Skinning in Midnight has undergone a little bit of a facelift, receiving the most changes out of any of the gathering professions. This guide covers the changes, and tips on where to level your Skinning and how to place your knowledge points.
Midnight Skinning Materials
- Void-Tempered Leather
- Void-Tempered Hide
- Void-Tempered Scales
- Void-Tempered Plating
- Fantastic Fur
- Carving Canine
- Peerless Plumage
- Majestic Fin
- Majestic Claw
- Majestic Hide
Most of the materials will be obtained by simply skinning mobs, while to obtain the majestic materials you will have to use lures.
Skinning Trainer Location
The Skinning Trainer is Tyn, who is located in Silvermoon City in the Bazaar area. You will be sent to the city as one of the first quests of the campaign.
/way #2393 43.23 55.62 Skinning Trainer
New to Skinning in Midnight
There are quite a few changes to Skinning, including new systems and advancements of the old ones.
Only Two Ranks
Leather and Scales gathered by Skinners in the Midnight Expansion will only come in two ranks, as opposed to three in recent expansions. Other Skinning materials will have no ranks at all, as usual.
Epic Profession Equipment
All professions will now have access to epic quality profession equipment. The uncommon green gear can still be bought and sold on the AH, while the rare and epic gear is Bind on Pickup and has to be ordered through the work order system.
Upgraded Lure System
In Midnight the Lure System has been tweaked and is now a mandatory part of skinning, if you want to get all types of mats.
You will be able to craft 5 different Lures; one each for the four different zones, and one Grand variant. Using these Lures to spawn Renowned beasts, and killing and skinning them, is the only way to obtain the 3 Majestic materials (Majestic Fin, Majestic Claw, Majestic Hide).
The lures can be used every hour. However, during testing, only the first renowned beast per day could grant Majestic materials, and the rest you summoned that day would never drop any. If this persists, lures should be treated as a daily cooldown.
The Majestic drops are not guaranteed, even from the first renowned beast, which likely will make the Majestic materials very rare and expensive.
All the lures will require fish to make, so having a leveled Fishing profession may be important.
Fishing Lures
Skinning will no longer be making lures for fishing. Instead the Fishing profession will be making its own lures.
New System - High Value Beasts
Upon learning Midnight Skinning you will be able to track High Value Beasts, which are marked on your minimap with a unique icon. Skinning these will result in additional materials than when skinning a regular mob, roughly 3-4 times more materials in a single skin.
High Value Beasts are not as frequent as mining or herbing nodes, and we don’t think it’s worth flying from High Value Beast to the next. They are however a nice bonus if you are farming in an area and one spawns.
New System - Diffusers
You can now craft Diffusers out of motes of elements. You use 2 motes of the element of your choice; Light, Pure Void, Primal Energy or Wild Magic; to craft the Diffuser, use it on a beast to make the beast infused, then kill it. When you skin the infused beast it will drop about twice as many motes as it took to make the infuser, and of the same type as the Diffuser. This can be further buffed through the knowledge trees.
There is no cooldown on the diffusers, which means you can use them on every single mob, for an endless mote farm. However the diffusers weren’t working properly during Beta-testing, which means something could be incorrect here and we might update this text after launch.
Before Starting Skinning
If you are starting Skinning at the beginning of the Midnight expansion you will not have much of an opportunity to purchase anything. However, if you are starting later there might be a couple of things to get before you start.
Equipment
Before starting to skin, you may want to pick up some profession equipment, since the increase to skill will let you start gathering higher quality materials much earlier. You can purchase cheap green equipment from the auction house, although availability early on in the expansion may be lower.
The Thalassian Skinning Knife, Skinner's Cap and Skinner's Backpack should be great to get you started.
When you upgrade to blue and epic quality, we recommend upgrading the Knife, then the Backpack and finally the Cap.
Tea
Teas are a new type of crafted food made with the Cooking profession. There are a total of 3 teas which buff gathering professions, and which you can either buy on the AH or make yourself:
| Tea | Stat |
| Azeroot Tea | Deftness |
| Sanguithorn Tea | Perception |
| Argentleaf Tea | Finesse |
We recommend using either the Sanguithorn Tea or the Argentleaf Tea. Whichever you have the mats to craft or is cheapest on the auction house.
Leveling Skinning in Midnight
Skinning in Midnight is very easy and quick to level. Below we have suggested two good skinning areas in Eversong Woods, which is the first leveling zone of Midnight. We have purposely chosen these areas with your character not being max level in mind.
Early Midnight
In the first days or weeks of the expansion, there are usually opportunities to find a lot of unskinned dead beasts from people questing. If you find one of these goldmines, make sure to take advantage of the spot, as they may disappear as people hit the endgame.
Leather Farming Spot
In the south of Eversong Woods, in the Tranquil Repose, you can find a large amount of neutral beasts. They are generally quite clumped together and you can AoE pull them. You can do laps around this area, and there is even a rare, Harried Hawkstrider, which you can skin for additional loot once per day.
Scales Farming Spot
Scales are a little harder to find in Eversong Woods, but you can go to the Wyrms on Sunstrider Isle. While they are not the best, they are part of a world quest so you might find a lot of skinnable corpses there, if that world quest is available. You can also just do laps and will not run out of mobs. But these Wyrms are less dense than the leather spot.
Best Skinning Knowledge Build
Early Skinning choices are pretty clear cut in Midnight, as 2 of the specialisations unlock the ability to consistently gather certain resources. We have decided to go heavy into luring, with the assumption that you will be fishing for the materials of lures, or buying materials on the AH.
When you reach 25 and 50 Midnight Skinning unlock Thorough Tanning and Gainful Gathering specialization. Whichever you choose first is not that important so go with your preference.
- Thorough Tanning immediately unlocks the Sharpen Your Knife ability. Using this will guarantee that the next corpse you skin will give you a Void-Tempered Hide or Void-Tempered Plating.
- Gainful Gathering will let you start collecting the non-majestic reagents from enemies just by learning it.
Do not spend points in either of these specializations as you are only taking them to unlock the ability to gain additional materials.
Once you reach 75 Midnight Skinning, you unlock the final specialization, Talented Tracker. Put 20 points in the main wheel to unlock the first sub-specialization, and choose the left option, Majestic Materials. This will let you start collecting the three majestic materials from renowned beasts summoned by the lures.
Once you have unlocked Majestic Materials, continue placing points in Talented Tracker to unlock the final specialization, Component Collector, and all of the beast lures.
From this point on you can place your points as you like, though we suggest to either branch further into lures by filling in the Majestic Materials wheel; or to aim for higher quality materials and start putting points in the Thorough Tanning main wheel to increase the quality of the Void-Bound Leather and Void-Bound Scales you are collecting.
Where to obtain Knowledge Points
Skinning differs from the other gathering professions in that it doesn’t get a chunk of knowledge from discovering new herbs/mines. There are no discovery knowledge points at all to get for skinners. Instead we have the following ways to get knowledge:
Profession Treasures
There are a total of 8 profession treasures scattered around Midnight Zones, which award a one time only 3 knowledge points each. We have a full guide with their locations in our Midnight Profession Treasures Location Guide.
Faction Profession Knowledge
Once you reach renown 6 with Amani Tribe in Zul’Aman, you can buy 10 Skinning Knowledge from Magovu for 75 Artisan’s Skinner's Moxie and 750 Voidlight Marl.
Abundance Knowledge
You can buy 10 Skinning Knowledge from Chel the Chip for 1600 Unalloyed Abundance and 75 Artisan’s Skinner’s Moxie. Unalloyed Abundance is a currency earned from doing weekly Abundance events around Midnight zones, and Chel the Chip is a vendor at the Abundance locations.
Weekly Knowledge
In addition you can earn knowledge points weekly from several sources which we have in the table below.
| Knowledge Source | Knowledge Points |
| Weekly Quest | 3 |
| Drops from Gathering | 9 |
| Thalassian Treatise on Skinning | 1 |
Darkmoon Faire
When Darkmoon Faire is active you can gain 2 skill points and 3 knowledge points, by completing 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.
Best Professions to Pair with Skinning
We recommend pairing Skinning with Leatherworking as that can take advantage of the resources.
Or you can choose a second gathering profession:
- Mining
- Herbalism
We also recommend you have Fishing to help supply fish for the lures.
Best Race for the Skinning Profession
While all races are perfectly fine for Skinning, a few have some bonuses that will have a minor impact.
- Worgen - Their Flayer passive grants 5 additional skill to Skinning and 25% increase to deftness, letting you skin more quickly
- Dracthyr - Their Discerning Eye grants 2 % Perception, which increases the amount of rare resources you receive from skinning.
- Earthen - Their Hyper Productive grants 2 % Finesse, which increases the amount of resources you receive from Skinning.
- Kul Tiran - Have Jack of All Trades which increases all profession skills by 2.
We hope this Skinning Profession leveling guide helped you get started with this gathering profession. For more Midnight content you can check out all of our Midnight Guides.
