Skinning Guide for Dragonflight

Skinning is responsible for processing the corpses of Dragonflight Beasts into skins and hides widely used by Leatherworking and to a lesser extent by other specializations. They can also craft Lures and Baits, such as Temporal Dragonhead Lure or Titan-Infused Creature Bait which allow for more targeted material farming.

In Dragonflight, multiple skinners can skin the same mob, as long as they were in the group responsible for its tagging or no skinners were present in the group that tagged. This opens up efficient group farming for skins and removes the risk of ninja looting by other players in the area.

Dragonflight also introduces Crafting Specializations, which you are able to unlock once your profession skill hits 25. These serve as a profession talent tree system fueled by Skinning Knowledge, obtained from weekly quests, one-time treasures in the Dragon Isles, Draconic Treatises, and first-time crafts.

While you will eventually be able to unlock all talents, doing so will require a long time as the sources of knowledge are very limited, especially once one-time treasures and first-crafts are exhausted.

Devastation Evokers with their unique Dracthyr mobility abilities, Soar and 2% baseline Perception gain racial, are great options for skinning.

The very best skinners, however, should be Worgen Beast Mastery Hunters and Guardian Druids, who benefit from the ability to quickly round up a lot of beasts to kill safely, while also having extra skinning skill and increased skinning speed!

Dragonflight introduces three new stats specific to gathering professions: Perception, Deftness, and Finesse.

We explain what each stat does and how to maximize them in the specialized guide below:

Skinning can make great use of all three stats, but you might want to focus on specific stats for different playstyles. We go into detail with Skinning stats and the gear you can use to boost them in the specialized guide below:

You can gather four base skin types:

Resilient Leather, which are skinned from any non-Dragon and non-Scalehide beasts, who give Adamant Scales, instead.

Rarely, you can find Dense Hide from regular beasts and Lustrous Scaled Hide from Dragons and Scalehides, instead!

Some enemy types can drop unique types of skins such as Rockfang Leather, which comes from Rockfang Cats / Tiger beasts. You can also find:

• Windsong Plumage from Ohuna Bird enemies;
• Crystalspine Fur from Crystalspine Quillbeast enemies;
• Salamanther Scales from Salamanther Lizard enemies;
• Pristine Vorquin Horn from Vorquin Stag enemies;
• Fire-Infused Hide from specific Fire Beast enemies;
• Cacophonous Thunderscale from Thunder Lizard enemies.

Skinning is perhaps the easiest primary profession to level, as all you need to do is kill and skin mobs, without any real concern for your own skill level or enemy levels and modifiers.

Regardless, you should still take into account the racials of the character you are leveling on and learn about the knowledge points you will need to advance your Specializations, both of which are discussed in our specialized guide below:

Skinning Specializations dictate what enemies you are most proficient at skinning, and you can even learn how to craft Baits and Lures with the Bait Crafter tree!

As Skinning is so easy to level, we would recommend you to quickly unlock all trees, starting with Harvesting for its damage benefit while leveling, while deciding what tree to specialize into later.

Skinning Specializations are divided into three disciplines, each with multiple sub-specializations within which can be unlocked as you put points into their pre-requisite disciplines, akin to talent trees.

Tanning is what you need in order to learn how to refine hides to maximum Quality. Depending on what you invest into, you will learn how to refine Hides, Leather, and Scales, and also gain more skill and secondary stats while skinning enemies.

Harvesting has a great first point benefit which increases your damage against Dragons and Beasts in the outdoor zones, allowing you to level and skin faster.

Beyond that, you can learn how to occasionally loot Curiously-Shaped Stomach when skinning, which contain Enchanting materials and other useful goodies, how to gather more unique skins from enemies with Trophy Collector, how to craft Fishing baits with Lure Crafter, and how to gather more meat from enemies with Meat Carver.

Bait Crafter has nodes that teach you how to craft Baits, such as Elusive Creature Bait.

You can also learn how to infuse them with elemental power in order to target farm specific Awakened Essences with the Elemental Infusion tree.

Skinning makes gold by farming skins in the Dragon Isles, with rarer skins being looted based on your Perception stat.

As skins are a common ingredient for Leatherworking, try to sell yours in raid days, when Leatherworkers are more likely to be looking to create and sell their wares. The Undermine Journal can also help you understand the price fluctuation for skins in your server, and which skins are best to farm at any given moment.

We have a specialized guide for Dragonflight goldmaking below, which contains a goldmaking tier list and goes deeper into techniques and habits for successful gold making, as well as websites and addons that can help you on your journey!