Guild Wars 2

When I went through the leveling process initially I got plenty of drops, including rugged leather scraps and such. I leveled my leatherworking to 280, leveled my toon to 80. This past week I’ve been enjoying going out and gathering resources, one of the resources I need is rugged leather. How ever no mob drops any type of item to give me that item. I get thick leather, linens, ores, all sorts of things, but not one single rugged leather in any form. I’ve looked it up on wiki, says its a common resource drop. I’ve traveled to all of the locations that its supposed to drop from. Ive gotten hundreds of bags of various kinds this past week, not one single rugged leather in them.
I know some people play for the imaginary money in the game. Some people play for the all powerful elite gear, I play for the shear thrill of the kill, the fun of leisurely roaming and gathering and crafting, taking my time and occasionally standing on top of a mountain and watching the environment. What few goals I do set for myself are minor, little things, like craftng past 280 and doing all of the crafting professions on one character, I’m not trying to be rich, or the most powerful. right now, this complete absence of drops is starting to make me bored. I didn’t level a character to 80 or get my magic find up to end up with nothing.
Can someone please tell me where rugged leather is, I see it in the trading post, so apparently people are getting it. where is it? why am I not getting it? Does being level 80 or having my magic find above 50% have some effect on drop rates? do I have to farm mats in a leveling characters to get mats or other items?

The primary source of Rugged leather is probably salvaging lvl 46-63 medium armors. This means people likely open bags on characters near that level or find them during levelling and then salvage those.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rugged_Leather_Section

With many low level materials it’s usually inconvenient to farm a specific tier unless you have a character in that range you aren’t interested in levelling. You could save up bags and open them with that char and then salvage the medium armor for the leather. It’s probably alot easier to just earn some gold from other things and buy them though.

You could also do map completion on zones in that level range, if you get lucky you might get 20-40 leather, but there is also a chance you get metal, clothing or wood instead so it’s not that reliable.

The problem is that loot scales to your level, so as level 80 you mostly get also
level 80 armor drops that just give T5 or T6 leather. So you can mostly just
get leather from salvaging pelts, or from opening bags.

Personally i get it now and than from the bags that the dredge in dredgehaunt cliffs
drop, but thats not really much.

Here is a longer list :
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rugged_Leather_Section

Edit (since somebody postet while i was still writing) :
You don’t need to open those bags with low level chars, that is only relevant for
champion bags.

so if I understand this scaling principle correctly, if I want drops for tier 4 leathers, I should make cast of characters to get to that level range. That even if i get bags that are supposed to drop that tier of mats, scaling makes it scale up to my lvl range automatically . so at lvl 80 I’m in essence cutting my own hands off because i’ve reduced my chances of getting lower tier mats.

Your level does have an influence. The equipment you drop in any zone of the game is scaled in favor of your character level, not the area level. That means that at level 55 in a lvl 50-60 area (e.g. Timberline Falls), you’ll drop equipment that salvages into rugged leather (almost) exclusively, while at level 80, the majority of equipment you drop will be around lvl 80, thus salvaging into thick leather.

That said, you still get area level drops, but due to the nature of the random number generator, you need a large selection of drops to get a reasonable chance of dropping something that salvages into rugged leather, especially if you’re on a cloth or plate wearing class (drop chances are slightly skewed in favor of equipment types you can actually use on your character).

There are however other drops in those areas that are independant of your character level, namely bag drops (e.g. from flame legion charr in the iron marches) and salvagable pelts (from different kinds of furry animals). I’ve recently done some map exploration in both Timberline Falls and Iron Marches, mostly on a (lvl 80) thief, and did get some rugged leather sections (although I didn’t pay attention to how many, nor what amount came from salvagable equipment vs. bags).

If you want a “fool-proof” way of gaining your leather, there are a few more ways to get it:

• if you have (a lot of) karma to spare, find a karma merchant that sells leather armor of the level that salvages into rugged leather. Mystic forge 4 identical pieces of that armor into one piece of (most of the time) salvageable equipment of the same armor type
• collect bags of (masterwork or regular) gear, e.g. from the silverwastes, and open that on an alt of the appropriate level, for yet more equipment of that level to salvage into rugged leather and other materials of that tier. This works with champ bags, pvp reward bags/chests and jumping puzzle chest, too, depending on how much time you want to spend, but the gear bags usually give you the most pieces of equipment (thus biggest chance to actually get something that salvages to leather)
• run the Twilight Arbor (lvl 55) and Sorrow’s Embrace (lvl 65) dungeon explorable paths. The nightmare court, dredge, and inquest mobs in those dungeons drop bags that again have a chance of dropping rugged leather, so most of the time each path will give you a few sections. In addition, you can trade in rare (not exotic) lvl 55/65 gear for tokens from those dungeons at the dungeon vendor in Lion’s Arch for more salvaging materials

Overall, make sure not to concentrate on leather only too much, but rather take everything and check for its value. The equipment tier that salvages into rugged leather also salvages into linen, platinum, and hard wood. If in the end you’ve got a surplus of one of those materials, consider selling it on the tp and buying the missing leather with the money you got that way.

Happy hunting!

malachi.7503:

so if I understand this scaling principle correctly, if I want drops for tier 4 leathers, I should make cast of characters to get to that level range. That even if i get bags that are supposed to drop that tier of mats, scaling makes it scale up to my lvl range automatically . so at lvl 80 I’m in essence cutting my own hands off because i’ve reduced my chances of getting lower tier mats.

Not quite. The regular material bags that drop off dredge, flame legion, grawl, and similar enemies, have a fixed material tier attached, so the t4 variety of those spits out rugged leather and linen regardless of the level of your character.

The equipment bags like champion bags and bags of gear, as well as the bags you get as personal story rewards or from material converters like princess or mawdrey II, on the other hand, do scale to the level of the character opening them (as do the equipment pieces that drop from jumping puzzle chests), so opening those on a lower level character can be helpful if you’re after lower-level materials.

malachi.7503:

so if I understand this scaling principle correctly, if I want drops for tier 4 leathers, I should make cast of characters to get to that level range. That even if i get bags that are supposed to drop that tier of mats, scaling makes it scale up to my lvl range automatically . so at lvl 80 I’m in essence cutting my own hands off because i’ve reduced my chances of getting lower tier mats.

Nope .. the bags listed in the wiki always give the listed items, no matter what level
your character is.

Your level only has impact on drops of armor and weapons, and opening champion
bags.

Leather also has a new sink since the change to crafting made them a part of crafting insignias. My guess is the bulk of it is going to ascended crafting as those doing raids want to min-max their builds. I was hoping Arenanet would ease up on fabrics so linen and silk would drop in price but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I appreciate everything you all just posted. How ever it all brings me back to my question, why am I not getting that leather out of those bags? your answers reassure me I did understand it relatively, the resource bags I’m getting around that level range should be giving me the needed leathers even if the gear drops don’t. I read on wiki that ettins in timberline falls drop bags with that resource, I’ve been hunting them since 6am, its almost 10am here where I am now. aside from 2 someone sent me, I haven’t gotten any out of those bags. which is why it started to seriously frustrate me. it seems odd to me that such a common resource would be so hard for me to find.

The bags are still RNG .. so you may get leather, or other mats. From the dredge bags
i would say maybe 1 out of 5 or 10 gives leather.

Ettins in Timberline are also bad to kill, they have a lot more HPs than other mobs,
so try maybe the dredge in dredgehaunt cliffs. I just kill them when i’m there to
harvest iron ore ^^

Do silverwastes and send all bags of gear / herb bags to a 40 / 50 toon. Thats how i get all my rugged leather.

If it to hard to farm just buy it from the TP(farm the gold if you low on it).