How do you make farming leather more profitable?

Its easy, skin mobs that drop profitable cooking meats. By doing this, you “double” up on your farming and make more profit.

What meats should I farm?

The common meats needed for cooking are Worm Meat, Rhino Meat, Shoveltusk Flank, and Chunk o” Mammoth. Look on your AH and see which is going for more gold at that time and farm that type. Vary it up, so you dont flood the market with one type!

Where do I find mobs with good drop rates?

Worm meat has a high drop rate off Ravenous Jormungar and Roaming Jormungar in a cave in Storm Peaks that is marked by a circle below:

Rhino meat has a high drop rate off Shardhorn Rhino around The Suntouched Pillar, north of the Nessingway Base Camp in Sholazar Basin that is marked by circles below:

Shoveltusk Flank can be found off all Shoveltusk all over Howling Fjord.

Chunk o’ Mammoth has a high drop rate off Stoic Mammoth ouside a cave in Storm Peaks that is marked by a circle below:

Today’s gold making tip is a response to an email I received a couple days ago. The person wrote:

Hello !

I’m planning to level a second character on the other faction of my server, using a death knight as a banking alt.

And I was thinking, since that death knight can be leveled to 60 without blinking, and Grand Master <Profession> requires lvl 60, I could perhaps use it as a profession mule too.

What would you recommend as the best four-profession combo ? The main I would be leveling from 1-80 would be a rogue.

Thanks in advance,

Aeltyr

This is a very good question. First I will cover the Death Knight aspect. If you have a DK “bank alt” that you can get to level 60 that you do not plan on playing, there is one way you can make fairly good amount of gold. I would recommend Tailoring + enchanting. You are probably thinking WTFBBQ are you talking about?!?! There are 6 main reasons why I say this.

1. Tailoring and Enchanting go very well together. You can level Tailoring at no net loss if you sell the DE mats, or use those mats to level your enchanting.

2. There are also many ways to make gold off crafting tailoring items and DE’ing them for profit. (I DE Brown Linen Robes, Azure Silk Cloaks, White Bandit Masks, and Low level Netherweave items for a 50% profit margin)

3. Tailors can make gold crafting Netherweave Bags, I sell about 100 a week. This also gives you a cheap source to obtain bags for other alts/banks etc. (I will have a article on the numbers of this tomorrow)

4. You can Purchase items off the AH and DE them for profit if you don’t want to craft things.

5. You can take the cloth that you receive from leveling and turn it into something more valuable (enchant mats) and that have no listing fees.

6. You can DE all the greens you get and sell the enchant mats, again enchant mats have no listing fees while greens do.

However if you do not want tailoring as a profession on your alt, you can try inscription. This is a nice way to make gold (through Northrend Darkmoon Faire Cards, crafting glyphs etc).

For leveling, I always recommend Skinning + (Mining or Herbalism). I know some people say to do Mining and Herbalism, but I find it rather annoying to use macros to switch tracking etc. Skinning is easy money that you can get just for killing the mobs you need to xp and you don’t need to go out of your way.

If you want to be a leatherworker at 80, save the leather you skin. This will allow you to not have any upfront costs of leveling the profession. You can do this by having a bank alt with a bunch of bags, or use the mail system to send mails to your alt that you never open. (if in 30 days you haven’t cleared it out, it will be sent back to your main, but make sure you do something with it then or it will disappear when the mail expires)

Choosing between Herbalism and Mining depends on what you want to do when your 80 .

Do you want to be an Alchemist or Inscriptionists? Choose Herbalism. Herbalism also works great if you choose Inscription on your DK and Alchemy later on your main.

Do you want to be a Jewelcrafter, Engineer or Blacksmith? Choose Mining. However, do NOT smelt the ore, I repeat do NOT smelt it!!! Even if you’re going to choose Engineer or Blacksmith. Lower level ore sells for more than bars since it can be used for more professions (all three + someone leveling mining with smelting). Bigger market to sell too also means a quicker sale. If you choose to go Mining or Engineering, I recommend dropping skinning first to pick it up so you have your smelting ability still available to help speed up the process of leveling.

If you want to pick professions based on money making abilities I would choose Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking (assuming you already have tailoring and enchanting). There are several Leatherworking items you can DE, along with selling armor kits. Jewelcrafting is also a goldmine as well. However, with the increasing numbers of Jewelcrafters, you would need to be smart with the market. Save gems for big rush times (ie new seasons, new instances that provide lots of new gear)

If you have any questions your self, feel free to email me at webmaster@wowconomics.com and I will try my best to answer your questions.

There are many areas through Northrend where you can skin. The place I choose to farm is mainly related to what cooking food is the most expensive on the AH. This way I farm the meat (some go for up to 4-5g each) and leather at the same time. Some people think outside Warsong Hold is the best place to farm since you get Nerubian chitin (5g each on my server) and you’re relatively close to town. (Best solution if you can only do it for 15-20 min at a time so you spend less time in transit going back to town.)

I can update once I can find a set route that is best, but it is highly contingent on how many people farm on your server, and what extra bonuses you need from the mobs. (i.e. food, rep drops)

Outlands leather still sells, almost as much as Borean leather. So spending some time farming in Nagrand may prove profitable for you. The trick to farming lower leathers is to not flood the market, doing so will just lower the price. This also gives you the opportunity to get the talbuk that is purchasable through crystal samples/research tokens in Halaa.

The same can be done with rugged leather and thick leather (both around the same price as Borean and Knothide leather)
To sum it up, it may be more profitable to change your skinning type/location to not over flood the market. Everyone is farming Borean, so farming spots are competitive. Why compete for leather when you can go to somewhere lower where the mobs are easier to kill and the leather/meat etc are roughly the same price?

Patch 3.0.3