Complete New World Tracking & Skinning Guide

Welcome to our New World Tracking & Skinning Guide with everything you need to know about the topic. We will go over any information that you may be looking for, or didn’t know existed that relates to skinning and tracking in New World. As we will be touching upon many topics, jump to the topic you are directly interested in, in the table of contents.

Disclaimer: This guide will look to keep all data up to date with any changes to the game build. Last Updated: 10/05/2021

If you are looking for any of our other profession guides, check out these links:

• Complete New World Mining Guide
• Complete New World Logging Guide
• Complete New World Harvesting Guide
• Complete New World Fishing Guide

How To Start Skinning: New World Tracking & Skinning Guide

To start skinning in New World, you will need to make a skinning knife. You can craft a flint skinning knife right away at any campfire or in any settlement. If you are wondering how to craft a skinning knife, you require the same materials as your do for a flint sickle, used for harvesting:

• 1 Flint
• 1 Green Wood

As we mention in our Complete New World Harvesting guide, the same goes for here. You can find flint lying around pretty much anywhere. Just look where you are running and you will see what look like rocks, usually with a bit of brown/beige color to them. For green wood, you can simply gather any bushes you see around you. Alternatively, if you have already made a Logging Axe for Logging, then you can chop young trees to obtain the Green Wood.

The screenshot below shows a boulder beside several flint. If you see rocks like this laying around, be sure to pick up a few for your crafts. After you gather your flint and green wood, head over to a campfire or a settlement and craft a flint skinning knife.

How To Make Skinning Faster

If you have already read our other gathering guides, this section will also be very familiar to you. If you have already read this section in our other guides, simply check out the materials list below, as all other steps and explanations are the same.

Territory Standing Reputation

The first option to make skinning faster, or to make any gathering skill faster, is to choose this option when you rank up in reputation for a region. When you gain Territory Standing in a region, you are allowed to choose 1 of 3 upgrades, which differ each time. Sometimes you will have the option to “Increase Gathering Speed by 3.0%” while in the region. If you chose this, you can begin to stack these to significantly increase your gathering speed while in that region.

Upgrade Your Gathering Tools

Using a flint skinning knife will only get you 100% harvesting speed. Sure, 100% sounds like a lot, but this speed is actually pretty slow. If you have some other gathering skills leveled already or some gold to spend at a trading post, you can craft an iron skinning knife pretty much right away as well. Crafting an iron skinning knife will increase your skinning speed to 125%-139% depending on the attributes you get.

For how to craft an iron skinning knife, head to a work bench inside a settlement and use your engineering skill to craft one. The ingredients you will need are:

• 1 of Any type of leather
• 2 of Any type of timber / refined wood
• 7 Iron Ingots

Where To Get The Materials

You can obtain the leather from skinning animals with your flint skinning knife. You will kill and skin an animal, then take their hide to the tannery in town to turn it into leather. Alternatively, you can buy 1 leather from the Trading Post in town, they should be very cheap.

The same goes for 2 pieces of timber. You will need to take Green Wood into town and cut it into timber. Alternatively, go to the trading post and purchase 2 timber if you are looking for a quick turnaround and do not have the materials yet.

For iron ingots, you can find Iron Veins and use your mining skills to extract iron ore. Again, you will need a mining pick for this. You can go out and find these veins, mine the ore, then smelt them in town to create iron ingots. Of course, if they are affordable you may choose to buy them off the trading post if you do not already have these materials. Iron veins can be hard to come by unless you are specifically looking for them.

Once you have gathered the required materials, you can craft the iron skinning knife in New World and your skinning speed will be significantly faster! Scroll further down our New World Tracking & Skinning Guide to see where you can gather each type of material.

How To Obtain Each Tier of Upgraded Skinning Knife

The efficiency you gain when crafting your first iron skinning knife does not stop there. There are 5 tiers of mining pick axes that you can utilize and upgrade to. Each tier will increase your skinning speed, but higher tier picks are not fully required to skin higher level animals.

As your will be tracking and skinning very often, speed increases will be crucial for you to level skinning fast / quickly.

An important note to the base gathering speed listed below is that these are the base speeds. You can sometimes roll better speeds if you are lucky or use additional items/azoth which we will cover later in the New World Tracking and Skinning Guide.

Tier	Skinning Knife Name	Base Gather Speed	Craft Requirements
1	Flint Skinning Knife	100%	1x Flint 1x Green Wood
2	Iron Skinning Knife	125%	7x Iron Ingot 2x Timber 1x Coarse Leather
3	Steel Skinning Knife	250%	8x Steel Ingot 2x Timber 1x Coarse Leather
4	Starmetal Skinning Knife	400%	9x Starmetal Ingot 2x Timber 1x Coarse Leather
5	Orichalcum Skinning Knife	625%	10x Orichalcum Ingot 2x Timber 1x Coarse Leather

What Is Trackable at Each Skill Level of Skinning?

Prey	Tracked At Skinning Skill
Small Prey	25
Medium Prey	50
Large Prey	75
Small Predator	125
Large Predator	175

How To Get Better Items and Rare Drops: New World Skinning and Tracking Guide

Food Buffs for Skinning in New World

Cooking food is one of the ways to improve your chances at rare items while skinning in New World. When you have added skinning luck, you have chances to obtain special items while skinning. The below table shows all food buffs that currently affect skinning luck. Be sure to level up your cooking skill early to make the most of your skinning runs!

To understand better how the “luck rating” system works with the overall chances, check out this post, it explains how the RNG works exceptionally well.

Tier	Food Name	Image	Increase on Luck Rating	Duration	Level Req.	Ingredients Needed
1	Roasted Carrots		1,000	20 Mins	0	1x Carrot 1x Honey 1x Nutmeg
2	Herb-Roasted Carrots		1,400	25 Mins	5	1x Carrot 1x Water 1x Garlic 1x Peppercorn
3	Carrot Soup		1,700	30 Mins	20	1x Carrot 1x Water 1x Seasoning Blend 1x Cooking Oil 1x Paprika
4	Vegetable Boil		1,900	35 Mins	40	1x Carrot 1x Cabbage 1x Water 1x Nut 1x Cauliflower 1x Cooking Oil
5	Savory Fish Cake		2,000	40 Mins	60	1x Carrot 1x Fish Fillet 1x Seasoning Blend 1x Garlic 1x String Bean 1x Butter 1x Rosemary

Charms

When crafting a skinning knife, use a Skinners Charm to increase the chance of more rare drops or experience or yield from skinning. These charms are typically acquired from killing mobs or looting chests. The range shown below is dependent on Gear Score. Higher Gear Score will land higher percentages. There are currently three skinner’s charms in the game:

• Steel Skinner’s Charm (3%-9.4% More Skinning Experience)

• Starmetal Skinner’s Charm (2%-9.3% Increased Chance at Finding Rare Items)

• Orichalcum Skinner’s Charm (10%-19% Increased Yield while Skinning)

Using these charms when crafting will give you the Skinner’s Luck perk to your item. The Skinner’s Luck perk does not affect Equipment and Item drops, it only affects the drop rate of the Rare Resources associated with the resource being gathered. These rare resources will be discussed in the next section of the Complete New World Tracking and Skinning Guide.

You can get the Skinner’s Luck perk on your skinning knife, your amulet, and also your armor to stack these chances. You can also randomly gain this perk when crafting, if you are lucky!

What Trophies Can I Make to Increase Skinning Luck?

There are 3 trophies you can make to store in your house, if you own one yet. You can craft these using the Furnishing skill. These trophies significantly increase your skinning luck and therefore your chances at finding rare items while skinning. Here is a breakdown of all skinning trophies in New World.

Trophy	Image	Skinning Luck Bonus	Ingredients
Minor Skinning Gathering Trophy		500	25x Lumber 20x Steel Ingot 1x Maple Stain 25x Air Mote
Basic Skinning Gathering Trophy		1,000	25x Wyrdwood Planks 20x Starmetal Ingot 1x Oak Stain 1x Notes on Aeternum Fauna
Major Skinning Gathering Trophy		1,500	25x Ironwood Planks 20x Orichalcum Ingot 1x Mahogany Stain 1x Tracker’s Seal

How To Hold More Weight In New World

In addition to food buffs, charms, and trophies that you can use while Skinning for extra luck, you may find yourself getting full bags and becoming encumbered. Being encumbered means you will walk instead of run, and you will not be able to recall to an inn or fast travel. This can be quite a set back when trying to make a big haul of skinning before you head back to town.

Luckily, there are currently 3 encumbrance potions you can chug to increase your encumbrance amount for a period of time. This may be just enough to farm more and recall with all your goodies. Unfortunately we do not have the data quite yet on exactly how much encumbrance limit is increased per potion, but will update this table when the data is available.

Tier	Potion Name	Image	Encumbrance Limit Increase	Duration	Level Req.
3	Strong Encumbrance Potion		+50 Weight Limit	120 Secs	20
4	Powerful Encumbrance Potion		+75 Weight Limit	150 Secs	40
5	Infused Encumbrance Potion		+100 Weight Limit	180 Secs	60

How To Increase Yield to Get More Materials From Skinning

Add Perks to Raise Yield from Skinning

When you are crafting any of your skinning knives or other items, they all have chances to add a perk. A perk will give your item a special attribute that may increase different aspects of the item.

You can add either a special item to your craft, or you can also add Azoth when crafting to increase the chance of getting a perk. Some of these perks increase the amount of items, or the yield, you can get from skinning. To increase the yield and get more out of skinning, you will want the “Skinning Yield” Perk on your Skinning Knife in New World which makes it yield 10% more resources.

You can also add perks to armor and amulets, as discussed in a following section. Utilizing as many of these as you can in your gear set will maximize yield.

Consume Proficiency Potions to Raise Yield of all Gathering Skills Temporarily

Another way to raise yield temporarily while on a gathering is to craft and consume Proficiency Booster potions. Some people think since this is a potion it must be crafted using the Arcana skill, but it is actually crafted using the Engineering skill, using a Workshop.

Here are all the current proficiency potions available in New World:

Tier	Potion Name	Image	Increase in Yield	Duration	Level Req.	Ingredients
2	Weak Proficiency Booster		5%	10 Mins	5	1x Water 1x Soul Mote 1x Air Mote
3	Common Proficiency Booster		7%	15 Mins	20	1x Water 1x Soul Wisp 1x Air Wisp
4	Strong Proficiency Booster		10%	20 Mins	40	1x Water 1x Soul Essence 1x Air Essence
5	Powerful Proficiency Booster		15%	30 Mins	60	1x Soul Quintessence 1x Air Quintessence

All Available Skinning Perks in New World

The following table is a list of all the currently available perks you can add to your skinning knife or other items when crafting. Keep this in mind if you are looking to increase your yield, make skinning faster, or have better chances at finding rare items while skinning.

As you will read in the description, each of these perks scales depending on the gear score it is applied to. The higher the gear score, the better your perk!

Perk	Slot	Description
Skinning Luck	Skinning Knife	While Skinning gain 2.0%-9.3% chance at finding rare items.
Skinning Yield	Skinning Knife	Skinning yields 10.0%-19.0% more resources.
Tanner’s Discipline	Skinning Knife	Gain 3.0%-9.4% more Skinning experience
Reinforced Skinning Luck	Armor	While Skinning gain 2.0%-5.0% chance at finding rare items.
Adored Skinning Luck	Amulet	While Skinning gain 5.0%-9.5% chance at finding rare items.

All Skinning Equipment Sets in New World

There are three tiers of sets of skinner’s equipment available in New World currently. Each of these sets of armor give different benefits to skinning depending on their tier and their gear score rolled. Here are the skinning sets in New World:

Tier 3 Skinner’s Equipment Set – At 400 Gear Score

Piece Name	Slot	Image	Tier 3 Stats (at 400 Gear Score)	Skinning Buff
Skinner’s Hat	Head		+15 Dexterity	3.8% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Shirt	Chest		+15 Dexterity	3.8% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Gloves	Hands		+15 Dexterity	3.8% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Pants	Pants		+15 Dexterity	3.8% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Shoes	Feet		+15 Dexterity	3.8% Increase to Chance of Rare Items

Tier 4 Skinner’s Equipment Set – At 500 Gear Score

Piece Name	Slot	Image	Tier 4 Stats (at 500 Gear Score)	Skinning Buff
Skinner’s Hat	Head		+20 Dexterity	4.4% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Shirt	Chest		+20 Dexterity	4.4% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Gloves	Hands		+20 Dexterity	4.4% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Pants	Pants		+20 Dexterity	4.4% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Shoes	Feet		+20 Dexterity	4.4% Increase to Chance of Rare Items

Tier 5 Skinner’s Equipment Set – At 600 Gear Score

Piece Name	Slot	Image	Tier 5 Stats (600 Gear Score)	Skinning Buff
Skinner’s Hat	Head		+25 Dexterity	5% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Shirt	Chest		+25 Dexterity	5% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Gloves	Hands		+25 Dexterity	5% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Pants	Pants		+25 Dexterity	5% Increase to Chance of Rare Items
Skinner’s Shoes	Feet		+25 Dexterity	5% Increase to Chance of Rare Items