Tobold's Blog
Saturday, November 13, 2010
 
1750 Borean Leather

One of my plans for Cataclysm is to make a goblin hunter, with the skinning and leatherworking professions. I never had any character with these professions leveled up beyond the basics. But I remembered from the little I did that you need more leather for the leatherworking than you get if you just level up skinning. So as my level 65 bank alt had one free profession slot, I decided to already level him with skinning and get some leather stockpile in preparation.

So I was looking for a list for what leather I'll need, and found this leatherworking guide. And in the total list of needed ingredients I stumbled upon the line saying I need 1750 Borean Leather to get to the level cap in leatherworking. Wow! Most of it is used to transform to Heavy Borean Leather, but as that is the only way to get the heavy version, there is no way past those 1750 leathers. At 1 Borean Leather per skinning of non-elite mobs, that means farming 1750 mobs in Northrend to max leatherworking.

Isn't that a bit much? Especially when Wrath of the Lich King isn't the most recent expansion any more, there are naturally less mobs killed in Northrend. Then leatherworking could become a serious treadmill in the 400 to 450 region.
Comments:
That is a max income guide. You craft only items that you can sell.

If you don't mind the losses, you can just buy a bunch of arctic fur, and place fur lining (the LW-only self wrist enchant) again and again from 400 to 430. So all you need is 30 arctic fur.

Then you can craft leg armors or go to Cataclysm lands and use cata recipes.

You can also go to the AH and buy 1750 borean leather for about 1000G.


The big question of course is why do you grind 5 (or 6) max level characters replaying the same content over and over, instead of having one and going into some form of end game?
 
The big question of course is why do you grind 5 (or 6) max level characters replaying the same content over and over, instead of having one and going into some form of end game?

You got that one around the wrong way: Having several alts allows me to play DIFFERENT content with each of them, e.g. it took me three characters to do all Northrend quests. The "end game" on the other hand consists of doing the same few raids, battlegrounds, or arenas over and over and over and over.
 
You don't need to grind to 450 on Northrend recipes. Seems the first Cataclysm recipes require a skill of only 425. Not surprising really, Borean Armor Kits (the easiest WotLK recipe) only require 350 skill, not 375.
 
I've maxed out all the professions since I started playing (it's all a part of an elaborate plan to mock Gevlon, you see), but LW in wrath took so much time I simply couldn't be bothered with it. When I finally got up to 440, I was left with a choice of either grinding green fur linings up to 445 (presumably profitable, but boring) or doing ilevel 200 epics (which by then were more or less worthless) using a heavy load of mats. This was about a year ago, and I figured that it was simply better to wait for Cataclysm and start from ten lower.

Of course now, in the dying days of Wrath, mats are cheaper than ever so I could probably take those last ten pins relatively easily. But to do that I have to be bothered to log in. :)

Point being: I agree wholeheartedly. In TBC, blacksmithing was the most needlessly grindy profession to max out. Wrath was TBC BS times about 5. I call poor design, particularly the need to make super-expensive ilevel 200 gear to max out your profession, when the gear itself is completely obsolete. And on top of that, most of the designs that were slightly more attractive you needed 450 in the first place. Ugh.
 
Don't grind it, buy it.
And buy it fast, as soon as cataclysm is out, noone will be farming anything in Northrend and prices will likely go up.

The amount of money required is small, even at 1g per leaher we're talking less than 2k gold. One week-end at the AH without any kind of optimization/strategy nets you that without trouble.... and it's a lot less annoying that farming 2000 mobs....
 
I recently dropped Enchanting on my druid to pick up leatherworking.

There were a few really, really annoying parts that I actually had to grind out (One with...either heavy or thick hide, I forget. The other with fel scales in outland.)

Other than that I bought everything up to...430? It cost me 1400g total I believe, and that is with being incredibly, incredibly inefficient and not being shy about buying some expensive stuff from the AH.
 
The raptors in the northeast corner of Zul'drak will drop 1-3 pieces of borean leather making them the best place to farm leather. (I'm not sure if anything else drops leather like they do.) (And you get a chance at a non-combat pet dropping as well.)
 
I have two Leatherworkers on 450 and pretty much bought all the leather needed. Allow some time to find cheap leather on the AH, no need to rush 1-450 in a day.

I only farmed the leather with one toon from 300-375 because he is skinner as well, but the time needed was just ridiculous.
 
Typically the last 10-25 of an expansion are very expensive but when the new expansion comes out much cheaper alternatives are added. E.g. instead of very expensive TBC epics after WotLK you could get from 425 to 450 just from converting borean leather scraps into borean leather.

Now if you want to get a non-golblin/worgen to 525 LW, you might want to get them to 450 before Dec 6th. But your goblin will be using the new LW guides to get to 525 which I'm guessing will probably be a lot less BL.

And yes, 1750 leathers is easiest to acquire in the AH.

***Spoiler alert***






FYI: The level 65 is sometimes a lie:
Kaliope has reported for some professions, including LW, on the current Beta you need to be level 84 to get to the zone where the final recipes are sold. Not a problem for mains but annoying for profession alts.
 
Why? Because the longer it takes you to do something, the more "satisfied" you are when you get done. And the longer it takes to do something in WoW, the more money Blizzard makes.
 
Carson mostly addressed this, but I want to add one note: about 40% of that leather is needed for training 425-450 using Overcast Handwraps. Using new recipes from Cataclysm will, after the initial price spike, probably be more economical.

Also, a stack of leather can, in my experience, be picked up much faster than herbs or ore.
 
"The big question of course is why do you grind 5 (or 6) max level characters replaying the same content over and over, instead of having one and going into some form of end game?"

Why do you listen the same song a hundred times?
 
@Bhagpuss, your analogy is inaccurate. It's more like "Why are you listening a song for the first 3 minutes when it's a 4-minute song?"

In which Tobold's answer is something like "It's better to listen 3 minutes of a 4-minute song if it allows him to listen more different songs than just repeating the same 4-minute songs over and over again"
 
you must mean repeating the last minute (or few seconds) of the same song for ages?
 
Look on the bright side. At least your Leatherworker won't have to do Jewelcrafting dailies. *shudder*
 
My understanding is that when Cata hits recipes will sometimes award 3 skill points instead of one. Better to wait a month?
 
1 did it over a year, buy leather, turn leather into leg enchants, sell leg enchant, who cares if it took 190 leg enchants to go 440-445 when I am making 20-30g on each.
 
My advice would be to get your LW up to 425 only. I have a feeling that Blizz would include recipes in Cata that will give you a boost from 425 onwards.
 
I maxxed out skinning and laetherworking when I played vanilla WoW and it was the most worthless endgame combo at the time. I do hope for your sake that that that has changed(I imagine it has by now)
 
In TBC, LW was the premiere raiding profession for any class (due to the drums). So much so that top-end guilds had people re-rolling to LW.

In WOTLK, most crafting professions are the same with very, very minor profession-specific bonus differences.

Skinning, on the other hand, is not that great (+40 crit bonus).
 
This comment has been removed by the author.
 
You got that one around the wrong way: Having several alts allows me to play DIFFERENT content with each of them, e.g. it took me three characters to do all Northrend quests.

There are a few "core" quests to each zone that have true variation. I think pretty much all the core varied content can be done between 1-2 characters. Most of what you're calling 'content' though is just doing the same 5-year old quest archetypes over and over and over and over ... but with swapped textures and environments. A dictionary may have thousands of pages, but I get the point after only reading a few.

The "end game" on the other hand consists of doing the same few raids, battlegrounds, or arenas over and over and over and over.

For players who emphasize the social and group dynamic of MMOs, end-game content makes every raid fight and PVP encounter a unique and varied experience.
 
Not only is it best to buy the leather -- Once you get to where you can convert borean leather to heavy borean, you should be able to make a profit on everythign you make up to 425 and higher.

borean --> heavy borean --> artic fur --> leg armors is generally profitable or at least breakeven. Normally it's profitable enough that I can get it done on my non-LW toons to sell the armors, even giving a healthy tip/payment to the LW I use.

Also borean armor kits, and some of the green/blue armors will sell for a profit also.

No need to farm mats unless leather is going high on your server. Even at 1g ea, the stuff is generally breakeven. So you spend 1750g, and end up getting all of it back.

Now I agree, come cata this will be a big pain in the ass. It'll be similar to the spot where you have knothide leather now.

It wouldn't surprise me if blizz adjusts the recipes though. I think it's a great idea to get a lw past borean now while the leather is still cheap though.
 
For players who emphasize the social and group dynamic of MMOs, end-game content makes every raid fight and PVP encounter a unique and varied experience.

Fair enough for PVP but raiding has to be the most grind intensive aspect of WoW. If you want to raid you must turn up at a specified time at a specified location and attempt one or more specified bosses, and repeat week after week until either all bosses are down or all required gear has dropped. Questing on the other hand may involve doing the same content over and over but that content can be completed at the player's discretion and convenience unlike the raider chained to the pc staring at the same bosses for weeks and sometimes months on end.
 
WRT 310% flying: I suspect the big thing about this is that it will be required for certain new mounts. I *can't* be about a 10% speed increase for 5000g. There must be new mounts that require this flying level.

Why else?
 
I don't think 1750 borean leather is a lot to farm. My main is a hunter skiller/lw and I certainly farmed way more than that since I farmed all the leathers I needed for my hunter and my druid's crafted purples as well as got all the leather I needed to transform to arctic so I could turn them in for all the blue/purple recipes from the recipe vendor in Dalaran. Of course it's a lot if you envision staying in the same area and killing 1750 mobs. I got a lot while doing SoH dailies and killing the jormungar. I levelled all my pets to 80 while doing it also. Of course you make money from all the vendor trash and get greens also while doing this. So it's certainly not a waste of time, it's just tedious if you force yourself to do the whole thing in a few days. I thought that farming khorium in BC and titanium in wotlk was more tedious because it was more flying around looking for nodes instead of being on the ground doing much fun slaughtering of the helpless wildlife. I guess there are small aspects to the different gathering professions that seem more or less enjoyable to people depending on their personality.
 
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