MoP Classic Leatherworking Leveling Guide (1-600)

Leatherworking on MoP Classic runs from 1 to 600 in five stops, one per expansion, and takes roughly 775 crafts by the time you are done. This guide gives you the bracket route, the craft count expected at each step, and one shopping list you can fill before you start.

Every number here is computed from the MoP Classic client data, not estimated. Where the route and the community consensus disagree, the disagreement is called out rather than smoothed over, and anywhere our data could not verify a recipe, that step was cut instead of guessed at.

What you need

Leatherworking is trained in seven ranks up to Zen Master at 525, and you must visit a trainer to unlock each rank before your skill will move past it. The ranks land at 75, 150, 225, 300, 375, 450, 525. If your skill stalls dead on one of those numbers, you are not unlucky, you are untrained.

Almost everything you craft consumes a leather or hide tier straight off a skinned animal: Light Leather, Medium Leather, Heavy Leather, Thick Leather, Rugged Leather, and their Outland, Northrend, Cataclysm, and Pandaria equivalents. A handful of brackets also convert one tier into a cured or heavy version before you can use it as a reagent for the next recipe, so a few early crafts exist purely to build stock, not to level your skill.

Skinning on the same character pays for itself here, but it is not required. Every leather in the shopping list is a common Auction House commodity on progression realms.

How the craft counts work

A recipe is orange while your skill is below its yellow threshold, and every orange craft raises your skill. Between yellow and gray, each craft has a diminishing chance to give a point, and at gray it gives nothing.

The "expected crafts" column is the mathematical expectation for that bracket, computed from the recipe's real yellow and gray values in the client data. The "buy" column adds 20 percent on top, because expectation is an average and your run will not be average. If you end a bracket with leftovers, that is normal and intended.

The route

Classic, 1 to 300

Skill	Craft	Expected crafts	Buy (+20%)	Materials
1-45	Light Armor Kit	50	60	Light Leather x60
45-55	Handstitched Leather Cloak	15	18	Light Leather x36, Coarse Thread x18
55-100	Embossed Leather Gloves	51	62	Light Leather x186, Coarse Thread x124
100-115	Fine Leather Belt	16	20	Light Leather x120, Coarse Thread x40
115-122	Cured Medium Hide	10	12	Medium Hide x12, Salt x12
122-135	Dark Leather Boots	16	20	Medium Leather x80, Fine Thread x40, Gray Dye x20
135-150	Dark Leather Belt	15	18	Fine Leather Belt x18, Cured Medium Hide x18, Fine Thread x36, Gray Dye x18
150-155	Heavy Leather	7	9	Medium Leather x45
155-165	Cured Heavy Hide	12	15	Heavy Hide x15, Salt x45
165-180	Heavy Armor Kit	19	23	Heavy Leather x115, Fine Thread x23
180-190	Barbaric Shoulders	10	12	Heavy Leather x96, Cured Heavy Hide x12, Fine Thread x24
190-200	Guardian Gloves	10	12	Heavy Leather x48, Cured Heavy Hide x12, Silken Thread x12
200-205	Thick Armor Kit	5	6	Thick Leather x30, Silken Thread x6
205-235	Nightscape Headband	34	41	Thick Leather x205, Silken Thread x82
235-250	Nightscape Pants	15	18	Thick Leather x252, Silken Thread x72
250-265	Rugged Armor Kit	19	23	Rugged Leather x115
265-290	Wicked Leather Bracers	26	32	Rugged Leather x256, Black Dye x32, Rune Thread x32
290-300	Wicked Leather Headband	10	12	Rugged Leather x144, Black Dye x12, Rune Thread x12

Two reagent carries in this stop: Fine Leather Belt and Cured Medium Hide from earlier brackets are consumed by Dark Leather Belt at 135-150. Keep the buffered amount back instead of vendoring them.

Outland, 300 to 350

Skill	Craft	Expected crafts	Buy (+20%)	Materials
300-325	Knothide Armor Kit	31	38	Knothide Leather x152
325-335	Heavy Knothide Leather	30	36	Knothide Leather x180
335-350	Scaled Draenic Boots	16	20	Heavy Knothide Leather x40, Fel Scales x40, Rune Thread x60

Northrend, 350 to 435

Skill	Craft	Expected crafts	Buy (+20%)	Materials
350-380	Borean Armor Kit	32	39	Borean Leather x156
380-386	Arctic Boots	6	8	Borean Leather x64
386-390	Arctic Gloves	4	5	Borean Leather x50
390-398	Heavy Borean Leather	15	18	Borean Leather x108
398-400	Heavy Borean Armor Kit	2	3	Heavy Borean Leather x12
400-435	Fur Lining - Agility	55	66	Eternium Thread x66

Fur Lining - Agility closes out this stop cheap: one Eternium Thread per craft, nothing else. It is also the single biggest trap in the community route, covered below.

Cataclysm, 435 to 500

Skill	Craft	Expected crafts	Buy (+20%)	Materials
435-450	Savage Armor Kit	15	18	Savage Leather x90
450-460	Tsunami Boots	10	12	Savage Leather x84, Eternium Thread x12
460-471	Savage Cloak	11	14	Savage Leather x98, Eternium Thread x14
471-476	Darkbrand Boots	5	6	Savage Leather x60, Eternium Thread x6
476-480	Darkbrand Shoulders	4	5	Savage Leather x60, Eternium Thread x5
480-485	Darkbrand Chestguard	5	6	Savage Leather x72, Eternium Thread x6
485-490	Heavy Savage Leather	12	15	Savage Leather x75
490-496	Darkbrand Leggings	6	8	Heavy Savage Leather x32, Volatile Earth x96
496-499	Cloak of Beasts	3	4	Heavy Savage Leather x32, Volatile Air x8, Volatile Earth x8, Volatile Fire x8, Volatile Water x8
499-500	Darkbrand Helm	1	2	Heavy Savage Leather x10

Heavy Savage Leather from the 485-490 bracket is a reagent for the next three crafts, not a spare. Bank the buffered amount before moving on.

Pandaria, 500 to 600

Skill	Craft	Expected crafts	Buy (+20%)	Materials
500-530	Mist-Touched Leather	32	39	Sha-Touched Leather x156
530-536	Misthide Boots	6	8	Mist-Touched Leather x64
536-540	Misthide Belt	4	5	Mist-Touched Leather x40
540-550	Misthide Shoulders	10	12	Mist-Touched Leather x96
550-560	Misthide Gloves	10	12	Mist-Touched Leather x96
560-575	Misthide Chestguard	15	18	Mist-Touched Leather x150
575-600	Misthide Chestguard	96	116	Mist-Touched Leather x1160

The last row is not a typo. The final 25 points before the 600 cap sit deep in Misthide Chestguard's yellow window, and the math for that stretch alone is almost as expensive as the rest of Pandaria combined. See the disagreement section for why.

Total shopping list

Buy this once and you can run the whole route without stopping. Quantities include the 20 percent buffer.

Material	Total	Buy (+20%)
Mist-Touched Leather	1350	1636
Savage Leather	440	539
Rugged Leather	423	515
Thick Leather	405	487
Light Leather	329	402
Borean Leather	306	378
Knothide Leather	274	332
Heavy Leather	215	259
Coarse Thread	149	182
Silken Thread	143	172
Sha-Touched Leather	128	156
Fine Thread	101	123
Medium Leather	99	125
Eternium Thread	90	109
Rune Thread	84	104
Volatile Earth	78	104
Heavy Savage Leather	53	74
Salt	46	57
Black Dye	36	44
Heavy Knothide Leather	32	40
Fel Scales	32	40
Gray Dye	31	38
Cured Heavy Hide	20	24
Fine Leather Belt	15	18
Cured Medium Hide	15	18
Heavy Hide	12	15
Medium Hide	10	12
Heavy Borean Leather	8	12
Volatile Air	6	8
Volatile Fire	6	8
Volatile Water	6	8

Mist-Touched Leather alone is nearly a quarter of every reagent you will buy on this route, almost entirely because of the last 25 points of Pandaria. Stock it heavier than anything else.

Where this route disagrees with the usual advice

Four places worth flagging.

No separate Light Leather step. Most published routes open with a bracket that crafts Light Leather out of Ruined Leather Scraps before you ever touch Light Armor Kit. Our data shows Light Armor Kit is guaranteed on its own from skill 1 all the way to 30, and it already consumes plain Light Leather as its reagent. The scrap-conversion recipe adds a step without adding skill, so this guide starts straight on Light Armor Kit.

The Fur Lining - Agility trap. MoP Classic's client actually contains two different recipes named Fur Lining - Agility. One is usable from skill 1 with a yellow/gray window of 425/435, which is the one this guide uses for the 400-435 bracket. The other requires skill 500 just to learn, and its own window (490/505) means it is already past yellow the moment you unlock it. A route that has you "craft Fur Lining - Agility from skill 400" using the second recipe is describing something that does not exist yet at that skill level. Learn the right one.

The finish line is not a vendor recipe. The commonly published route closes the last bracket (576-600) with a vendor-bought "Contender's Armor" recipe from Pandaria, priced in Spirit of Harmony rather than crafting materials, with a quantity that varies by which piece you buy. That recipe has no verifiable spell entry in the client data, so it gets cut rather than guessed at. The crafting-only finish, using Misthide Chestguard to the cap, is real but brutal: the 575-600 stretch alone needs roughly 96 expected crafts and 1,160 Mist-Touched Leather, because the closer you get to 600 the worse the odds get. If your realm sells the vendor recipe, it is very likely cheaper than finishing this way, but this guide only publishes what it can verify.

Quantities usually run lower than published, except once. The commonly published quantities pad higher than our expectation in most brackets, most visibly at Heavy Knothide Leather (325-335), where the usual figure is 270 Knothide Leather against our 150, and at Cured Medium Hide (115-122), where the usual figure is 15 Medium Hide against our 10. Our numbers are the expectation and the buy column already carries the buffer. The one bracket that runs the other way is Heavy Borean Leather (390-398): the usual figure is 60 Borean Leather, ours is 90. That bracket sits entirely inside the recipe's yellow window with no guaranteed portion at all, so the higher number is not padding, it is what the math actually costs there.

FAQ

Does this work on any MoP Classic realm? Yes. The route is computed from the Mists of Pandaria progression client, so it applies to Mists of Pandaria progression realms. Classic Era and retail have different recipes and different caps, and each has its own guide.

Can I skip ahead if my Leatherworking is already partly levelled? Yes. Find your current skill in the bracket tables, start there, and buy only the materials from that row down. The totals are additive.

Why do I keep failing to gain skill even though the recipe is not gray? Between yellow and gray, skill ups are a chance, not a guarantee, and the chance shrinks as you approach gray. If you are stuck for a long run of crafts, check that you are not sitting on a training rank at 75, 150, 225, 300, 375, 450, or 525.

Do I need Skinning to level Leatherworking? No. Every leather and hide in the shopping list is a commodity you can buy. Skinning lowers your cost, it does not change the route.

What do I do with the gear I craft? Most of it vendors for a little, and a few pieces (Fine Leather Belt, Cured Medium Hide, Heavy Savage Leather) are reagents for the very next bracket. Check the notes under each stop before you sell anything back.

When this guide changes

This route is computed from MoP Classic client build 5.5.4.68806. If Blizzard adjusts recipe thresholds or adds recipes in a content patch, the brackets shift and this page is recomputed from the new client data. The material quantities are expectations from the current thresholds, so they move with them.