Skinning in the War Within (Khaz Algar Skinning) has kept a similar layout to Dragonflight, killing beasts and skinning them to get Leather, Hides, Chitin and Carapace. However, Skinners now get a new hour-long cooldown to guarantee rare materials.
This guide covers what we think are some great spots to level your Skinning to 100. We have included a Leather Area (Leather gear) and a Chitin area (Mail Gear).
Skinning Trainer Location
The Skinning trainer is Ginnad, who is located in the east of The Foregrounds in the south of Dornogal.
Dornogal is the capital of The War Within, and is located in the first zone. You will be sent here within the first ten quests, so make sure to visit the trainer then.
Base Materials
This is a list of the base materials you can receive from skinning, regardless of skinning specialization choices:
Leveling Skinning in The War Within
Skinning in The War Within is a quick process to level. Below are our two recommended areas for leveling skinning. These spots are both on Isle of Dorn, which is the first leveling zone in The War Within, and the spots have been chosen with your character not being max level in mind.
The full process of leveling Skinning to 100 will be by killing and skinning beasts throughout The War Within.
Early into The War Within
In the first weeks of the expansion there are usually great opportunities to find heaps of dead beasts unskinned, a large number of people are leveling and doing quests in places where there will not be as much traffic later on in the expansion. Make sure to take advantage of any such spot when you find one.
Leather Spot
North of Boulder Springs is a big area with Plainswalker Shalehorn and Ironhoof Shalehorn. These mobs are part of a side quest, so early on in the expansion other people will be killing mobs here. However, we think this spot is great even when there is no one else here, as you can do laps and never run out of mobs to kill and skin.
Chitin Spot
Along the coast, on the west of the Isle of Dorn, there is a cove just north of Dhar Oztan where there is a large number of Mana-Flecked Crawlers. While they are not part of any quest for the area, there are a lot of them with a pretty fast respawn rate. You can just do laps up and down the coast and never run out of mobs to kill.
Skinning Profession Knowledge
Skinning has three profession knowledge specializations; all three will increase the amount of resources you receive. That being said, we do recommend unlocking these in a specific order:
- Tanning gains access to the Sharpen Your Knife ability, which makes your next skin grant a guaranteed Hide or Carapace. This ability is on a 1 hour cooldown, but you can gain additional charges by spending knowledge points in the Tanning specialization.
- Luring gains access to the ability to craft Elusive Creature Lures. These lures will spawn specific mobs that you will need to kill and skin for additional rare materials. The Lure is crafted through meat and can be further improved to summon specific mobs by spending knowledge points in the Luring specialization.
- Harvesting does not grant any unique ability and will just grant a small amount of deftness increasing your skinning speed.
Where you spend your knowledge points from this point on will depend on what you want from skinning.
If you want better quality base materials, spend points in the Tanning Specialization. The sub-specialization will let you refine your poor quality materials into better quality.
Harvesting will let you find meat when skinning, and with the Meat Carver sub-specialization you will be able to learn an ability which guarantees meat on your next skin.
In previous expansions meat hasn’t been worth a lot; but in The War Within the cooking profession has become significantly more expensive to level up, and feasts used at max level will require more materials than before. For this reason we predict meat to be significantly more expensive than previously, which could make Harvesting a great choice for making gold.
Luring will let you summon the elusive creatures of Khaz Algar and get their unique skinning drops, which are used by a large number of professions. By putting points in the Trained Tracker sub-specialization you will reduce the cooldown on this ability every time you skin.
Darkmoon Faire
When Darkmoon Faire is active you can gain 2 skill points and 3 knowledge points; it will be a short quest from Chronos called Tan My Hide.
We recommend leaving this as late as possible to get the most value out of the increased skill points.
