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Skinning is a gathering skill that allows you to take a Skinning knife and skin various beasts, dragonkins, and silithids to gather leather, hides, and scales. Some enemies can be skinned, while others can’t, but those that can be provide extra income from enemies already slain. The materials gathered from Skinning are useful in numerous trades and can be sold for a good bit at the auction house!

Skinning is a primary skill, meaning it counts towards your two profession limit. Keep this in mind when you take up Skinning, as unlearning it to learn a new profession will reset your knowledge of Skinning to zero should you choose to pick it back up again.

Either for making some extra cash or creating a new suit of leather, Skinning is a great profession for any class! It goes even better with a profession like mining or herbalism and allows you to make a pretty good income off of just gathering materials!

Be sure to check out our Profession Forums should you require any additional help with Skinning! Our community is always looking to help anyone with any questions they should have.

To begin you seek a <Skinning Trainer> out in order to pick up the Skinning profession. From there, simply interact with the trainer who will teach you the delicate art of Skinning. When you first start off you will be an Apprentice Skinner and have to pay only a few copper to learn the profession.

There are several ranks to Skinning and as your skill progresses you’ll find yourself at a point where you can’t continue further without training. Your skill in Skinning determines what level of enemies you can skin which is critical for Skinning enemies at your level!

Any character of any level can pick up Skinning and train it to any level (although Master trainers are only located in Outland, requiring level 55). This means you can have a level twenty character with 300 in Skinning, although it would be very difficult to utilize that skill at such a low level.

Skinning is the source of materials for many professions, although it is primarly used for Leatherworking. Leather by itself sells really well do to how it's used in so many crafted items and is one of the cheaper routes to go for the Darkmoon Faire.

Alchemy: Skinning and Alchemy do not go together and you would be at a major disadvantage with this combo.

Blacksmithing: Blacksmiths require metal and sometimes leather for their creations. blacksmithing and Skinning do not go together due to the high price of metal, but leather is used in many recipes.

Enchanting, Talioring: These two do not require skinning but they also don't interfere with it. A fine choice should you not want to take up Leatherworking and want to have a craft that produces something.

Engineering: Skinning is not a very good choice with Engineering. Once again, while many recipes may call upon leather, you'll find many many more requiring mining.

Herbalism or Mining: Dual gathering professions are very important to consider because of the good chance of making a decent profit off just gathering materials and reselling to players. Taking skinning then Mining or Herbalism is a good choice because Skinning doesn't have a radar finding skill (the skin is off the enemies corpse) so you it won't interfere with them!

Jewelcrafting: Jewelcrafting goes best with Mining and will get little to nothing out of Skinning.

Leatherworking: Leatherworking requires leather, hides, and scales to create things. These items are provided by Skinning, so naturally

Skinning is an easy process that should be done every time you kill an enemy that is skinnable. When you've killed an enemy (usually a beast, but can vary) then loot its corpse. Make sure it's completely empty and then over it and look for the words "skinnable" in the tooltip. If it's skinnable and you have to the skill level to do it (see further below) then you can begin the process of skinning!

To skin an enemies corpse simply right click on it (a skinning icon should appear when you hover over it). A bar will appear letting you know the time it takes to cast (which depends on what rank you have in skinning, can go up to 3 seconds) and will continue until finished. If you succeed then you'll enter loot mode (unless you have auto-loot on or shift-clicked the corpse) and be able to pick up whatever leathers/hides/scales the enemy has. If you fail then you simply try again.

The reason skinning is attractive as a profession is because you don't have to hunt down any minerals or plants. All of the leather comes from enemies you have slain, providing you with some easy extra income. Well, you do have to hunt down the skinnable enemies, but at least when they defeated you can loot whatever they have, gain XP, and then get some extra bonus loot!

The difficulty of a corpse depends entirly on the level of the enemy when it was alive. When your skill is below 100 you can skin anything that is your ((Skill Level)/10)+10. For instance, having 40 skill points in Skinning would be ((40/10)+10 = 14. After 100 skill points in Skinning the formula changes to Skill Level/5. For instance, having 200 skill in Skinning would allow you to skin enemies up to level 40.

If an enemy is skinnable then the tooltip will have a color with it. Depending on that color is if you can skin the enemy or not.

Red: Can not skin the enemy and require more skill with Skinning before you can.

Orange/Yellow/Green: You can skin it with decent (Orange is more difficult then Green) success. Orange has a great chance to give you a skill gain, yellow has an alright chance to give you a skill gain, and green has a fair chance to give you a skill gain.

Grey: You can skin it with 100% success, but there will be no skill gain.

Below is a chart on which levels differnt types of leather appear on enemies.

Below is a chart on what drops some of the special leather types.

You can combine certain pieces of leather to create a higher tier of leather, assuming you have the recipe.

3 Ruined Leather Scraps = 1 Light Leather
4 Light Leathers = 1 Medium Leather
5 Medium Leathers = 1 Heavy Leather
6 Heavy Leathers = 1 Thick Leather
6 Thick Leathers = 1 Rugged Leather

Sometimes you can benefit by taking and upgrading your pieces of leather before selling, but a good bit of the time you'll want to just sell them as is. If you are aiming for something, say Rugged leather for the faire, then you're fine combining them!

Trainers are also available in The Burning Crusade new racial starting zones (ask a guard where to go) and in Outland (they are located in the first main cities you visit for instance, Honor Hold). Any trainer should be able to teach you any level, except Master which is a Burning Crusade exclusive level of Skinning.

Hides are gathered much in the same way as regular leather, although it appears less frequently. You can cure hides using Leatherworking by curing them with salt. They follow the same naming scheme (Light Hides) and levels as regular leathers.

Scales are items coming off of Dragonkin, turtles, Silithid, and dragon whelps. They are used in Leatherworking recipes that are usually rarer then regular recipes or for mail created with Leatherworking. Regular scales can be found off of Turtles (Turtle Scale), Deviates (Wailing Caverns - Perfect Deviate Scale, Deviate Scale), Murlocs (Slimy/Thick Murloc Scale), Scorpids (Heavy Scorpid Scale, Scorpid Scale), and Silithids (Silithid Chitin).

Dragons whelps drop whelp scales depending on their color (Red/Black/Green). Dragonkin drop dragon scale (Worn, Green, Blue, Black, Red) and many Dragonkin bosses drop special scales (that may require above 300 skinning) (Dreamscale (Emerald Dream Dragons), Scale of Onyxia (Onyxia), and Brilliant Chromatic Scale (BWL).

Enchanted Leather is created by Leatherworking and requires Rugged Leather.

Etiquette is pretty simple when it comes to skinning. If it's an enemy you killed then skin away! If it's an enemy someone else has killed then ask them if you may skin it before you begin to skin. If it's a skinnable corpse and NO ONE is in the area, then look harder. If no one is still around then skin it (but save the skin should the owner of the corpse return).

Basically, with skinning, the skin is owned by whoever killed the enemy. If the owner of the kill can't skin then they will usually say "sure, skin away". However, sometimes they may not wish for you to skin their kills. In which case it's best to honor their wishes since they were the ones to place the time into the kills.

As for abandoned corpses, generally speaking they are open for anyone. Sometimes though the owner may have gone to sell items and return to skin it. In those situations you may wish to return all or some of the skinned leathers to be nice.

With anything you slay yourself then you own it and no one should attempt to skin it before you.

Join us on our forums to discuss Skinning and the other profession! Need more help? Why not ask the community! Want to comment directly to us? Email us! Xerin@TenTonHammer.com