Is High-Skill Leatherworking really as Difficult as it seems?

[teoteodore]

Hunter here: I'm on my second character, and am artisan in four professions (herbalism, alchemy, skinning and leatherworking) and twice each in the secondary skills. Gotta tell you, leatherworking is the most time consuming, most expensive and most difficult of the profs so far and the only one I'm not already at 300 by lvl 45. I started on Dragonscale and after about a day of gathering scales and skins and buying some mats at the AH --- I've advance maybe 2 skill points. I suspect that the clue might be to make the cheapest, fastest orange and yellow items to advance thru the skill points and then make one or two of the dragonscale mail pieces only when and if I can afford them. Any other advice or experiences would be appreciated.

[GenXCub]

Engineering is very tough, even early on. My 43 warlock is at 200 engineering because every new recipe you get from a trainer starts as yellow. I think this is to balance out that the mat cost is usually much less than an equivalent Blacksmithing level 200 recipe.

[Jagzmtg]

You just need to wait for dragonscale leatherworking to become feasible. I have a 56 shaman, and when I ran Sunken Temple this past weekend, I ended up getting 21 Green dragonscales and 9 worn dragonscales. The problem for you is just that most of the dragonkin mobs are significantly higher level than you.

[Bullvye]

If you think LW is hard, try armorsmithing before you get to 60.

My suggestion: make the cheapest (mat-wise) orange plans you can until you 300.

-Bullvye

[Oatmealsmurf]

heh... I was about to say the same thing re: Weaponsmithing.... I feel lucky if I can advance 2 skill points in smithing in a day. That is assuming I'm actually harvesting my own mats. When the cheapest recipie you can make that will skill you up requires 20 bars of Thorium going can be slow as small thorium veins will only give you two pieces of ore max... and rich thorium veins tend to be spaced very far apart and require a great deal of travel time to farm them.

Been stuck at 291 for a minute... but hopefully it will go faster now that I just finished my turn ins for the full imperial plate set though which was eating up all my thorium.

Herbalism/Alchemy on my alt seems to be going much much faster.

[Havoc Jack]

Leveling leatherworking is peanuts to leveling blacksmithing. I've got a 300 leatherworker. My blacksmith hasn't gotten past 270 yet.

Where a leatherworking pattern might require 12 leather, there's no lack of things you can kill and skin for it. A blacksmithing pattern more likely requires 20 thorium and a gem or two, which tends to be hard to find. Not everybody skins, quite a number more mine.

(oh and by the way, I've got a level 29 engineer who's maxed at 240 skill (gnome, with the racial bonus). It really helps when he's being twinked by a miner. And no, that's not why I don't have any thorium, 240 engineering still demands mithril, which I no longer need.)

[Draguss]

Now what I did was to check my next level of LW would need for mats and save them in the bank. Once I got the training I just plowed throw. Some recipe at Camp M and I had 80 hides for it. zoom. My buds kept asking, "How did you level your LW so fast?"

[IIRuckusII]

I hated LW when I was doing the Wild Leather quests....wildvine was expensive on Vek at the time and the produced goods were often garbage like "Wild Leather Helm of the Whale".....who wants "whale" anything? or some leather piece of "spirit" with like +19 spirit

[Inferknow]

My 60 pally was a dragonscale LW of a while and then i switched him trible. And even though dragonscale is kind of diffcult is's nothing compared to any type of weaponsmith. It takes my alt. a while to make one sword and that is if i don't get anything fom AH.

[craigbeere]

I levelled leatherworking by using recipes that only needed leather. I'd go skin the yeti in Feralas until I had a bag or more of thick leather then make items and sell them to the vendor to cover the cost of thread. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Dragonscale has been a bit of a waste of time. I've sold a few Dragonscale Gauntlets (+1% crit chance) at auction. I've sold a few green (or blue) dragonscale items to vendors after they came back from auction the fifth time. Even Black Dragonscale items don't sell. With 20 dragonscale going for 30-35 gold (on Scarlet Crusade) the Black Dragonscale Breastplate (needs 60 black dragonscale plus lots of rugged leather plus rune thread) doesn't give you much profit when it does sell for 105-115 gold, especially after you've lost your auction deposit four or five times. The other Black Dragonscale items need cured rugged hide as well, which needs refined deeprock salt, also expensive.

I can farm black dragonscale, sure. I get around five an hour killing elite dragonkin. Each elite pretty much requires all my mana so I go through a lot of water.


HTH
Craig

[evanmartyr]

What really works well for me (at least, to advance quickly early on) is to find things that Twinks want, and that aren't even the best they can get, and sell those in AH. Deviate Leather Belt and the Gloves of Archery (or w/e) are both relatively easy to find mats for and sell for enough to cover the mats and then some, which helps when you have to start buying wierd ingredients. Sounds like you're past all that, but it's worth mentioning.