Leather Prices After the Skinning Rollback

Skinning Is Back to 1 Skinner per Corpse

For a stretch of the beta a skinnable body paid every skinner in the party in full, and each of them walked away with their own hides rather than a divided share. That was the version of the rule we took apart under the shared skinning rule, and it was the single thing that made Skinning behave differently from the other 2 gathering trades.

In the current build testers describe the older behaviour back in place: a corpse is skinned once, by whoever reaches it, and the hides land in 1 set of bags. We have not seen a change note that says so in Blizzard's own words, and nothing has been published about whether the revert is intended or a side effect of other work, so treat it as what players report rather than as a stated rule. Check it on your own character before you plan a route or a party around either version.

The consequence for supply is simple to state. Leather no longer scales with the number of skinners in a group; it scales with the number of beasts that die, exactly as ore scales with the number of veins somebody clicks. A party of 3 skinners now produces roughly what 1 skinner produces, which puts hides back alongside mining and herbalism as a contested resource instead of a shared one.

One difference survives the rollback, and it is the reason leather is still its own market. Hides come off mobs you were killing anyway, with no detour off the quest path, so the supply is tied to combat volume rather than to node density and route length. A zone can be stripped of herbs and still be full of skinnable beasts, and a thin levelling week for Herbalism is not automatically a thin week for Skinning.

The Contest Moved Inside Your Own Party

With the shared rule gone, 2 skinners in a group are 2 miners standing at 1 vein. The group kills faster, which is the reason to be in it, but the corpse is skinned once and the materials belong to whoever got the click. Decide it before the first pull: one player skins and the other sells their time elsewhere, or you alternate bodies and both come away with half a route's worth.

That changes the arithmetic of grouping for a gatherer specifically. Grouping still pays when the mobs are the bottleneck, when a quest collection step is dragging, or when a camp is too dense to hold alone, and all of that is covered in a gathering route's takings bracket by bracket. It stops paying the moment the second skinner is only there for hides, because the hides are no longer multiplied by heads.

Outside the group, the competition is the ordinary one. A camp that is already being worked pays what the respawn timer allows, and how often you find one stripped depends on players sharing your copy of the world rather than on how fast you kill. A quieter camp with fewer beasts often returns more hides per hour than a famous one with 3 characters circling it.

The one lever that still multiplies output is the account-wide perk rather than the party. Bountiful Harvest raises what scarce materials a route yields from Mining, Herbalism and Skinning, and it is bought with points earned by levelling crafting trades, classes and PvP rather than by gathering. Where those points come from and what they cost to spend sits with the Legacy professions tree, and the budget is tight enough that taking it in full is a decision rather than an addition.

Questions

Do all skinners in a party still get hides from the same body?

Testers working the current build describe the older behaviour: the body is skinned once and the materials go to whoever clicked it. The shared version existed earlier in the beta, and nothing official has been said about why it changed or whether it stays this way, so confirm it on your own character before building a group around either rule.

Does the rollback make Skinning a bad first gathering profession?

No, it makes it an ordinary one. Hides still arrive off mobs you were killing anyway, with no detour off the quest path, which is the whole argument for the trade. What is gone is the bonus for having company, so a second skinner in the same party is no longer adding supply, only sharing the kills.

Who buys leather apart from leatherworkers?

Tailors do in earlier versions of the game, because a number of patterns ask for leather alongside cloth, and that would put a second trade behind the same stacks. Forever reworked the recipe lists and nothing has been published about which recipes consume hides, so treat the tailor as a possible buyer to confirm in the profession book rather than as a given.

Should I still group while levelling Skinning?

Group when the mobs are the bottleneck and go solo when the respawn rate is, which is the same rule that applies to any farming spot. The difference now is that a second skinner adds nothing to the hide count, so agree before the first pull who takes the bodies and whether you alternate.