skinning or herbFollow

which will make the most money?

i would vote skinning.

Light leather sells for alot of gold, Medium, heavy and pretty much all leathers at all levels sell for good money per stack. i went to BRD recently to farm up some fiery enchant recipies to sell, and while on the way i killed all the dogs in the front room...after my 5 instance resets, i had 3 stacks of thick leather i didnt need for anything. my server had thick leather stacks posted from 20-30 each, long story short, i got an extra 75gold for nothing.

peacebloom, silver leaf, mageroyal and many lower level herbs are pretty worthless. you will not begin to make money on herbs until late oldlands (dreamfoil, palugebloom, Mtn silversage, and golden sansum) and outlands herbs.

herb--you have to move around and find spawn points. not a big issue with add on's like gatherer.

Skin--pretty much any animal can be skinned. go to an area like STV, and its endless amounts of leather to be collected. along the way, you will get many other things while killin and looting for leather....meats, greys, whites, greens maybe even a blue or purple.

but in the end, its a personal preferance.

wrong, wrong, wrong! "complementary crafting skill" will put you into the poorhouse. If you want to go crafting, wait until you're at level cap and have alternative ways of generating gold.

Your reasoning for picking this method seems to be this:

1. You'll have a way to make money up until level 40, a completely arbitrary level (unless you count it as when you get your mount; however, in the next patch this will be rolled back to 30 and only cost 35, so then it really will be arbitrary).
2. By doing the skills for 40 levels, you'll know which is more profitable.
3. At level 40, presumably it is easy to backfarm the items you need to quickly skill-up the appropriate complimentary skill.

However, following Mike's advice...

1. You will have TWO ways to make a lot of money up to and at 70. As prices for most goods increase multiplicatively until 60 and remain fairly constant at that level, you'll be making a lot more money as you level up by doing the same amount of work.
2. To know what skills are most profitable, check the AH for the most common goods. If you want to be scientific, use Auctioneer to check the prices. It really shouldn't take too long to figure out what to best; and often it'll be mining/herbalism + skinning (or enchanting with anything else).
3. While at level 40 it's easy to backfarm items to catch up your skill, it is infinitely easier to just buy everything you need at level 70. More expensive? Maybe; but you won't spend hours upon hours backfarming instead of MAKING money off higher-quality goods to buy MORE. Ie, you could farm iron for an hour and get two stacks at 40... or you could mine fel iron for an hour and make 3x the profit, thus buying yourself 3x the items you need to level up.

Mike's description of your way was incorrect. It's not "wrong", per se.... but it definitely isn't the best way to level up skills.

The only thing that your path DOES have going for it is that you may be able to use the items you make at the appropriate level. But since almost all of these will be BoE items anyway that you could buy off the AH, I only see this as applying to engineering (where you need skill for the items, and a lot of them can be used far before the ILevel of items with required levels).

Yes, you've covered my reasoning, Locke. I found the backfarming to level up a crafting skill to be a major irritant at 60 where I did that on one of my toons. I didn't have any money issues, but then I'm not a spendthrift. :p

Given the upcoming mount change, maybe the change over to a crafting skill could be done as early as 30 and after picking up the mount.

This.



And this.


Two gathering professions. Sell other people mats to skill-up their crafting professions (lots of people with piles of gold power-level crafting professions at 70). When they throw onto the auctionhouse 20 of the same item they made to skill-up their crafting profession - using your mats - you buy it for a fraction of what the mats cost to make it. You wind up having them make you the item and give you money for the privilege of doing so. Can't beat that with a stick.

So it all depends on whether you want to have the money to buy your mounts the moment you reach the level which allows you to purchase them, and have the money to buy the gear you want to help level up (don't do a lot of this, it's counter-productive since you will be vendoring it within five levels), and the money to powerlevel the profession of your choice at 70 - OR - you want to "have fun" as a poor person who is scrambling to find the mats to level a crafting profession, only to sell the items you make for much less than you could have sold the mats for.

Which option do you think that beggar in Stormwind chose? You know the one - the guy that whispered you asking for 20s so he can take a griffon to meet his friends in Redridge?

Edit: to clarify.


Edited, Jun 25th 2008 2:41pm by cynyck

You really need to look at your particular server and faction's AH to answer this question. On my server, Alliance side, it's herbalism hands down. But on the Horde side skinning is insanely profitable for some reason. I mean, to the point where I feel almost guilty putting the price in there.

Take a week (or at least a weekend and a few weekdays) and check out the prices of stacks of each kind of leather versus some of the most common herbs you'll sell: I'd think Kingsblood, Briarthorn, Goldthorn, Liferoot, Khadgar's Whisker, Sungrass, Felweed, and Ragveil would give you a pretty good cross-section. Then factor in that you'll generally get more skins than herbs, and figure out which will be most profitable for you.