WoW Forever Skinning Guide

Skinning in WoW Forever is still the profession you level by killing things you were going to kill anyway. Leatherworkers still want every hide you bring back, and Forever builds more of its crafting from leather, so a skinner's bags are worth more than they were in Classic.

Most of the work is the climb. Creature level decides what you can skin, which makes the real question where to hunt at each stage and when to go back to a trainer. Past that come the materials themselves and what a skinner can do with a camp of their own.

WoW Forever Skinning Changes

The knife work on a corpse is unchanged from Classic. What grew is the profession around it.

• Trainers in the starting zones: six Junior Skinning Trainers teach Apprentice Skinning where new characters spawn, and an early quest in each starting zone can pay out Pelt Collecting for Beginners, a picture book that teaches the profession on its own.
• Camp objects: Tanning lets a skinner add features to a camp. Camping 101: Skinning asks for 20 skill and teaches the Camp Chair, a critical strike buff for everyone sitting at your camp.
• Scarce skins: Pristine Leather, Pristine Hide and Pristine Scale carry the Scarce tag, and Pristine Leather already comes off creatures in Loch Modan and The Barrens.
• Fel reagents: Fel Hide and Fel Leather are two level 60 reagents Classic never had. Both go into Leatherworking recipes only, Fel Leather into 52 of them.
• Two more camp objects: the Field Guide hands out Track Beasts, and the Trapper's Workbench holds a trap; both come from Blueprints.
• A knife with a bonus: the Keen Skinning Knife adds 3 skill, counts as the Skinning Knife and doubles as a caster dagger with spell damage and healing.
• A stronger glove enchant: Enchant Gloves - Advanced Skinning is worth +10, twice the plain Skinning enchant.
• A skinning bag: the Apprentice's Skinning Satchel has 4 slots for leather, hides, scales and the camp objects. It is the only skinning bag in the game, and all six Junior Skinning Trainers sell it.

Seventeen of the 23 trainers in the next section teach every rank, while the six Junior Skinning Trainers stop at Apprentice. The profession itself requires a Skinning Knife in your bags.

WoW Forever Skinning Trainer Locations

Skinning has four ranks. A full trainer teaches all of them, and each rank waits for the skill shown below, so train Journeyman at 50 rather than skinning on until the bar stops at 75. Your skill cannot climb past your rank's cap.

There are 23 skinning trainers. Seventeen teach every rank plus the Camp Chair, while the six Junior Skinning Trainers in the starting areas teach Apprentice only and leave the three higher ranks to the others. Every rank also needs a Skinning Knife in your bags.

Alliance Skinning Trainers

Each Alliance capital has a trainer. Four more full trainers stand on the leveling road, in Elwynn Forest, Teldrassil, Ashenvale and Redridge Mountains, and two of them appear with the starting zones below. Jayla in Ashenvale and Wilma Ranthal in Redridge Mountains are in the coordinates table at the end of this section.

Horde Skinning Trainers

Every Horde capital has a trainer too. Five more full trainers stand out in the world, in Tirisfal Glades, Mulgore, The Barrens, Desolace and Feralas: Dranh in The Barrens, Malux in Desolace and Kulleg Stonehorn in Feralas are in the coordinates table at the end of this section, and the Tirisfal and Mulgore trainers appear with the starting zones.

Skinning Trainers in the Starting Zones

Six Junior Skinning Trainers stand where new characters spawn, one in each of the six original starting zones, and they teach Apprentice Skinning but none of the higher ranks. All six also sell the Apprentice's Skinning Satchel. Four of the six add a full trainer. Zephras Isle, Forever's own island, has no Junior trainer at all. Both of its trainers serve either faction.

Learn Skinning from a Profession Book

You can skip the trainer altogether. An early quest in each starting zone offers a choice of three gathering manuals, and the skinning one is Pelt Collecting for Beginners: it teaches Skinning if you know fewer than two professions and adds 2 skill, up to 15. That takes one of your two profession slots.

At 20 skill, Camping 101: Skinning (open from level 4) points you to a skinning trainer for the Camp Chair. A camp needs a campfire before anything else, and cooks teach it.

All Skinning Trainers with Coordinates

Every trainer, sorted by faction and zone. Coordinates are in the Forever frame of each zone map.

How to Level Skinning 1-300 in WoW Forever

Skinning levels by skinning corpses, and a creature's level decides the skill it asks for. Loot it fully, then skin it. The Skinning Knife only has to be in your bags rather than in your hands, and each creature can be skinned once, after which the corpse disappears.

Skins come mostly from beasts and dragonkin, with a scattering of humanoids such as worgen, yetis and owlbears. Hover a corpse. A red Skinnable line means it is still beyond your skill. The route below runs in six brackets of 50 points, and its table names the zones that yield the most skins from creatures of each bracket.

Skinning Skill by Creature Level

The rule is simple once written down. Up to level 10 a creature asks for 1 skill, from 11 to 20 it asks for ten points a level above 10, and from 21 on it asks for five times its level. A level 40 creature needs 200; a level 60 one needs 300.

For what it's worth, the rule runs past the cap too. Level 61 creatures ask for 305, which is why the Core Leather of Molten Core needs a skill bonus on top of 300.

Best Skinning Zones by Skill

Start with the lower-level creatures of a zone and move to the higher ones as the skill climbs. Each bracket below covers the creatures whose requirement opens inside it.

Skinning 1-50

Levels 1 to 14. Any starting zone works. Across the bracket The Barrens yields the most skins, then Durotar, Darkshore, Dun Morogh and Elwynn Forest, with boars, plainstriders, bears and wolves throughout. On Zephras Isle, 20 kinds of beast can be skinned, Prideclaw, Galestriders, hippogryphs and Vuldren among them, most of them for Ruined Leather Scraps and Light Leather.

Train Journeyman at 50.

Skinning 50-100

Levels 15 to 19. The Barrens wins this bracket by a distance: 23 kinds of skinnable creature live there, Sunscale Scytheclaws, Ornery Plainstriders and Oasis Snapjaws among them, against three in Redridge Mountains. Redridge and Westfall share their Great Goretusks, and Redridge adds the Black Dragon Whelps that give Black Whelp Scale. Darkshore has six kinds, Grizzled Thistle Bears and Moonstalker Sires among them.

Skinning 100-150

Levels 20 to 29. This is the bracket where Medium Leather takes over. Wetlands leads on its raptors, then Duskwood with its wolves and worgen, Hillsbrad Foothills with lions and bears, and Thousand Needles with wyverns and cougars. Wetlands alone has 17 kinds of skinnable creature in these levels, from Mottled Raptors at 22 to Mottled Razormaws at 26-27, and Duskwood has 13.

Train Expert at 125.

Skinning 150-200

Levels 30 to 39. Stranglethorn Vale holds more skins here than the next two zones together — basilisks, raptors and tigers, 22 kinds in all, from Young Stranglethorn Tigers at 30 to Lashtail Raptors at 35-36. Hillsbrad Foothills and Alterac Mountains carry yetis, Thousand Needles turtles and scorpids, Badlands coyotes.

Train Artisan at 200.

Skinning 200-250

Levels 40 to 49. Feralas comes first with 21 kinds of skinnable creature, Feral Scar Yetis and Longtooth Runners among them, and Stranglethorn Vale stays useful for its Elder Mistvale Gorillas, Jungle Stalkers and Ironjaw Basilisks. Tanaris and The Hinterlands follow — and their turtles give Turtle Scale alongside Thick Leather.

Skinning 250-300

Levels 50 to 60. Winterspring holds the most skins of any zone in this bracket, from yetis, chimaeras and bears, then Silithus, Un'Goro Crater with its pterrordaxes and diemetradons, and Eastern Plaguelands.

WoW Forever Leather, Hides and Scales by Skill

Leather comes in tiers by creature level, and five tiers have a matching hide. The levels below are where most of each material comes from.

Frankly, hides are the rare half of each pair. Forever made them matter. A raw hide goes into one recipe, its own curing: leatherworkers cure it with salt, and the cured hides go into far more recipes than in Classic Era. Cured Rugged Hide is made only at a Tanning Rack, the leatherworker's camp object.

Scales and special leathers come from narrower sets of creatures. The skill shown is the lowest any of them asks for.

Three creatures give Devilsaur Leather, all of them devilsaurs in Un'Goro Crater. Raptor Hide is the trap. Fair warning: it is a drop and not a skin, so the raptors of Stranglethorn Vale leave it in their loot, while skinning those same raptors gives plain leather.

New Skinning Materials in WoW Forever

Forever adds three Scarce skins and two Fel reagents, and all five fit in the skinning satchel.

Pristine Leather comes first. Skinners take it from creatures in Loch Modan and The Barrens, and 95 kinds of creature drop it as loot, 28 of them in The Barrens. It goes into 126 recipes, 80 of them Leatherworking and 30 Blacksmithing. Pristine Hide is skinned from the Maddened Rotclaws of Wetlands.

All three Pristine skins carry the Scarce tag, the tag the Bountiful Harvest perk increases. Fel Leather is the bigger of the two Fel reagents: 52 Leatherworking recipes against 8 for Fel Hide.

WoW Forever Skinning Camping: Camp Chair, Field Guide and Trapper's Workbench

Each of the three skinning camp recipes makes one object. They all need a campfire. Every one stands for 15 minutes and sits on the one-hour cooldown that all camp objects share, and a Field Guide or a Trapper's Workbench can replace a Camp Chair while still giving everything the chair does.

The Camp Chair costs 1 silver at any full trainer, or comes free from Camping 101: Skinning, and its buff gives 2% critical strike chance with spells and attacks to everyone sitting nearby. It does not stack with Moonkin Aura. A player who reads the Field Guide gains Track Beasts, which shows nearby beasts on the minimap.

Blueprint: Field Guide drops from Lady Anacondra in the Wailing Caverns dungeon at a 0.25% drop chance, about one in 400 kills. Honestly, that is a long farm. Blueprint: Trapper's Workbench is rarer still, at 0.01% from Houndmaster Loksey in the Scarlet Monastery dungeon, and it needs Skinning 300 before you can learn it.

WoW Forever Professions

What WoW Forever Leather Is Used For

Forever put leather into far more recipes than Classic Era ever did: Light Leather goes into 99 against 41, and Rugged Leather into 213 against 135.

The cured hides grew the most. Cured Light Hide sits in 49 recipes where Classic Era had 10 — and Cured Medium Hide in 45 where it had 4, every one of them Leatherworking. Heavy Scorpid Scale doubled to 46 recipes. Most of that demand is Leatherworking, and our WoW Forever Leatherworking guide shows how much of each leather its route burns through.

Leather also fills a Waylaid Crate. You identify the lost shipment by reading its label, and from there a Textiles crate takes 20 leather and a Fabrics crate 2 cured hides, each as one bundle from its list below. Once it is sealed, an Apprentice crate turns in for 5 or 10 Merchant's Favor and a Journeyman crate for 10 or 20 — double that when the Performance Bonus perk procs.

Best Skinning Tools, Gear and Bags in WoW Forever

Every rank of Skinning needs a knife, and two other items do the knife's job.

The Keen Skinning Knife stands out. It is an item level 19 dagger with spell damage and healing on it and no level requirement of its own, so a Horde caster can skin and fight with the same item once the level 14 quest that rewards it is done. The plain Skinning Knife costs 10 copper at 93 of the 97 vendors that sell it.

Skill bonuses let you skin a creature before your trained skill reaches it, and past 300 they are the only way up.

Cartilage Shapers drop from Lyn the Ignored. Lyn is a rare elite in Alterac Mountains, and the gloves come off at a 46.15% drop chance. The bonuses sit in different places: the Shapers are gloves, the glove enchant can go on them, and the knife sits in your main hand, so all three together give +17. Look, either glove enchant on its own takes a 300 skinner to the 305 that level 61 creatures ask for. The Apprentice's Skinning Satchel is the one skinning bag in the game: 4 slots, sold for 26 copper by most of its 35 vendors, the six Junior Skinning Trainers among them.

WoW Forever Legacy Perks for Skinning

Four perks of the Legacy Professions tree touch Skinning, counting the one that pays out on crates.

For a skinner, Bountiful Harvest is the one that changes the loot: its last rank doubles the Pristine skins and every other Scarce material you find. Working Overtime raises the chance of a skill point from any tradeskill. Performance Bonus needs 5 points in the tree and gives a crate hand-in a 5%, 10% or 15% chance of double Merchant's Favor. Dedicated Study opens after 10 points spent. It is a 25-second cast with a 23-hour cooldown that adds a point to your lowest tradeskill. Skinning itself earns no Legacy points. Tradeskill points come only from non-gathering professions at 150, 225 and 300.

WoW Forever Skinning FAQ