10-25-2005, 06:06 AM
Icebird,Oct 24 2005, 07:29 AM Wrote:Personally I prefer mining / herbalism to mining / skinning.
I agree. Neriad in retail started off as a skinner purely to make money. It worked well for a couple months as people needed lots of leather to level up their leatherworking and to a smaller extent tailoring and blacksmithing. However, it wasn't long before the market got saturated. Players got their skills to 300 and stopped needing so much rugged and thick leather. Meanwhile, the leatherworkers who did need the leather were most often skinners themselves and therefore already had stocks of leather on hand. At first, I was able to sell leather consistently on the AH for twice what I could get from selling to vendors, but after a while, I barely could make anything above what the vendor would pay after the AH took its cut. I did manage to make a "last gasp" amount of money by selling the black dragonscales I would skin off of UBRS dragons, since I was often one of the few who had a Finkle's Skinner on me and therefore was the only one who could skin some of the dragons late in UBRS. But after a while, the price of even these scales dropped -- and besides, I stopped needing to go to UBRS after a while.
Meanwhile, I see the prices for herbs stay quite high -- which makes sense, because the items they are used in get consumed constantly. High level raiding guilds need lots of mana potions, healing potion, fire protection potions, shadow protection potions, and now specialty items like Flasks of the Titans. High level herbs remain in demand long after the server has developed its economy. I definitely recommend herbalism over skinning to make money.