Gold From Level 20 to 30 in WoW Forever: Silk, Heavy Leather, Iron and the Riding Fund

The short answer

From level 20 to 30 the money in WoW Forever moves up to the silver-per-item range, and this is the bracket where you should start saving for a mount. The three items that matter most are Heavy Leather at 8 silver, Iron Bar at 5 silver89 copper and Heavy Hide at 20 silver89 copper. Heavy Leather has the largest recipe demand of any material in the bracket, Iron Bar is the first ore where smelting clearly pays, and Heavy Hide sold for more raw than cured on the beta. Silk Cloth is a steady seller rather than a big one. Bank every silver you do not need for training: the client lists every level 40 mount item at 20 gold.

The 20 to 30 materials, priced

At level 20 you move into the Wetlands, Hillsbrad Foothills, Ashenvale, Stonetalon Mountains and Duskwood. Humanoids drop Silk Cloth, beasts give Heavy Leather and Heavy Hide, and miners start to see Iron and Gold veins.

Live Auction House prices

Silk Cloth3 silver67 copper2 houses listing

Bolt of Silk Cloth14 silver95 copper2 houses listing

Heavy Leather8 silver2 houses listing

Heavy Hide20 silver89 copper2 houses listing

Cured Heavy Hide18 silver2 houses listing

Iron Ore5 silver49 copper2 houses listing

Iron Bar5 silver89 copper2 houses listing

Bronze Bar2 silver69 copper2 houses listing

Gold Ore15 silver90 copper2 houses listing

Gold Bar9 silver45 copper2 houses listing

Kingsblood4 silver2 houses listing

Wild Steelbloom6 silver19 copper2 houses listing

Liferoot5 silver49 copper2 houses listing

Elemental Air98 silver98 copper2 houses listing

Lowest buyout from player scans of the WoW Forever beta Auction House, as of beta build 70291. Beta prices are a testing economy and will not carry over to launch. Last verified7 hr ago

Heavy Leather: the demand leader

Heavy Leather goes into 133 recipes in our extract of the beta profession tables, more than any other leather, cloth or bar a level 20 to 30 character can gather. Leatherworking owns 70 of them, Engineering 27, Blacksmithing 25 and Tailoring 10. If one character crafted each recipe once, they would use 881 Heavy Leather. Fifty-four of the recipes are new in Forever, spread across four professions, so this is not just a Leatherworking item any more.

On 2026-10-08 Heavy Leather was also the sixth most listed trade good on the beta, with over seven thousand units across the houses, and it still sold for more than five times its vendor price. That combination of huge supply and a strong price is the best sign of real demand you will see on a beta. If you skin while levelling, this is your income for the whole bracket.

Heavy Hide: sell it raw

Now the odd one. Heavy Hide sold for 20 silver89 copper while Cured Heavy Hide sold for 18 silver. The cured hide was worth less than the raw hide, even though the client's Cured Heavy Hide recipe needs one Heavy Hide plus three Salt. Cured Heavy Hide feeds 49 Leatherworking recipes, 33 of them new, so the demand is real. Our reading is that Leatherworkers on the beta prefer to cure their own hides and buy raw ones, which pushes the raw price up and leaves cured hides with few buyers. Either way the call is clear: skin, do not cure, and list the hide.

Iron: the first ore where smelting clearly pays

In the first two brackets, raw ore was worth as much as the bar or more. Iron breaks that pattern.

That gain is our arithmetic on one day's scans. It comes from the bar's 48 recipes (34 Blacksmithing, 10 Engineering, 2 Alchemy) against just three recipes that take raw ore. Iron Ore is only needed by Mining itself and one Enchanting recipe. If you mine iron, smelt it before you list it.

Gold works the same way at a smaller margin: Gold Ore at 15 silver90 copper against Gold Bar at 9 silver45 copper. Gold Bar feeds 45 recipes, 18 of them new, and 12 of those 45 are Tailoring recipes, which is unusual for a metal. The client also keeps the Alchemy transmute Iron to Gold (one Iron Bar into one Gold Bar). On 2026-10-08 both bars sold for 8 silver60 copper, so the transmute gained nothing on the beta.

Bronze Bar stays in demand through this bracket too, at 2 silver69 copper with 81 recipes. If you still have copper and tin from earlier, see the bronze margin in our 10 to 20 guide.

Silk: bolt it only if you are a Tailor

Silk Cloth is the cloth of this bracket. The client's Bolt of Silk Cloth takes four Silk Cloth. On 2026-10-08 four Silk cost 13 silver56 copper and one bolt sold for 14 silver85 copper, a margin of 1 silver29 copper per bolt for a Tailor. The bolt feeds 105 recipes, 100 of them Tailoring and 49 of them new, which is the largest jump in Tailoring recipes in any cloth tier. Raw Silk itself only feeds 10 recipes, mostly Engineering and First Aid. Non-Tailors: sell raw. Tailors: bolt your own silk, because the bolt is your real reagent.

The 20 to 30 herbs

Herbalism gets better here. Kingsblood has 17 recipes in the client, 9 of them new, and sold at 4 silver, more than sixteen times its vendor price. Liferoot sold at 5 silver49 copper and Wild Steelbloom at 6 silver19 copper. Grave Moss, the fourth herb of the bracket, sold at 2 silver and feeds 6 Alchemy recipes. All four herbs are Alchemy herbs first. Only two have any use outside Alchemy in our extract: Kingsblood has one Enchanting and one Leatherworking recipe, and Liferoot has one Cooking and one First Aid recipe. Wild Steelbloom and Grave Moss are Alchemy only.

Elemental Air: a beta outlier worth watching

Elemental Air is the strangest price in this bracket. It vendors for 4 silver and sold at 98 silver98 copper on the beta. Of the other three elementals of the same tier, Elemental Fire and Elemental Water sold right at their vendor price of 4 silver, and Elemental Earth sat between them and Air. The client explains part of it: Elemental Air goes into 21 recipes, 17 of them new, and 15 of those new recipes are Leatherworking. A small beta population and a big batch of new recipes make one reagent scarce. In Classic, elementals drop from elemental mobs in mid-level zones; we have not confirmed drop sources on the Forever beta. If you kill air elementals while levelling, keep every Elemental Air until you have checked the strip.

Planning the riding fund

The single biggest purchase in Forever levelling is your first mount, and the client is clear about one part of the price. Every faction mount item in the beta client, from the Brown Horse Bridle to the new Skyborne Galestriders, has a vendor buy price of 20 gold and a required level of 40. Blizzard has said you buy the riding skill in game on top of that; the training cost is not in the files we have read, so we cannot give you the full bill yet. At BlizzCon, Blizzard also described Forever moving some of the up-front mount cost into training and granting a mount with the skill. Until that is confirmed in the client, plan for 20 gold plus training.

Here is the fund expressed in materials, at 2026-10-08 beta prices, before the Auction House cut:

The unit counts are our arithmetic: 20 gold divided by the scan price, rounded up. Nobody needs to farm all of it in this bracket. The point of the table is pacing. If you put away a stack of leather or bars every session from level 20, you reach 40 with the mount covered, and the training cost is the only thing left to find.

1. Open a second bank tab in your head: everything above 1 gold after repairs and training goes into the mount fund.
2. Sell Heavy Hide raw and Iron as bars; those two have the best price per bag slot.
3. Do not buy green upgrades from the Auction House; quest rewards replace them quickly in this range.
4. Vendor greys that sit near their scan price. See our vendor price guide.
5. Sell any BoE green you cannot use. Our BoE greens guide shows what they fetched on the beta by level band.

Where to level and farm, 20 to 30

The beta client ships a map for Duskwood in this range; the other zones show the continent art until their maps are added. None of these zones has a walked, timed route from us yet.

The Wetlands get new areas in Forever: our new-world extract (build 70058) lists Dragonmaw Retreat with an explore level of 25, Excavation Site: Wetlands at 26 and a tavern called The Drunken Dwarf. Excavation Site: Wetlands is also a new party instance map in the client.

Duskwood also paid one of the larger single quest rewards in our beta cache: Seasoned Wolf Kabobs, a level 25 Duskwood quest, pays 18 silver plus four Seasoned Wolf Kabobs and the recipe.

Requirements

Level

20 to 30

Profession

Skinning (to skill 150), Mining (to skill 150) or Herbalism

Gear

Skinning Knife or Mining Pick

Group

Solo

Walked route status

Mid zones, levels 20 to 30

Not walked yet

No hourly gold figure is published here until this route has been walked end to end with a timer and a full loot log. Until then this page gives you the inputs (live prices and what drops) and leaves the arithmetic to you.

What to watch on the Auction House

1. When the beta cap moves to 30, a wave of characters reaches this bracket at once. Iron Bar, Heavy Leather and Silk will all react.
2. Elemental Air is a single-recipe-batch story. When enough players reach Leatherworking 200, demand will settle and the price will fall toward the other elementals.
3. Cured Heavy Hide is the item most likely to flip. If its price climbs above the raw hide plus three Salt, curing becomes worth it again.

The next step is gold from level 30 to 40, where Mageweave, Thick Leather and Mithril arrive and you finally spend that mount fund. Gatherers should also read the best gathering professions to level with. The full lane is on the leveling gold hub, and every Forever page is on the WoW Forever gold guides index.

Changelog

• 2026-10-08: First version. Item, vendor and mount data as of beta build 70291, recipe counts from our beta profession extract (build 70124), zone areas from our new-world extract (build 70058), quest data from our beta quest cache, prices from player scans of the beta houses read on 2026-10-08.