Some mobs can be skinned by more than one person in patch 9.2

Skinners, and by connection Leatherworkers, have a gainful source of income in Shadowlands — the Legendary — and to make these, a lot of Callous Hide is needed. Skinning hasn’t worked the same as the other gathering professions like Mining and Herbalism. For Skinning, mobs need to be killed and only one person can skin every mob, whereas multiple people can tap the same ore node or herb. That’s about to change in patch 9.2, for better or for worse.

In recent patch notes, the developers stated:

This appears to apply only to higher level mobs, not to all mobs. This should help when it comes to skinning mobs that are generally killed by multiple people. These would either be attempted to be skinned by multiple people, but only one player would be able to successfully skin them, or worse, not everyone would loot the corpse and no one could skin them. Having Skinning — and other mob-based mechanics like this — assigned on a personal level will allow skinners to target mobs that are more likely to have valuable leatherworking materials, too.  They wouldn’t need to worry about others’ interaction with the mob.

However, this will also allow multiple-connected accounts, to target, loot, and skin the same mob multiple times for extra materials, potentially flooding the Auction House with Leatherworking materials and driving down prices. As certain materials like Callous Hide — and the related Heavy Callous Hide and Enchanted Callous Hide — have been the most expensive part of crafting a Legendary, so this might make them more accessible. Or, it might make them not as profitable for Leatherworkers, and perhaps not as many will be crafted and put on the Auction House if it’s not lucrative anymore. Time will tell how this effects the economy, and it may differ by server.

As this won’t change the rules regarding all mobs, this still won’t solve some of the other issues around skinning. If a player didn’t engage in a battle with these rare or named mobs, they won’t be able to skin them — even if no one else skinned them. Other mobs will still need to be looted to be skinned when a skinner finds them out in the wild. Players report pulling large packs of mobs, to kill them and skin, group loot, and then while skinning them one-by-one, have another player come along and start skinning them. Group skinning, skinner-locked kills, or common courtesy is still needed to correct this issue. Perhaps this is just the start — or a trial run — for bigger changes to Skinning next expansion.