World of Warcraft: Forever Skinning Guide

Skinning is a primary gathering profession that lets you collect leather, hides, and scales from defeated creatures throughout Azeroth. This overview covers how to skin creatures, the benefits Skinning provides in WoW Forever, the best profession to pair with it, where to find trainers, and the materials you can gather as your skill increases.

Skinning is a gathering profession that lets you collect crafting materials from the bodies of certain creatures after their regular loot has been collected. You will need a Skinning Knife and enough Skinning skill to skin the creature, with higher-level creatures generally requiring more skill.

Many beasts, including wolves, boars, and bears, can be skinned while you are questing. You might gather Ruined Leather Scraps and Light Leather in a starting area, then move on to Medium Leather, Heavy Leather, Thick Leather, and Rugged Leather as you fight stronger creatures. Some creatures also provide special materials, such as Turtle Scale or Devilsaur Leather.

Most of these materials are used by Leatherworkers to make leather and mail armor, armor kits, and other equipment; other professions also use leather and the new scarce materials found through Skinning. You can keep what you gather for your own recipes or sell it to other players, earning extra gold from creatures you are already defeating.

Leatherworking is the best profession to pair with Skinning because its recipes use large amounts of leather, hides, and scales. Gathering these materials yourself makes Leatherworking cheaper to level, and you can turn them into armor and armor kits for your own use or to sell to other players as a means to make gold.

Once you have learned Skinning, always keep a Skinning Knife in your bags. Defeat a creature, collect all of its regular loot, and check whether the corpse is marked as skinnable. Interact with it again to gather its Skinning materials, provided your skill meets the requirement. Each corpse can only be skinned once, even if several members of your group have the profession.

Skin creatures regularly as you quest so that your skill keeps up with the enemies you encounter; if a creature requires more skill than you have, return to lower-level beasts until you can gather from it. WoW Forever has made the skinning requirements much more friendly, allowing you to follow a much smoother progression path while leveling up. Remember to visit a trainer for the next rank before reaching your current skill cap.

Skinning boosts let you skin creatures before reaching their normal skill requirement. For example, a +5 boost lets you skin a creature requiring 150 Skinning when your base skill is 145. Both weapon bonuses and glove enchants require the item to be equipped, and you can combine their bonus for an even higher skill boost.

Item	Effect	Source
Keen Skinning Knife	+3 Skinning skill while equipped. Requires Level 14 and the ability to use daggers.	Unwelcome Guests quest reward.
Enchant Gloves - Skinning	Enchants gloves to grant +5 Skinning skill.	Enchanting (200).
Enchant Gloves - Advanced Skinning	Enchants gloves to grant +10 Skinning skill.	Enchanting (250).

The Skinning skill needed to gather materials depends on the creature, rather than the leather or hide it gives. Higher-level creatures generally provide higher-tier leather, though creatures of the same type can yield different materials; check the corpse's skill requirement before attempting to skin it.

For ordinary creatures at Level 20 and above, the usual requirement is five times the creature's level: a Level 20 creature requires 100 Skinning, while a Level 40 creature requires 200. Lower-level creatures have smaller requirements, allowing you to begin in a starting area at level 1 skill.

The table below groups ordinary leather with its corresponding hide and lists examples of creatures and outdoor zones where you can gather it. Hides are less common than leather, so you may need to skin several creatures to find the ones needed for a recipe.

Material	Example Zones
Ruined Leather Scraps	Elwynn Forest, Teldrassil, Zephras Isle
Light Leather Light Hide	Westfall, The Barrens, Darkshore, Loch Modan
Medium Leather Medium Hide	Wetlands, Hillsbrad Foothills, Ashenvale, Thousand Needles
Heavy Leather Heavy Hide	Stranglethorn Vale, Badlands, Swamp of Sorrows, Dustwallow Marsh
Thick Leather Thick Hide	Tanaris, Feralas, The Hinterlands, Blasted Lands
Rugged Leather Rugged Hide	Winterspring, Western Plaguelands, Felwood, Un'Goro Crater

Some recipes require materials from particular types of creatures. Look for the creatures listed below when you need these reagents, rather than expecting them from every beast of a similar level.

Material	Creatures	Locations
Black Whelp Scale	Black whelps	Redridge Mountains
Red Whelp Scale	Red whelps	Wetlands
Deviate Scale Perfect Deviate Scale	Deviate raptors and serpents	Wailing Caverns and its entrance caves
Green Whelp Scale	Green whelps	Swamp of Sorrows
Shadowcat Hide	Shadowmaw Panthers and Shadow Panthers	Stranglethorn Vale, Swamp of Sorrows
Turtle Scale	Mudrock Tortoises, Saltwater Snapjaws, Steeljaw Snappers, and Surf Gliders	Dustwallow Marsh, The Hinterlands, Tanaris
Scorpid Scale	Scorpid Hunters, Scorpid Tail Lashers, and Scorpid Dunestalkers	Tanaris
Worn Dragonscale	Black Dragonspawn, Cobalt Scalebanes, and Nightmare Scalebanes	Burning Steppes, Winterspring, Sunken Temple
Green Dragonscale	Green Scalebanes, Green Wyrmkin, and Nightmare dragonkin	Swamp of Sorrows, Sunken Temple
Red Dragonscale	Red Dragonspawn and Red Wyrmkin	Grim Batol, Wetlands
Blue Dragonscale	Cobalt dragonkin and blue dragonkin	Winterspring, Azshara
Black Dragonscale	Black Dragonspawn and Flamescale Dragonspawn	Burning Steppes
Heavy Scorpid Scale	Stonelash scorpids, Firetail Scorpids, and Venomtip Scorpids	Silithus, Burning Steppes
Devilsaur Leather	Devilsaurs, Tyrant Devilsaurs, and Ironhide Devilsaurs	Un'Goro Crater
Warbear Leather	Shardtooth bears, Angerclaw Grizzlies, and Diseased Grizzlies	Winterspring, Felwood, Western Plaguelands
Frostsaber Leather	Frostsabers	Winterspring
Chimera Leather	Chillwind chimaeras, Mistwing Ravagers, and Mistwing Rogues	Winterspring, Azshara

WoW Forever adds Fel Leather and Fel Hide for new endgame crafting recipes. Gathering locations and skill requirements for these materials are not yet fully documented and will be added as more information becomes available.

• Fel Leather — Used by Leatherworkers to make new armor, including Warbear Helm and Tranquil Wristguards.
• Fel Hide — Used to make items such as Tranquil Wristguards and Mystic Rugged Armor Kit.

Skinning can also yield scarce crafting materials in addition to ordinary leather and hides. These materials are used in new recipes across several professions, giving you more reasons to keep skinning creatures as you travel:

• Pristine Leather — Used in new Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, and Tailoring recipes, including armor and bags.
• Pristine Hide — Used to make new armor and bags, including Skycaller's Mail Sabatons and Bottomless Reagent Bag.
• Pristine Scale — Used in higher-level recipes, including Warbear Helm and Mystic Rugged Armor Kit.

Skinners can make three items to place at a campsite, giving nearby players a critical strike chance buff and eventually providing beast tracking or a trap. Each item requires a nearby campfire, and camping features share a cooldown of one hour. The skill and source for each item are shown below:

Campfire Item	Skill to Place	Source	What It Does
Camp Chair	20	Trainer	Grants critical strike chance with spells and attacks to players sitting nearby; does not stack with Moonkin Aura.
Field Guide	140	Blueprint: Field Guide	Grants Track Beasts to players who read it and provides the Camp Chair buff.
Trapper's Workbench	300	Blueprint: Trapper's Workbench	Contains one trap with a skinnable beast, and provides the Camp Chair buff.

In The Same Category

CookingHerbalismFirst AidFishingMiningBlacksmithing