Skinning

A lot has changed with gathering in TWW – make sure you read the Gathering guide first!

Tools of the Trade

Picking a Skinning Toon

Unlike other professions, combat capability matters for skinning. If you haven’t already figured out which toon will be your skinner, you should choose one that you plan to level to max and spend a bit of effort gearing. Try to pick a class/spec that can aggro a bunch of creatures, survive being attacked by all of them at once, and has excellent AoE burst. Havoc Demon Hunter is my personal favorite.

Skinning items & where to find them

Color coding indicates rarity/quality

  • Gloom Chitin – the basic mail reagent – drops from reptiles, crabs, krolusks, worms, insects, spiders, flayers, etc.
  • Stormcharged Leather – the basic leather reagent – drops from mammals, birds, eels, frogs, etc.
  • Thunderous Hide – rare drop from leather creatures
  • Sunless Carapace – rare drop from chitin creatures
  • Burning Cinderbee Setae – drops from bees and wasps
  • Kaheti Swarm Chitin – drops from nerubian creatures
  • Honed Bone Shards – drops from shalehorns and krolusks
  • Bottled Storm – drops from storm themed creatures
  • Superb Beast Fang – guaranteed drop 1x/day from Slatefang, summoned by superb beast lure (requires specializaiton)
  • Crystalline Powder – drops from creatures summoned by crystalline lures (requires specialization)
  • Writhing Sample – drops from creatures summoned by writhing lures (requires specialization)
  • Viridescent Spore – drops from creatures summoned by sporefused lures (requires specialization)

Skinning Specializations (3)

1. Tanning  

Tanning lets you get higher quality mats when skinning, which lets leatherworkers make higher quality goods.

The base node improves your skill at gathering by 1 point for every point invested, gives you the ability to refine hides, and a new ability – “Sharpen Your Knife” which guarantees a hide/carapace the next time you skin.  You get 1 charge of this for unlocking the specialization, and additional charges at 20 and 40.

The secondary nodes improve skill (and to a lesser extent the non-skill stats) to leather and chitin gathering specifically, and gives refining for that subtype. 

2. Harvesting 

Harvesting gives you bonus stuff while skinning regular creatures

The base node improves your deftness/finesse/perception and helps with misc. reagent gathering. The base node primarily boosts deftness, and allows you to find stomachs. 

The secondary nodes:

  • Fishing Friend: increases deftness and allows you to make lures
  • Meat Carver: increases finesse and lets you use “Carve Meat” which guarantees meat will drop from your next gather
  • Trophy Taker: increases perception, which helps you get the rarer reagents that drop from regular creatures. The capstone ability is a whopping 150 perception.

3. Luring 

This teaches you how to make lures to bring all the creatures to you, or summon special ones that drop rare reagents.

The base node improves your finesse and allows you to make elusive creature lures and “Beast Lure Scent” which brings all nearby creatures to you, for a skinning spree. The capstone ability reduces your lure CDs when you skin rare/elite creatures.

The secondary nodes:

  • Trained Tracker: increases deftness and allows you to lure elite & rare elusive creatures
  • Impressive Infuser: increases perception and allows you to infuse your lures with special reagents to attract creatures that will drop more of that reagent (Crystalline Powder, Viridescent Spores, Writhing Samples). It will also reduce your lure CD.

Suggestions for Skinning

General Utility Build:

Start with the Tanning specialization. You’ll get the skill you’ll need to gather quality 2-3 mats here. Fill the base node and unlock the secondary nodes when they become available. Use your “Sharpen Your Knife” ability as often as you can – the guaranteed hide is a great ability (if you’re gathering to sell, the leather hides are worth more than chitins).

After filling your Tanning base node, your next best options (in no particular order) are:

  • Invest in a Tanning secondary node for more skill. If you’re a LW, choose the one that gives you the material type you use most.
  • Harvesting(10)→Trophy Taker. Perception and additional rare reagents are always good.
  • The Luring base node is full of tasty finesse, and dang does LW eat up a lot of mats. You’ll want to fill the base node until at least 20 for the phermone lure, which brings all the animals to you, and makes skinning go so much faster (assuming your toon has good AoE).

Ultra-rare Reagent Farming Build

Luring(10)→Trained Tracker(40) will teach you how to make a Superb Beast Lure that lets you summon Slatefang in the Ringing Deeps (/way #2214 63.0 50.0 Use Lure Here). Once a day, per toon, you can skin it to get a Superb Beast Fang, which is quite valuable. Unfortunately starting here isn’t good for a general purpose skinner. Note: Slatefang is no joke, and if you’re not max level, you’ll have a hard time killing it w/o help.

Farming Tips

  • Mass Chitin: Pillar-nest Xesh in Azj-kahet (just East of the City of Threads) has a ton of tightly packed spiders. You can quickly get lots of chitin, and your weekly knowledge point drops, here.
  • Chitin & bones: The area near Slatefang in the Ringing Deeps (/way #2214 62.0 49.0) is fairly decent for chitin farming. The krolusks drop Honed Bone Shards which tend to be more valuable than the other species related drops.
  • Leather & bones: For leather, I usually stop right outside of Dornegal (/way #2248 58, 33 Warphorn) and gather up the Stormtop Shalemaws, Shalehorns, and the elite mob Warphorn, who patrols the area. The Shalehorns drop Honed Bone Shards. Warphorn is skinnable once a day, and drops a large amount of Honed Bone Shards. The Shalehorn (except Warphorn) are neutral, so it might take some gymnastics or a Beast Lure Scent to get them to rounded up.

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