Leatherworking: Gold Making Guide

Introducing our new writer, Ghoulaash. You can look forward to more articles about making gold in the World of Warcraft from him. Please feel free to leave some feedback for him.

I would like to say hello and thank you for the opportunity to share my gold making techniques with you all. My main is a level 80 enhancement shaman on Detheroc. I have maxed out Leatherworking and Engineering. I make my gold in a lot of different areas, but the bulk of it at the moment is made with leatherworking. So that is what I will be sharing with you today is my guide to leatherworking.

Borean Leather

The first piece and most important piece of advice I can give is buy as much regular borean leather as you can. I pay between 10g and 12g per stack, perhaps a little more if I am running out. Since 3.3.3 dropped you are able to trade 10 pieces of heavy borean leather for 1 arctic fur. This can be done in Dalaran, from Braeg Stoutbeard, in front of the leatherworker trainer. This makes getting arctic furs quite a bit cheaper as they are generally in the 50g range on the Detheroc AH. Also do not forget a couple doors down is Frozo the Renowned where you can trade frozen orbs for Crusader orbs (6 frozen orbs) runed orbs (4 frozen orbs) eternals (1 orb) and frost lotus (1 orb)  pay on average 17g per frozen orb.

Epic Patterns

I have all the epic patterns from Trial of the Crusader, Ice Crown Citadel, as well as other blue patterns from the various quartermasters around Northrend. I also have every pattern from all of the leatherworking trainers. For me my biggest money makers are the TOC BOE 245 epic patterns, and mammoth mining bags. I also craft and sell borean armor kit, heavy borean armor kits, drums of forgotten kings, drums of the wild, Trappers Traveling Pack, and dragonscale ammo pouches.

TOC and Ulduar craftables are not for everybody. I generally try and keep 1 of each made up and in the AH. These take very little time to collect the mats and craft, have a very profitable mark up, BUT do not sell that often. I generally will sell on average each of the 8 items once per 2 weeks. You will have to repost these multiple times but for the amount of work that actually goes into it, generally 5-10 mins total time of crafting/relisting. i make between 500-1000g on each item.

For example Moonshadow Armguards is my best selling BOE epic. Mats are 20  heavy borean leather (cost 66g), 12 eternal life (18g ea=216g), 6 arctic fur (33g ea=198g), and 4 crusader orbs (100g ea=400g) My total cost for mats is 880g, plus the 24 hour listing fee of 1.85g, brings you a total cost of 881g 85 silver. These sell for, on average, 1400 gold. which after the auction house’s cut brings your net profit the neighborhood of 450-500 gold. The numbers for the other bracers are very similar to these. The materials for the chests are around 600g more, but the items sell for on average 2300g. giving you profit of 800-900g each time. These items take very little time to make, and have a high profit per item. If you have the stomach to put the cost out for the mats.

Leg Armor

In the past Icescale and Frosthide leg armors were extremely profitable and would sell in decent quantities (10+ per week of each). Currently however every leatherworker and their brother are selling these which drives the price down to the cost of the mats, and as such is not worth it. I do however keep a couple on my bank toon in the event the AH is bought out and I can list for a profitable price.

Mining Bags

As far as what i sell the most out of and what “pays the bills” Mammoth mining bags have been my bread n butter for the last couple months. They take 8 heavy borean leather (26.4g) 24 hr listing fee of  1.65g for a total cost of 28gold 5 silver. and sell for on average 105g. giving you a net of about 65g each time. I have been selling around 10 each week, with about 75% sell rate. Giving me on average 650g a week for around 5 mins worth of work. This item in particular taught me an important lesson about the AH. I used to only sell 1-2 per week when they were listed at 150g. I tried lowering my price to a 100g and they have started flying off the shelves, so to speak. Since then i have been slowly raising the price and will continue to do so until they stop selling as much. Its obviously nice to have a 600% mark up on an item, but sometimes if you have a 400% markup and sell 5 or 6 times as many items, you obviously are going to make more money.

Other Notes

I have not yet ventured into crafting ICC patterns and tried selling them on the AH. The mats are between 4-6k on the items, and I have not seen them sell for much more then a few hundred gold more then the cost of the mats. So for now I am very comfortable smacking my LFW macro in trade every time I am in town and making around 100g per craft.

What do I keep in stock… 10 borean armor kits, 10 heavy borean armor kits, 10 mammoth mining bags, 2 trappers traveling packs, 1-2 dragonscale ammo pouches, 1 drum of the forgotten kings, 1 drum of the wild, and 1 of each of the TOC craftable 245 BOE epic pieces. 2 frosthide and icescale leg armors.

In short with very little time spent you can make a very high gold per hour with leatherworking. I do not have any firm numbers, but i spend less then 10 hours per month and net in the neighborhood of 25-30k at the moment.

Thank you for your time and I hope this helps all the leatherworkers out there. Feel free to comment or add any tips you might have. After all, this is just what has worked for me.