Profit from skinning?Follow

This is just my opinion, and of course there are differences from server to server. If you are going to be a LW, I'd say definitely take up skinning. If you are doing it solely for profit, I would find something else.

While I think the high level leather stuff sells well, the low level leather doesn't do as well as it used to.

You may be able to make a few sales a week on Medium or Heavy leather, but I wouldn't take it if you're looking to make lots of cash.

Mining makes all the money in WoW now thanks to Titansteel from WotLK but skinning has it's own rewards. Each profession plays a role now, well at least gathering wise. If you make a skinner your crits are going to go up a bit which is good for DPS and i guess casters haven't exactly experimented with this. Herbalism now gives the ability to heal yourself like a Draenei except it doesn't scale with your level, so this would be effective for just about anyone who gets in a pinch. Mining gives you an HP boost which is good for tanks mostly. I haven't done this will all the professions just those three as they are the main gathering professions. I'm sure enchanting has one as well.

But it's not just those professions, Alchemy gives Alchemists a boost when using potions, which is rather nice topped off with an alchemist stone trinket etc.

I'm making about 7g50s per stack of Borean Leather atm. Arctic Fur(which is a lot more common than I expected) goes for 50g per. I don't remember what I sold that one Nerubian Chitin I got for(got it while doing an early quest), but I figured that it'd be profitable.

Though, as said by others, real money's in mining and herbing right now. I took up skinning on my DK solely for the crit.

I have a 450skinner and 450miner and honestly I can make more in 5minutes with mining then I can in an hour of killing and skinning. I'm pretty sure as soon as I finish maxing out Enchanting that I will be dropping Skinning and picking up another primary profession. If you want to make out LW then most definently keep it as it will save you a ton of money over the whole process. If you wanna do skinning only because of profit you're better off doing something else.

I'm finding that on Moon Guard, mining ain't really all that it is cracked up to be, to be honest.

Right now, Saronite Ore is selling for less than 20g per stack, hovering around 18g. It takes over 1g to list, so if it doesn't sell, you're out some money. Saronite Bars are even worse, they are hovering around 30g last I checked. That's 15g per stack of Saronite Ore, and the listing fee is even higher.

Titansteel Bars are about 150g but let's consider the mats:

3x Titanium Bar (15g each, 45g)
1x Eternal Fire (15-20g each, 60-65g total so far)
1x Eternal Earth (5g, 65-70g total so far)
1x Eternal Shadow (10ish, 75-80g total so far)

So for something you can only do once per day, you're only making 70-75g profit from a 20 hour cooldown.

And I'll place any bets that skins are much, much more common than saronite nodes, and especially titanium nodes. Even though Saronite is only worth 18g a stack, people are still tripping over themselves to get them, so there is still heavy competition for them, and titanium... if you see one, drop everything and grab it, or it is going to be gone.

Heck, the stupid Crystallized Elements are worth more than the damn ore is, most of the time.

And Gems?

Don't get me started on a gem rant. Moon Guard's gem market sucks to be honest. Most blue gems are worth 30g, if that. And half of the time they don't sell. Siren's Tears, which are rare and hard to get, they are still in the 200s, but it is hard to get one to sell. Green Gems? Just vendor them. Not even worth sticking on the AH.

Edited, Jan 11th 2009 5:24pm by Zariamnk

On my server, Borean leather don't sell very well at all, while Herbs and Mining are very profitable. Every server is different however.

I use my Death Knight in Northrend, usually just outside of Westbrook. I grab up the herd of Shoveltusks. Lay down my AoE, 2 Howling Blasts and 20 seconds later I have 6 to 9 Shoveltusks infront of me. Out of the 6 to 9, 4 of those is going to give up a Shoveltusk meat, or flank. A lot of the time both. Not only do I have 9 borean leather, but also the meat to cook. In an hour of farming, I can make 6 stacks of Shoveltusk Soup, 1 to 2 stacks of Shoveltusk steak for casters. And maybe 6 to 7 stacks of borean leather. Not to mention to the two or three Arcti Furs that drop ( they drop alot btw).

Some good replies here , as my Hunter main at 71 has leatherworking/skinning i feel i can say that most of the time you will not have much spare leather unless you farm mobs , but if you do farm as i do for a few hours every now and then you will get some spare and depending on your level it can be profitable , as has already been said some types of leather do sell for a decent amount of gold.

Best bet if you do go skinning leatherworking is find out what the meat prices are like on your server ( cooking is always being power levelled ) , at various levels there always seems to be some type of meat or fish that sells for a decent amount and for me made more gold than my spare leather , i have not tried it since WotlK came out but i know in outland i was making about 20g for 20 kills on some meat types plus of course all the greens and vendor trash( probably gone right down in price now ) its not easy to say if you can still make decent gold from the extra drops as you level but i would be surprised if you cannot make a decent amount of gold from skinning plus the extra drops of meat and other items plus of course you get the bonus stats from cooking as the cooked meat can sell for as much or sometimes more than the raw at times.

Biggest advantage with skinning is you can find areas with a lot of beasts and just spend a few hours trying to kill and skin before they re-spawn and to me that makes more sense than running around trying to find herbs or mining nodes , and of course in some areas the herbs and ore nodes are well spread out and not always easy to find.

I also will say herbs and mining will both probably make more gold over time and the levelling of your alt but my main has made and spent several 1000 g so skinning + leatherworking did me no harm .

This ^

Cooking can make you MORE money than skinning in the long run. There are foods such as dragonfin angelfish (this one requires you to have high fishing as well) that give a 1 hour buff of +40 agil and +40 stam. VERY popular raid-buff food. I have seen it sell on the AH on my server for 200g for a stack of 20. There is also a food that has +40 str and +40 stam that goes for more like 400g per stack of 20.

If you are a leatherworker, obviously you are going to want to skin, which might make you some extra gold. If you learn to fish and cook as well, you can supplement your income quite a bit.

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?wspell=57441

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=43000;source=live

Do some research here and some research on your server and don't neglect your "secondary" skills. They can be more profitable than your primary skills with a bit of work. I am sure that there are plenty of recipies that can make very profitable foods just from the meat drops you will get while killing/skinning anyway.

Edited, Jan 12th 2009 8:35am by jeromesimina

Edited, Jan 12th 2009 8:39am by jeromesimina

The point of skinning is not to 'grind' skins but to slowly accumulate them as you quest.

Questing an entire zone you might get say 3-4 stacks of ores to sell for a few hundred gold but in the same time questing and skinning you'll probably have 30+ stacks of leather, half a stack of Arctic fur and a whole bunch of dragon scales, joromunger scales and nerubian chitin.

So in my opinion, while questing, skinning will make more but if you want to farm solely for cash then mining is the clear winner (although I've found dailies just as profitable and they also grant rep).

The end game profession is different from the leveling game profession.

Personally I just hate to leave money sitting on the ground when a right click can pick it up. I have many toons that work like a personal guild, but most toons have skinning for that reason. Sometimes and in some areas other players leave corpses all around and you can pick up a lot of leather that way.

Then my one LW makes only green items which I give to my enchanter to disenchant, to level or to make mats to sell or the LW makes armor kits which sell well or I use as an easy armor buff.

On my realm it seems that mining and herbalism are better money makers than skinning. That being said, my main is a skinning/enchanting hunter. Although skinning makes less gold than the other 2 gathering professions, I don't have to keep my mini-map set to Find Herbs/Find Ore - leaving it free for all the other things I can track as a hunter.

The other advantage of skinning is that there is not the hot competition for nodes that you find with mining and herbalism. Plus, you can skin other peoples' kills if they have left the corpse. You probably won't get rich from skinning, but you will have an easy, steady source of income.

Honestly with my hunter I have, he's level 24 or so, I was thinking of taking skinning/lw instead of mining, but maybe i should just wait till 40 or so in the mean time taking mining and skinning and then decide whether or not to drop mining, I only plan on taking my hunter to 55 to make a dk, so I wont really need transport past my regular mount, which I already have the money for. Any other comments?