Dragonflight Skinning Guide: Best Methods and Tips

Oh my God, there are so many leathers in my bags in just a couple of minutes! Oh, look at that farm spot, and man, these are pretty high-quality stuff. I can actually craft something with my leatherworking, and skinning is pretty cool. And maybe you thought the same way, and that's probably why you're here. So, let's talk about skinning today, what you need to know picking up skinning, and how to maybe get more out of it.

You want to make some gold, you want to be the best leatherworker, and you don't want to buy stuff from the auction house. Listen, prices are very subject to change based on your server, so we're not going to talk about that. So, you know, keep that in mind when deciding if you want to make money with skinning, or if you just want to have fun with the gathering profession.

And you want to know how to kind of optimize it and make the most out of it. Plus, there's probably at least one thing in this video that you might not know about skinning. And if that's the case, maybe by the end, when you've watched the whole thing, you can leave a comment down below and tell us if we were able to tell you one thing that you did not know about skinning. Maybe two, maybe three, maybe a lot more.

So, let's actually talk about one of the coolest gathering professions because it takes you out there, it takes you out in the wild of those armed planes, and sometimes, as your span

although not the most common question, asks, some people do actually wonder since they would want to have the best skinner in their arsenal.

What is the best class and spec? Well, surprisingly enough, there are some combinations that are actually better now in Dragonflight as a skinner than before because some of the ratios have been adjusted to kind of factor in the new profession system.

First of all, the big elephant in the room, not so big because it's kind of skinny, it needs more meat on its bones, Evoker the Dragther specifically. Since Evokers, you know, are the race that you really want, you have the passive Discerning Eye, which gives you two percent perception. It's one of the secondary stats for it's a great gathering professions, which we will talk about in a bit. A

nd specifically, we would recommend you play Devastation. Obviously, you can kill beasts faster, so you can farm faster as well, although depending on your group farming situation, you might be as a go-proof, which is not really a big deal. But, the direct Evoker is definitely one of the classes that you can get to maximize your gathering professions, specifically skinning as well.

Worgen is even more specific as a skinner. Probably, Beastmaster is the best class for Worgen, considering Beastmasters, as a whole, are one of the best classes to use skinning one since you can just use your pet's aggro and multi-pick things because you can shoot everything all around to gather mobs and just skin them all.

Plus, you have the passive, of course, Flair, which is the Worgen racial that gives you five skill points, not to be confused with the knowledge points, but it's just your skinning has plus five skill points above everybody else. And you also have 25 percent deafness, which is pretty cool. Deafness only in skinning, by the way, and definitely makes you just skin faster, which is actually pretty good, especially when you're farming mass beast skinning.

works is as follows. First of all, you have two main materials that you can gather. We would call them the normal materials. You have the resilient leather, which you normally get from beasts that you would assume they just give you leather, and adamant scales, which are from tougher beasts like dragons and lizards and stuff like that.

These are the two main normal ingredients that you'll be looking for, and you do have a chance to also skin rare items which we've had before, basically hides. You have the dense hides, which you'll usually find in beasts that also give you resilient leather, and you have the lustrous scaled hide, which you would find in beasts that give you adamant scales. So, they kind of make sense from a synergistical point of view. And these are, let's say, the rare type of materials that you can find, basically with the blue text.

You also have special materials. These are more catered to the specific type of beasts that you actually farm. They're green in color; you'll notice them, and there are seven of them in total. And although not necessarily a green special, you also have the Flawless proto-drake scales, which are essentially blue in their quality.

I don't know why they're blue, but you can only get these from proto-drakes, which is a little bit, you know, kind of weird since the rest of them are, you know, uncommon in their quality. But going into the rest of them, you have Crystal spine fur, which you gather from quill beasts. You can find these in specific packs and camps in Azure span.

You have Rock Fang leather, which is gathered from rockfang cats. There's a really good farming spot on our own planes. You can also find the menthol dresses as well. Cacophonous Thunder scale is from thundered lizards; you'll find thunder and lizards around the dragonelles, but probably the best spot to get them from will still be on armed planes.

Fire infused hide will be gathered from fire beasts. You might have seen these in the Jordan zones in Waking Shores, basically the fiery mammoths and things like that, fiery hawks, and birds and things of that nature.

You might find them in other zones as well. Pristine vorkin horn is obviously from the working horses or stag-type beasts that you'll find in faldresses as well, but you'll find them in other zones also. Salamander scales are gathered from lizard-style beasts that you might find near rivers. Also, in the Northern Plains, Northern Plains usually has pretty much all of them, and windsung plumage from actual birds, also most prevalent in unarmed planes, but obviously, it depends on where you are in specific zones.

They're pretty widespread with certain concentrated iteration in specific zones where they would thematically belong. These special materials are basically used by skinning and also used by other professions, which are something that you might want to look for.

Now, when it comes to leveling skinning, there's not much to say here. We would recommend taking skinning as you level through Dragon elves if this is your first character. If you're already maxed, then you just take skinning.

If you already have skinning from I don't know, Shadowlands or BfA or anything like that, the first time you skin a beast in the Dragonelles, you'll automatically learn skinning. Otherwise, you would have to visit a trainer, the first one being in Waking Shores, and you'll find trainers spread all throughout the zones.

Leveling skinning, whether or not you pick up leatherworking in conjunction or you simply do the quest throughout the zones, you'll eventually pick up the skinning equipment, which I strongly recommend you do. The leatherworking profession makes your cap and your pack-style equipment, while the blacksmithing profession makes it a smock.

These are the only three tools or equipment essentially that you will use for your skin, coming in different quality depending on their item level. Lastly, to get better at skinning and leveling it quicker, you can definitely use Darkmoon Firewater, which you can probably find off the auction house now that Darkmoon is over or whenever Darkmoon Fair comes back. This makes it all go super smooth and way faster.

Before we go into the actual specialization, it is important to talk about the knowledge points, which is something that you will find a lot of sources online, so hopefully, we can make it a little bit more straightforward and easy for you to follow and understand.

Knowledge points are essentially like talent points; specializations in each profession unlock different perks and bonuses that make it better for you to do certain things with your profession. You want knowledge points; you want as many of them as possible.

By just playing the game, you'll naturally unlock these knowledge points. There are a couple that you'll almost automatically get. For instance, you'll get the simple knowledge points from actually skinning beasts.

Once per week, you can loot the large sample of Curious Hide. This has a lockout reset; you can only loot this once per week. It's an epic quality; it has the highest drop chances from Mirror Lurkers, but you can probably find it in any type of Beast that you do. The drop chance is pretty low across the board, and the difference in drop chances between mobs is probably not going to be something that you will feel.

I don't know if I would recommend you farming Mirror Lurkers just to get this one Curious Hide, which gives you two knowledge points. Besides this, you have the rare version of these hides or scraps that give you the knowledge points. You have Curious Hide Scraps, which give you one knowledge point.

The highest drop chances from Adventurous are Golly and Wild Proto-Drakes that you can find all throughout the world. Once again, I don't recommend farming this. I have tried it; I farmed hundreds and hundreds of Wild Proto-Drakes and haven't dropped once while I farmed other beasts that had a lower chance of dropping this, and I've had several of them.

Another one is Saturated Bone, also giving you one knowledge point. This has the highest drop chance from Cragscale Skitterers, which of course you can target if you want. But once again, I would recommend just skinning what you need, and you'll eventually get these with a low drop chance, but you'll eventually get these nonetheless.

Another way to get knowledge points is from Inscription with the Draconic Treatise on Killing. These can only be gotten if you put up a work order for them. You cannot buy them off the auction house yet. I don't know if they're ever going to be available.

If you're a Skinner yourself, you can make them for yourself, which give you one knowledge point. They're pretty pricey, not too pricey, but you probably won't be able to buy like dozens and dozens and dozens unless you're swimming in gold.

Another way to get knowledge points is from your profession master. Now, these are not very straightforward; these have a secret location that you will probably either luckily find or might have to look for.

Interested in reputation unlocks with Diaskara and Marook, which are the two factions that will give you recipes and also skill ups. By getting both professions renowned 15, you will get plus five knowledge points from each and another plus 10 when you reach plus 24 renowned with both of these professions, among other bonuses that these factions will also give you recipes to craft different types of things with your leatherworking.

This is really good, especially if you combine your skinning with leatherworking. One other thing that's probably more sought after are the dragon shards of knowledge, which are the purple epic Dragon shards. To unlock these, you first have to do a quest in Unarmed Plates.

The quest starts from a gift from Miguel, which is first encountered in the Waking Shores. That is the quest line, but the one that you will actually want will be "That's My Specialty," which will reward you with one shot at the Wonders of the World, which gives you another Master of their Craft. One last one is "The Worthy Hunt," the last actual Shard of Knowledge, which you will get guaranteed from just doing these quests, which are the profession quests.

I believe you'll probably finish all of them in Unarmed Plates if you do follow the trail of quests. And, once you unlock Kadeem's Wisdom, which is basically the end reward for this quest, you'll be able to have a chance to find them in Scout Supply packs and throw out the dragon elves. The drop chance is very, very low.

I think I managed to find one or two on top of the original four, and I've been pretty much farming skinning and treasures all throughout my hours playing WoW for the past couple of weeks. Some people are a little bit more lucky, but there you go. You can also get knowledge points from the bi-weekly profession trainer quests that you will find in Val Dragon. First of all, you need to have World quests unlocked and your skinning to be at least 50. If you just naturally level through the Dragon Isles, you'll be way above 50, maybe even max by the time you even get to Val Dragon, so this is not normally going to be a problem. For the World Quest, you do need to be 68 to unlock him and finish the story.

Obviously, if you did it on your main, you don't need to do it on your alt. If your Skinner is going to be an alt that you made specifically for this, you will get the quest scaling down from Relator the Rugged, which will not shut up, basically.

Everybody has a problem with this, but you will get this, and to turn in this quest, you'll just need two lustrous scaled hide for Rank 2, as in quality 2, and you will get Skinning Field Notes that will give you knowledge points.

If you just have these two scale hides, you'll loosely turn it in. It's no biggie, super easy to do. You'll probably naturally have these skill heights if you've done any type of skidding of any beast that gives you any types of scales.

Another thing that probably you might have noticed if you've played in the last week or so, depending on when you're watching the video, or you might have heard other people do this is from Dark Moon Fair. Darkmoon Fair has had profession quests for the longest time and adapted to Dragonflight. The NPC Chronos, which you can find in the Darkmoon Fair Zone, will give you the quest "10 My Hide" by just gathering a couple of leather and skeleton skins around the zone.

I dailies with these guys as well, mostly for crafting orders, but hey, if you have a crafting profession as well, you can probably take that into consideration.

With all this knowledge points information, I think we got them all. I don't know if there's one that we missed, if we did, let us know in the comment section below. We can actually go into specializations. This is a whole chunk of information as well.

Skinning has three main specializations: tanning, harvesting, and bait crafter. Tanning is what you would probably think a specialization for skinning would be. Putting points into tanning essentially gives you extra skill points for skinning, making it better and easier to gather high-level, high-quality stuff. It also unlocks refining hide to increase the hide's quality level.

Since we do have this quality thing from tier one, two, and three, if you want more details on the basics of this, you can also watch our main profession guide video that we just released a couple of days ago. Refining hide is definitely a good way to get Rank 3 hides.

You can also have sub-specializations, which are Scale Mastery and Leather Mastery. Scale Mastery obviously unlocks more stat points into skinning scales and also gives you the option to refine skills, which is really good.

Similarly, Leather Mastery does something the same, it just gives you more stat points into skinning beasts that give you leather and also unlocks the ability to refine leathers to a higher quality. Harvesting is where we're getting into some of the more interesting stuff. First of all, it unlocks you dealing damage versus beasts.

It's basically a hidden buff; you just do more damage to beasts and dragon elves, which is definitely something that you're probably looking into if you're going to be farming skinning in any capacity. It also gives a buttload of deftness, which is really good. Deftness essentially makes your skin faster, which is definitely what you want when you're farming hyper spawn spots that just give you a lot of beasts to skin. On top of all this, you get a couple of unlocks.

First of all, you unlock curiously shaped stomachs. These are basically containers/stomachs that give you materials for all professions if you want to, for some reason, either sell them or you have multiple R's for multiple professions. Take this into consideration because you can't get mats from other professions from this.

You also have Trophy Collector, a sub-specialization from harvesting. This essentially gives you a higher chance to gather specific materials like the special materials we talked about, the Green Tech next uncommon type materials. It also gives you perception stats, which is basically the stat that lets you have a higher chance to skin these from a specific beast. You have Meat Carver, a little bit less interesting one.

You essentially have a higher chance to gather meat from skinning beasts, which is definitely used in cooking. The value of this, you know, to conservation if you have cooking, if your server or region wants these materials in the auction house to buy them, so you know, up to you. I wouldn't see much value in this even though I'm a Skinner.

Fishing is probably still going to be better. Lure Crafter, speaking of, will let you craft fishing lures to basically make you better at fishing specific fish, which obviously, if you have fishing, this is something that you might want to look into at least to unlock it at the very least. And the last big specialization for skinning is Bait Crafter, and this is where the meat could be, at least at the beginning of the patch until probably everybody gets this.

You specialize deeper into bait crafter since now, as you may have noticed, skinning is not specific to one person. Everybody that participated in the kill of a beast, as long as that beast is stackable, will receive the benefits of skinning.

The first sub-specialization for bait crafter will be Mastery, which is okay. Some of the first perks that you will unlock is basically getting a faster cooldown on your bait, which I said like once again, if you're hyperskinning hyperspawn spot, but it might not make a lot of difference. You'll probably have bait sooner, but hey, it depends on your group and the rate at which you do things.

The second perk that you will be interested in is the possibility to draw Elites from your bait, which is obviously better, higher chance to gather higher quality of materials. And the last one is to target beasts you draw for better rewards depending on the zone. Each zone, obviously like we mentioned before, has a specific beast style ecosystem. Right, you would probably find rock fangs and thunder lizards and unarmed planes, you'll probably find fourkins in tall dresses.

So if you are in a specific zone, putting a bait down will draw a specific basic into that specific zone. Or similarly, if you're in a hyper spawn spot, you'll find you'll draw more piece of that same type. Elemental infusion is the last subspec and probably the most valuable, at least right now.

It will probably change based on how many people start to do this, but Elemental infusion essentially makes you able to infuse your bait with a specific element. This is how skinners are able to gather the browse using Decay rousing Titan rousing order, rather arousing Frost and so on and so forth. The way that herbalism and Mining can also do this is basically gradually unlocked as you put points into Elemental infusion. Obviously, the Titan being the most or the order rather being the most valuable at the moment.

For me, in the way that my blood working is working right now, I just need a lot of Decay and I have unfortunately did not place any points into this. I did not think it was very valuable. But I will give you some tips and what I would recommend you guys do with your skinning. But this is something that you need to take a look look into.

Obviously, if you do intend to use Elemental infusion to make better crafts and potentially make some gold, I would advise you to check your auction house and to try to see what the price for these elements are, and if they're decently high, then maybe it's worth going into Elemental infusion.

And with that out of the way, what are the best way to actually spend points? What would be a guide overall to give you guys so that you can actually specialize even deeper and make your skinning even better? With a quick disclaimer, there are as many best ways to, or basically skinning guides out there, as there are specializations.

And what you want to do is not as straightforward as before, you just I just want to gather most of them. Because specializing in a specific material type or specific skinning activity like skinning beasts or collecting trophies or getting stomachs, or all of that, is definitely one part of skinning. Eventually, you will unlock everything, but until then, it's going to be a grind.

So, you might as well go deep into one thing that you might think is valuable and get the most out of it. Now, the guide that I will basically present to you will be a little bit more general. It is what I wish I would have done going into skinning.

I recommend that you unlock this first, but the third unlock should be done when you reach the end of your skinning leveling. Also, you don't have to put points, just unlock it for the first time. After that, I would recommend putting 10 points into bait crafter to unlock their subspecializations.

The first one that I would actually recommend to max out is Elemental infusion, especially if you're doing this before everybody else gets in on it. You want Elemental infusion so you can take advantage of it and skin a lot of bees that give you elements. Elements are used by all professions in all aspects of crafting in Dragonflight, and if you don't care about crafting anything with them, you can just sell them on the auction house and make a decent penny. Keep in mind that the best way to use the elemental infusion aspect is to do it in groups.

There are groups that are farming special elements. It depends on your server, of course. You can look in the group finder and see how many there are, and if this is something you're comfortable doing, then definitely go for Elemental infusion. It will be very worth it.

The next thing I would recommend you max out is tanning or trophy collector because tanning basically gives you more skill points overall in skinning, making skinning better. But also, trophy collector gives you the special materials. It depends exactly on what you want. Also, put 10 points into harvesting to be able to do this.

Special mats sell for less on my server, for instance, because everyone is getting trophy collector and the prices are even lower than the actual leathers and scales, which is ridiculous. But it's definitely an indicative match trick of people just getting massive trophy collector points because everybody's just putting like thousands and thousands and thousands of these percent working horns and special skills and all of that. But at the same time, these materials are definitely something that other professions will want, and not everybody can get them, so there might still be some demand. While tanning can just be better, especially if you have leatherworking, giving you more leathers faster, there are higher quality leathers so that you can craft better gear.

The next thing that you should max out is the lore crafter, especially if you are a fisher because fishing is obviously good. It's a very specific endeavor because it's not like any other farm. You just sit there and fish for a long time.

If this is how you spend your time in wow, you definitely want lore crafters so you can target specific fishes, maybe for your own cooking, maybe for specific prices on your auction house in your region where you play. The next thing will be to max out either skinning or leather mashery, essentially depending on which one you specialize in.

If you are the leather worker or maybe the auction house has better prices for either one, it doesn't really matter which one you do. You will basically choose depending on your situation. And once you max out one of them, max out the second one, and essentially, you'll be able to refine both of the materials to their max quality.

Next, max out mastery in general and then max out everything else that is left. This would probably be the best way to get skinning, in my opinion, at least looking how the market and the crafting market is right now on my server. I am playing on one of the more populated servers on horde U-turn Mill, so I would imagine that this would probably apply best for most high POP servers. This would probably be everything that you need to know about skinning.

The amount of time it takes to farm depends on how much you actually farm. Farming all of the disturbed dirt and supply packs that you fly over in Dragon Isles gives you a lot of rip tokens, but they also have chances of giving you Dragon shards and different types of materials. Going into groups to farm specific leather materials that you want is way better and way faster. It may seem weird, and some people might not be comfortable with doing this.

That's fine. In that case, maybe play BM Hunter to farm properly. But going into groups is way easier, especially if you have the elemental infusion specialization. Dark Moon Fair is your friend. It is the best of the friends, especially at the beginning, as it gives you skill points, a bunch of stuff, and rep gains.

Especially if you want to get that rep with Disciple of Gorgoa and Morook to unlock different perks for your skinning. That actually is the last tip on the list.

To level up your Renown with Disciple of Gorgoa and Morook, do the hunt with Morook and do the feasts with Iskara to gain as much rep as you can. If you do the hunt, you'll also get skinning options and possibilities that kind of offset the fact that the repetition gain with the hunt is a little bit lower. But then again, you can spam the hunt all day every day.

This is pretty much the guide that we have for you when it comes to skinning. Let us know if we missed anything. If you've discovered something that could help anybody, leave a comment down below. If you want to see more of these for other professions, like leatherworking, blacksmithing, and mining, let us know in the comments. Thank you, patrons, for supporting the channel. We love you guys. See you next time. Bye-bye.