TRADES

Skinning, Leatherworking and Mining

any zone with beasts and veins / level 10 to 30 / leather, bars and stone / alone

Nixie Brassbottom bought six Pristine Leather from me in Booty Bay and paid in silver on the spot. A week later she mentioned what the leatherworkers in Ironforge were paying for one, and I worked out that she had made more on my leather than I had. I've kept it since.

Why it pays

Forever's leatherworkers make their own armour from new patterns, and the patterns eat leather. One set of six pieces made between skill 60 and 125, a belt, gloves, boots, a hood, a tunic and leggings, takes 25 Pristine Leather, 36 Light Leather and 30 Medium Leather, besides the cured hides. Up to skill 225 there are 95 new recipes with Pristine Leather in them, 61 for leatherworkers and the rest for blacksmiths and tailors. A skinner sells into all of them. A leatherworker who skins makes his set for the thread and one reagent a piece.

Mining gives ore and stone, and the stone is worth keeping. On the beta a Heavy Stone sold for about what an Iron Ore did, and a Coarse Stone for about what a Tin Ore did, because blacksmiths and engineers grind stone into sharpening stones, weightstones and blasting powder. The bars go further. Bronze Bar is in 46 of the new recipes, 44 of them for blacksmiths.

What you need

Skinning and Mining cost what the page on gathering first says. Leatherworking takes Journeyman at level 10 and Expert at level 20 for 50 silver, and only three trainers in the data teach Expert, Una in Thunder Bluff, Telonis in Darnassus and Caryssia Moonhunter in Feralas. Expert Mining costs 45 silver at any mining trainer.

How

1. Take Skinning with Leatherworking, or Mining with Blacksmithing, and give the third to an alt.
2. A leatherworker makes each piece of his set once he has the pattern and its skill, the belt at 60, the gloves at 75, the boots at 85, the hood at 100, the tunic at 110 and the leggings at 125.
3. Keep five Light Leather for a leatherworker's Camp Tent. The travellers say it fills rested experience while you sit at a camp.
4. If you don't craft, sell the Pristine Leather as it comes and the Light and Medium Leather by the stack.
5. Miners sell the stone with the ore. Smelt copper and tin into bronze only when the bars fetch more than the ore, and the crafting chapter does those sums.

What can go wrong

If the binding on the first page of this chapter holds, the set is for wearing and only the leather sells. Pristine Leather stops dropping once you pass level 25 (the page on gathering first explains), so a leatherworker who levels fast ends up buying it. Miners have new competition. The travellers say the Rockslicer from the Deadmines now mines copper, tin, silver and iron 30 times without Mining, and blacksmiths and engineers use it to dig their own ore.

BASTIAN'S VERDICT Skinning is the one trade I never go out of my way for, because I kill the beasts anyway. If I wore leather I'd learn Leatherworking with it.