If you’re thinking about becoming a leatherworking crafter in WoW Classic, you’ve come to the right place. This classic leatherworking guide will contain everything you need to know – from how to get started with leatherworking, to how to farm your way to max level.
So let’s dive right in.
What is Classic Leatherworking?
One of WoW Classic’s primary crafting professions, leatherworking focuses on creating leather and mail type armours from animal hides and skins. Beyond armour, leatherworkers can also create essential items like quivers, ammo pouches and armour kits.
What Classes Are Best Suited to WoW Leatherworking?
Looking at what they make, you can guess who benefits the most from leatherworking: Hunters and Rogues – these two classes benefit from their entire output. Druids and Enchantment Shamans can also benefit from the crafted armour types.
Why Choose Leatherworking?
If you’re one of the classes listed above, leatherworking can be a no brainer. But there are other reasons too:
1. Self-Sufficiency
If you’re a wearer of the amour, being able to produce your own gear can be great throughout the levelling process. As it’s an easy way to keep up with your gear requirements while simultaneously gaining experience in your crafting profession.
2. Economic Benefits
While armour may be class specific, armor kits are a highly desired item by almost all players in the game. Thus, you can make plenty of income by selling these amor kits on the auction house. You can also make money at max level by selling high-value raid gear – but that’s only really when you max out the profession.
3. Raid Relevance
When you reach max level of leatherworking, you’ll start producing some highly sought after raid gear. This can be useful either for yourself, your guild mates, or for someone else (who will pay you). Ultimately, it’s a useful end game profession.
How to Gather Leatherworking Materials
As a leatherworker, your main resource is going to be animal skins and hides. There are a few ways you can get these to fuel your profession and levelling.
1. Skinning Profession (Primary Source)
By taking the skinning gathering profession, you can skin beasts after killing them to generate your own crafting materials. This is by far the best way to go if you are levelling leatherworking alongside your character.
2. Auction House
While tough on the wallet, you can purchase all the hides you need off of the auction house if necessary. But be sure to do so when leather prices are low – as it can get seriously expensive. That said, you can always buy WoW Classic Gold in an emergency…
3. Alternative Characters
If you’re not levelling, it can be worth using alternative characters with the skinning profession to gather resources while they are doing so.
Classic Leatherwork Levelling Guide
Compared to some crafting professions, leatherworking is relatively straightforward to level. So let’s break it down:
Getting Started (1-75)
As you get started, you’ll first need to become a leatherworker. Simply visit a trainer in any major city to become a leatherworker, and get your skinning knife if you’re also taking the skinning profession. Then you’ll want to gather light leather and get crafting.
Top early recipes:
- Light Armor Kit (1-20): Requires 2 Light Leather each
- Light Leather Pants (20-45): Requires 4 Light Leather each
- Light Leather Bracers (45-75): Requires 6 Light Leather each
Intermediate Crafting (75-150)
At this point, you’ll need to focus on getting medium leather from level 15-25 beasts. As you progress you may want to farm The Wetlands and Hillsbrad Foothills, as they are great areas to farm a combination of Medium and Heavy leather – which you’ll need plenty of soon. Then you can get crafting some of these recipes:
- Handstitched Leather Cloak (75-100): Requires 3 Light Leather
- Fine Leather Belt (100-120): Requires 6 Medium Leather
- Fine Leather Tunic (120-150): Requires 8 Medium Leather and 2 Fine Thread
Advanced Crafting (150-225)
As you gather Heavy Leather from level 25-35 beasts, you’ll be able to focus on other recipes such as those listed below. You will notice that the amor starts requiring other materials – which can become costly. But if you make enough Armor Kits you should be able to make some profit by selling them on the marketplace.
- Heavy Leather Ball (150-175): Requires 4 Heavy Leather
- Heavy Armor Kit (175-200): Requires 5 Heavy Leather
- Dusky Leather Armor (200-225): Requires 12 Heavy Leather and 2 Black Dye
Expert Level (225-300)
At level 225 you’ll start needing Tick and Rugged leather. These can be time consuming to obtain, but if you’re playing regularly you will gain enough to focus on these recipes.
- Thick Armor Kit (225-250): Requires 5 Thick Leather
- Nightscape Headband (250-275): Requires 5 Thick Leather
- Rugged Armor Kit (275-300): Requires 5 Rugged Leather
WoW Classic Leatherworking Specializations
At level 225 you also get to choose a specialization. While many in the community are expecting notable changes to specializations, you can still choose between these three. Each has their focus own focus and special recipes.
While it may seem stressful choosing a specialisation, you can change specialisation by talking to your trainer. While you will need to re-level the new specialisation.
1. Dragonscale Leatherworking:
Dragonscale focuses on mail armour type, making it popular for hunters and enchantment shamans.
2. Elemental Leatherworking:
Elemental gear can be useful for raiding as a rogue/feral. But requires you to farm Essences which contribute to the elemental aspect of the specialisation.
3. Tribal Leatherworking:
Tribal is used by caster Druids, so if you’re a druid this could be your best bet.
Tips for Effective Leatherworking
- Keep your Skinning Skill Levelled – Ensure it is of high enough level to match your leatherworking, so you can continue to gather materials.
- Stock up on threads and dyes – These are needed for many recipes, so grab them when you can.
- Sell your Armor Kits from the start – Seriously, people always want and need these, so they can be a serious source of income.
- Track Auction House prices – To allow you to buy materials and sell kits when prices are in your favour.
The journey to becoming a master leatherworker is a long one – as with any crafting profession in WoW – but it’s not a hard one. Just gather, craft and sell. Then once you’re at the top of your game, make some of the most sought-after armour and Armor kits to keep your practice profitable! So, what are you waiting for? Get crafting!
Looking to boost your gear even more? Check out our WoW Classic Enchanting Guide. Learn to craft powerful enchantments and level up fast. Discover how to disenchant items for valuable materials and maximize your profits.