Skinning a Hide?

[Vensol]

Hello, my 1st post in this forum. Must say this site is the best thing since PoK books.

What my question is, is how exactly does skinning a hide/pelt/skin work? I don't have a skinning knife because my smithing skill is low and I just saw some for sale in the bazaar, but only after I spent my last Platty.

Does it have to be done in a container? How exatly does it work?

Also, does it always drop the hide to the next lowest level? (Meduim Quality - Skin it = Low Quality) In regards to the answer to that, does it apply to 'Greyhopper Hide'? I had someone give me greyhopper hides already skinned with the skinning knife..but they became 'tattered' and not low quality.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

(Yes I'm a low level bum trying to make his money off rich smithies. )

[cattywumpus]

To skin a pelt you simply put the pelt and the skinning knife in your sewing kit and hit combine. You will get a pelt of one step lower quality and you knife back.

I can't say what happens with all pelt since I have only used it on cat, wolf, bear and rockhopper and then only to convert medium to low quality. HQ pelts are too valuable as they are and who wants damaged?

[Troodon]

I'd never take a skinning knife to a hq pelt, unless it's a wolf, hehe; hq wolf pelts aren't very useful for much.

For some odd reason in EK the hq cat pelts are more plentiful than mq cat pelts. For some reason lq pelts of any kind are actually rarer than medium, so if you need to make a lot of leather padding, you'll pretty much have to get a skinning knife and take it to the mq pelts.

[ChaseFV]

Do keep in mind, however that the leopards in the southern reaches of Stonebrunt drop a goodly number of LQ pelts, an equivalent number of MQ, and never a ruined.

As for the Greyhopper situation, consider Greyhopper hides to be completely different from Rockhopper hides. Why that should be the case is beyond me, but based on your results, that is how it appears.

[Liwsa]

Why would you skin a greyhopper hide? Rockhopper yes greyhopper no.