you can skin beasts that other people have killed and cruicially may wish to skin for themselves. Skinning a corpse that you know another Skinner is about to skin will make you a pleb of the tallest order. If you are fighting a number of beasts in a small area, do not loot the corpse until you've cleared the area. This will prevent some nob jocky from leaping in and stealing your skin.
Bonus Equipment - There are only two bonuses that Skinners can gain. One is through an Enchant and the other is the aptly named [Finkle's Skinner] dropped by him know only as The Beast. Unlike the normal skinners knife this one will need to be equipped to gain the +10 bonus to skinning that it carries. True to his name The Beast is a beast class mob and therefore can be skinned. You need to be a skinning level of 310 to skin him so your skinning skill needs to be maxed (300) so with this equipped you can skin him to get the [Pristine Hide of the Beast] which is required for a number of quests.
You will also still need to carry your skinning knife in your bag. As a 'dagger' class weapons unfortunately Paladins will not be able to equip it as they can't learn to use daggers.
The second bonus comes through an Enchantment to gloves as detailed here.
How to Change or Unlearn Skinning
Recap
- Learning skinning costs money.
- You can train Skinning at character level 1.
- You need only a basic [Skinning Knife] throughout your entire career as a skinner.
- Skinning is the perfect partner to Leatherworking.
- Leathers stack to 20, hides to 10, cured hides (made with Leatherworking) to 20.
- Skinning breaks Stealth.
- Most skins are not soubound.
- Do not need to have killed the beast in order to skin it.
- Corpses must be looted before they can be skinned.
- Only beast class mobs can be skinned and even then not all of those are skinnable.
Further Blacksmithing Reading & Resources
- Skinning Suppliers
- Skinning Quests
- Skinning User Interface Mods
