Leatherworking: A Beginner's Guide

So you want to be a Leatherworker?

This can be a very rewarding profession for those of you who actually wear leather or mail armor. This includes Hunters, Rogues, Druids and Shamans. It's probably not the best choice for a class that doesn't wear leather, because one of the perks of creating leather and mail armor is getting to use it. There are other perks as well, just be aware that one of the main attractions to this craft is the ability to make your own gear.

If you're looking for a money-making tradeskill, this might not be the right profession for you. Realistically speaking it can be tough making money with any of the "armor" professions. Your crafted gear must compete with loot drops as well as other crafters who are making the same items you are. It can be challenging, but not impossible. But I would suggest that it's more important to become a Leatherworker for the purpose of making your own gear than purely for the cash value. If money is your only goal you're better off taking two Gathering professions instead.

Companion Skills

For leatherworking this is a no-brainer. Skinning is the only reasonable companion skill for leatherworkers. Of course you can buy leather from the Auction House if you really want to, but it's difficult to make a profit that way, unless you have rare recipes from raid drops. On the other hand, as a Skinner you can always sell your excess leather for additional profit. I strongly recommend you take Skinning as your second Primary profession if you choose Leatherworking as your first.

The first thing you'll need to do is locate a trainer. Any major city should have one of these, just ask a guard. There are also some trainers located in towns in various newbie zones, but this is not reliable so your best bet is to take care of this in the city.

One of the very first skills you will get is the Light Leather "combining" skill. Leatherworkers are given the ability to combine inferior leathers into larger pieces. For the early phase of Leatherworking this is a vital skill, since no recipe uses the Ruined Leather Scraps you'll receive from your early Skinning efforts. So make sure you put this ability to good use, not only will you save precious bag space but you'll also be getting valuable skill points too.

A very nice recipe that you'll learn right away is the Light Armor Kit. Armor kits are handy items that any player can use to improve the armor value of certain pieces of their gear. You can sell these on the Auction House and at the highest levels they will earn very nice money. If you have the leather to spare, be sure to keep your own gear beefed up with these kits as well. Armor kits can only be used for these item slots:

• Chest
• Legs
• Hands
• Feet

Please remember that an armor kit will overwrite any enchantment you might have on your item, so be careful about using them on gear that is already enhanced. Armor kits may seem a bit lackluster at first, but the Burning Crusade and Lich King versions are more interesting and more valuable to other players. Our leg armor kits are a standard raid enhancement and core consumable item for this profession.

When you're out in the world skinning various beasts, you may notice that occasionally you'll get a 'hide'. This is normal, and you'll need those for some of your recipes. Sometimes they need to be cured before you use them, and trade vendors sell salt for this purpose. Once you work your way up to Thick Hides, you'll no longer be able to use salt from the vendors. You'll need Deeprock Salt, which can be looted from rock elementals. Good places to find rock elementals are Arathi Highlands and The Badlands. For curing Rugged Hides, you'll also need a Salt Shaker. These are made by Engineers, and you can either buy one from the Auction House, or if you happen to be friends with an Engineer, perhaps they will make one for you.

Another item unique to Leatherworkers are ammo bags and quivers. You are the only crafter who can make this type of gear. Unfortunately they're no longer required for Hunters and may be phased out entirely at some point. Right now this item is in limbo and is slated to be retired, so just be aware of that before crafting a bunch of them.

There are several quests related to Leatherworking, the first of which is available to you at skill level 70 (Alliance only). By talking to the Leather trainer in Darnassus, she will offer you the recipe for the Moonglow Vest in exchange for 11 various leather items. One note on this quest, it seems if you are wearing any of the items used in the quest she will take them from you. Be sure that any of the items on her list that you wish to keep are tucked in the bank before you return to her with the filled order. The Moonglow Vest is a very nice caster item and makes an attractive dark purple top, so I would highly recommend doing the quest, especially if you are a druid or shaman.

To advance your training beyond 150, Alliance players will need to seek out Telonis in Darnassus and Horde players should visit Una in Thunder Bluff. For Artisan Leatherworking (above 225) the trainers are Drakk Stonehand at Aerie Peak in the Hinterlands for Alliance and Hahrana Ironhide at Camp Mohache in Feralas for Horde. You should be level 35 before you train as an Artisan. Around 200 skill is also where you will start learning recipes to create mail armor, for those leatherworkers who are interested in making gear for hunters and shamans.

Once you reach 225 Leatherworking skill, the next set of quests is available from a crafter at Feathermoon Stronghold in Feralas (Camp Mohache for Horde). This is the Wild Leather Armor quest line and involves multiple steps, crafting numerous items in exchange for five Wild Leather patterns. This quest line is required for those who want to pursue Tribal leatherworking as their specialty. It's optional for those who are planning to go with Elemental or Dragonscale. The Wild Leather items themselves are not fixed stats, but when crafted will bestow a 'random' enchantment. Sometimes it's a valuable one like Agility and other times it's a less popular one like Spirit or some sort of resist bonus. Any time you make one of these it will be a potluck situation and you'll end up with something that may not sell. My suggestion would be to skip this quest if you don't plan to go Tribal, the time and component investment is quite steep for such a variable set of items.

After you become an Artisan Leatherworker, you'll probably want to start thinking about what specialization to take. There are some general recommendations that most people make regarding which specialization is most appropriate for which classes. For Rogues this would be Elemental Leather, since these items lean towards Agility and Stamina bonuses and includes the Stormshroud Set. Dragonscale Leather is considered a Hunter/Shaman specialty due to the mix of attack power bonuses and caster-oriented stats and the fact that those recipes create mail instead of leather gear. Tribal Leatherworking is generally regarded as the Druid line, since many of the items are beneficial for druids. The Tribal recipes include the Ironfeather set which is very nice for healing druids, and the Devilsaur set that would be appropriate for Feral druids.

Once you've chosen a Specialization, you'll need to locate the proper trainer. Here's a chart of the various specialties and where the trainer can be found:

More Special Recipes

There are a number of in-game factions that will sell you special recipes if you have a good reputation with them. These include the Timbermaw Tribe, the Argent Dawn, the Cenarion Circle and the Zandalar Tribe to name a few. They include recipes for all leatherworkers and some for the specialty leatherworkers as well.

If for some reason you decide that you don't like the specialty you've chosen and you want to re-specialize, there is a way out. You'll have to unlearn your current specialty (talk to any trainer) and pay a fee (usually 100g), then visit the appropriate trainer for the new specialty you want to learn.

Leatherworking in Outland: 300-375

Raising your crafting skill beyond 300 can be rough, as soon as you arrive in Outland you should make a point to skin whenever you can. But the first thing you need to do is visit Brumman, the new Leatherworking trainer in Honor Hold. He is located outside the Inn, on the wall by the outhouses. Horde players can train with Barim Spilthoof, who stands under a small tent in front of the Inn at Thrallmar. If you haven't already, you should also visit your old Artisan level trainer. For Alliance this is Drakk Stonehand in the Hinterlands, or Hahrana Ironhide in Feralas for Horde. Blizzard has added some of the high end drop recipes (250-300) to the trainers to ease the tradeskill leveling process through the previous cap of 300.

The reason I suggest training any missing recipes you might have in the upper range of Leatherworking is that they can come in handy for gaining points. Many of the level 300 recipes will still be orange to you and can be used for skill points up through 320. If you have lots of rugged leather and other old materials in the bank, you may as well use them up to get yourself some relatively cheap points. I was able to make Wicked Leather Belts, since they only required rugged leather and some vendor-bought materials. You can easily milk old recipes until they turn yellow, even further if you really want to maximize the easy skill points.

If you prefer not to use old recipes for points, you should probably start out making Knothide Leather. This is just a combining recipe to turn Knothide Scraps into a usable piece of leather. It's yellow at 300 and gray at 310, so it won't get you all that far, but it's still 10 points for doing something you have to do anyway. After that you can choose one of the new gear recipes and make yourself some nice upgrade items or make Knothide Armor Kits to sell. Be cautious about cranking out a ton of leather gear to sell, many people do this and as a result most of these items are severely undervalued. So make sure you do some research and see which items are not being made on your server before you start crafting. You could also try making armor kits and leatherworking bags instead of leather armor.

The upside of any useless gear you end up with is that they can be disenchanted into the various dusts that enchanters need to skill up. Illusion Dust and Arcane Dust are useful for this, so find a buddy to DE all the backlogged inventory if you can. The pre-expansion gear will generally give you Illusion Dust and most of the post-expansion gear will give Arcane Dust.

Once you get to 320 or so you'll have to start using the expansion recipes if you haven't already. At this point only armor recipes will be useful for gaining skill points., so you'll just have to bite the bullet now. In general I would craft recipes that make the most of whatever materials you have on hand, being mindful of the low volume of customers for your goods. When you reach 340 you can switch to the Drums of War if you prefer to go back to consumables. This won't take you all the way to 350 unfortunately, but it should eat up a handful of points if you're looking to minimize the crafting of armor. You should be able to reach 350 fairly easily by making the various recipes you received from the trainer. Luckily you can totally skip the nasty phase of Outland leatherworking and go straight to the Northrend trainer at 350 skill.

When you reach 350 you may want to seek out Thomas Yance in Old Hillsbrad to purchase the Riding Crop recipe from him. This requires you to enter the Caverns of Time, which is only available to level 66+ players. If you don't happen to be that level yet, you can either recruit a buddy to buy the recipe for you, or purchase one from the Auction House. If you plan to spend a lot of time in Outland, this could be a handy item that's worth seeking out.

Leatherworking in Northrend: 350-450

Blizzard was kind enough to add extra recipes to the Leatherworking trainers in Northrend so new folks would not be subjected to the pain of skilling through the final 25 points with Outland recipes. Once you hit 350 skill you can go right to the new Northrend trainers and get new recipes. Right off the bat you'll learn how to make Borean Armor Kits, which are a good starter recipe. They are also a nice, cheap way to beef up your alts with some extra health. They also stay yellow all the way through 380 and use less leather than any other Northrend recipe, so this is the one to grind skill points with. You could also turn scraps into leather if you happen to have some, if so you should tackle that first since the recipe turns green much quicker than the armor kits.

The armor kits should see you to 375, at which point you'll have to start crafting actual gear. You'll get recipe from four different gearsets at 370, two items each for rogues, hunters, shamans and druids. This trend will continue through 385 until you've learned eight pieces for each set. The best scenario will be to craft some of these items for yourself or friends. This gear is hard to sell to players who are walking into Northrend in Karazhan or higher gear, but anyone leveling an undergeared alt or brand new toon can probably use them. You may not be able to sell any of these, so be wary of making boatloads of green gear at this point. If you used the armor kits all the way to 375, you should be able to get by with just five of these items to get to 380 and switch off to the more lucrative Cloak of Harsh Winds. Blue items tend to sell better than green, so this cloak should be a safer bet.

You can ride the cloak (or the greens if you prefer them) all the way to 390, when you'll unlock the recipe for Heavy Borean Leather. Feel free to make as many of these as you can stand, you'll never run out of a use for Heavy Borean Leather. You'll also learn the Heavy Borean Armor Kit at 395 and a ton of blue armor recipes. If you prefer to make the armor kits, they should be a solid seller for you. You can also go the crafted gear route, most of these items are quite decent, mid-level blues. In general rogue/hunter gear sells better than druid/shaman gear. I suspect this is probably due to playstyle, druids and shamans are more likely to be healing their way through levels and getting dungeon loot.

Heavy Borean Armor Kits should easily see you to 400 skill, if you make crafted blues you should be able to level with them all the way to 425. The mats for this first wave of blue recipes are pretty low, considering the type of gear you get from them. When you reach 400 skill you'll also be able to make some nice leg armor kits, so if you prefer to make those instead of armor, that's a good alternate path. At 425 you start to pick up new recipes that are basically pre-raid quality and have a higher component cost. While these recipes are more expensive to make, you can charge more for them. These recipes should see you to 435 skill.

A new source for recipes at 420 is Braeg Stoutbeard, the leather trader in Dalaran. His items are mostly PVP gear, with some frost resistance gear and pre-raid epics at higher skill levels. He charges you in "fur" aka heavy leather to purchase his recipes. It's important that you hoard your arctic furs, not only are they needed for crafting epic items, but they are also used as currency for Braeg's epic recipes. He has a ton of recipes, so you might need to prioritize what items you purchase. If you're using these items purely for leveling your skill, stick with one item per skill range and the lowest mat cost. At 420 this would be one of the bracer recipes, at 425 you can go with either a belt, boot or glove recipe. You can use either these recipes or the trainer recipes to reach 435 skill, the main reason to make the vendor gear would be for marketing reasons. Since most leatherworkers will probably skill up with the trainer recipes, you have a better chance to make good money if you shift over to vendor recipes. The amount of components needed is also slightly lower for these items.

When you reach 435 the crafted blue gear will not be worth using for skill points, it should all be green at this point. The only recipes you can use to push your way to 440 are the epic armor kits you got from the trainer at 425. This is why it was so important to save your arctic fur, because now you need it to skill up the rest of the way. Sadly these recipes will be yellow to you, which means you aren't guaranteed a skill point when you make them. The good news is that these armor kits are pretty much required enchants for raiders, so you should have no trouble selling them. The Icescale Leg Armor is going to have the widest range of users, but the Earthen Leg Armor will appeal to the PVP crowd. Our market research through WoWPopular shows the Icescale kit selling twice as much as the Frosthide, with Earthen not even in the top ten. You might want to watch the market for a few days to see what the action is like on your server, since this dynamic might not apply to PVP realms.

Hopefully you won't have to make more than 6-8 leg armor kits to get to 440 skill. Once you do, you'll be able to unlock all the epic goodies from the trainer and the leather trader. Now you can go crazy making all the nice epic gear that is presumably your goal. Bear in mind that most of the crafted epics are pre-raid quality, in order to make higher quality epics you need to collect recipes from Ulduar and the Coliseum. Occasionally Ulduar recipes show up on the Auction House, so that's an alternate way to get those items.

Good luck and enjoy your new goodies!