WoW Leatherworking Guide

• Notice: This is a wow leatherworking guide. If you are looking for a 1-80 leveling guide, check out these guides: Team Idemise Guide and Zygor Guides
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One of the useful primary professions for druids, hunters, shamans, and rogues is leatherworking. This allows players to transform leather and other raw materials into armor, quivers, cloaks, and armor kits, among other things. Leatherworkers can actually create some mail armor in addition to leather armor, making the profession useful for classes that eventually learn to wear mail. This WoW leatherworking guide will outline how to get the most out of leatherworking.

Companion Professions
Your characters can only have two primary professions at once, so if you take leatherworking, you’ll only be able to learn one other primary skill. The most useful is skinning. With skinning, you’ll be able to gather leather from many of the different beasts you fight. Without skinning, you’ll have to purchase leather off the auction house or get it from another character. In addition to using leather for your own leatherworking projects, you will most likely end up with excess leather that you can sell on the auction house.

Leatherworking Tools
For most leatherworking patterns, you do not need any special tools in your inventory. However, some cured hides do require refined deeprock salt. To make this salt, you’ll need to be at least skill level 250 in leatherworking and have a salt shaker. Salt shakers are made by engineers. However, many of the items that use refined deeprock salt are no longer in demand, and leatherworkers don’t have to make any of those items in order to level their leatherworking skill.

Becoming a Leatherworker
To become a leatherworker, you need to find a trainer. Most of the major cities feature a leatherworking trainer who will teach you the apprentice leatherworking rank and some of the basic patterns. All you need to do then is start collecting leather and the other required materials. As you start making items, you’ll notice that the patterns you can make start changing colors. As you gain more and more skill points, the harder patterns will become easier for your character to create, and thus you won’t gain as many skill points from that pattern. Difficult patterns are orange and always give a skill point, while the yellow challenging patterns will usually provide a skill point. Green patterns will most likely not increase your skill, and grey patterns never will. When a pattern becomes grey, you will probably want to start making something else.

Once you’ve gained 75 skill points, you will have maxed out your apprentice leatherworking skill. This means it’s time to return to a trainer and learn the journeyman skill. Your character has to be level 10 to learn this skill. Following journeyman, you’ll train as an expert (125 skill points and level 20), artisan (200 and level 35), master (275 and level 50) and grand master (350 and level 65). Note that master training requires you to have the Burning Crusade expansion, while grand master requires the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

Specializing – WoW Leatherworking Guide
Leatherworkers can choose to specialize in one of three different areas. Once they reach level 40 and have 225 skill points, a series of quests becomes available for each specialization. Once you’ve completed one of the three quests, you can specialize in that area and learn many unique patterns. You can later change specializations for a small fee if you like.

The elemental leatherworking specialization provides leather armor that is high in agility and stamina, making it ideal for rogues and feral druids. Survival hunters may also benefit from the high agility, although they may not want to give up the higher defense that mail armor gives them.

Dragonscale leatherworking, on the other hand, focuses on stamina and intellect, and it includes more mail pieces. Shamans will enjoy the extra spell damage and critical hit, while hunters will want the pieces with more attack power.

Finally, tribal leatherworking revolves around leather armor with high spirit, intellect, and stamina bonuses. It’s most useful for druids, especially those who are restoration or balance.

Armor Kits
In addition to making many different types of leather and mail armor, one of the most sought after leatherworking items are the armor kits. These armor kits can permanently add more armor to gloves, leggings, chest, or boots. There are also some special leg armor and glove reinforcements available to higher level leatherworkers.

Leatherworking-Only Items
Leatherworkers in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion have access to several different upgrades to their own armor. They must be skill level 400 to 405 to learn these, and some of the patterns have to be found from defeating enemies. These augments cannot be done to other player’s gear—only the leatherworker can use them, and they become inactive if you drop leatherworking as a profession.

Fur lining can add +70 resistance to one specific school of magic (arcane, fire, frost, nature, or shadow). Other fur linings add attack power, spell power, or stamina. Fur lining is applied to bracers only. Leg reinforcements add either stamina and agility or attack power and critical strike, depending on which of the two you apply.

High Level Patterns
Some of the most useful and highest level patterns must be bought from a dwarf named Braeg Stoutbeard in the city of Dalaran. However, he won’t accept gold for his patterns; instead, you must trade him either Arctic Fur or Heavy Borean Leather. Fortunately, you can skin many of the beasts in Northrend for these two items, and if you have a lot of extra gold lying around, you can always buy them off the auction house.

Thanks for reading my WoW leatherworking guide. I really hope you found it beneficial.