Update: The level of Grodok Hounds was downgraded to 44, thus they now drop Thick Leather and Heavy Leather. They no longer drop Rugged Leather.
One of the best places in the game to farm Rugged Leather is in Dire Maul North. The only downside to it is that you can only do 5 runs and then you’ll be on instance lockout for an hour. However, within 5 runs, which is typically less than half an hour, you can get 7-8 stacks of Rugged Leather. So, here’s a short instance farming guide for Skinning in Dire Maul North.
Requirements:
- Minimum level 75;
- Skinning: minimum 295 skill;
- Skinning knife;
Where to go:
If you play Horde, teleport to Thunder Bluff in Mulgore, then fly to Camp Mojache (75,42) in Feralas. Follow the road West and at (59,53) turn North and go to Dire Maul (62,30). Or fly directly to Dire Maul if you have a flying mount.
If you play Alliance, teleport to Ironforge, fly to Menethil Harbor (10,60) in Wetlands, take the ship to Theramore (68,50) in Dustwallow Marsh then fly to Tower of Estulan (57,55) in Feralas. From there go North to Dire Maul (62,30).
Or, if you’re going to play a character higher than level 85, with the Uldum portal unlocked, you can teleport to Uldum, from there fly to either Camp Mojache (Horde) or Tower of Estulan (Alliance), and then go to Dire Maul North.
What to do:
Enter Dire Maul North. As you enter, you will find a big yard with hyenas – Gordok Hounds. Pull the whole yards, kill them all, loot their corpses and skin them. If some of the ogre add up to the hounds, it’s best to single-target kill them, and AoE the hounds away from them. If the ogres die over the hounds, it may be difficult to skin some of the corpses.
They drop 1-2 Rugged Leather and occasionally Thick Leather. However, if you’re in a high level guild, and benefit from the guild perk Bountiful Bags, you will occasionally get 5-6 Rugged or Thick Leather.
Once you have skinned all the hounds, exit, reset the instance and repeat. With a 75+ character it shouldn’t take longer than 4 minutes to kill and skin all the Grodok Hounds. You will get 20+ Rugged Leather per run.
Loot:
A 5-run skinning session in Dire Maul North, which took me not longer than 20 minutes, has brought me the following valuable loot:
Rugged Leather x 145 = 95g/stack = 688g 
Thick Leather x 26 = 50g/stack = 65g
Rugged Hide x 4 = 5g/each = 20g
Green Item x 5 = 50g/each = 250g
Cash (after selling the trash loot): 28g
TOTAL: 1051g in 30 minutes of skinning.
Tips:
This is one of the best places in the game (if not the best) to farm Rugged Leather. You can skill up your Leatherworking here from 250 to 300, easily, in 1-2 sessions of 5 instance restarts.
A farming session of 5 restarts takes less than 30 minutes. Since the spot is inside an instance, your competition is ZERO here.
You can kill the ogres in the nearby chambers if you want for additional green loot and cloth, but I usually stick to the Gordok Hounds, for the leather.
A stack of Rugged Leather can go up to 150-200g, depending on server, but I usually sell them for 80-90g per stack, for quick cash.
I usually leave my skinner logged here until I fill up 3-4 bags, with Rugged Leather and only then I heart to a major city to sell.
I tried this recently but the hounds were primarily dropping Heavy Leather with a small amount of Thick. Was this dungeon changed? Or is there some other trick to it?
Just checked this spot, it’s like you say. The level of the hyenas was downgraded to 44, thereby they now drop Heavy and Thick Leather. Why do they keep changing these things, ffs?!… Thank you for pointing this out.
Are you still doing the Lotro guide? Would love to purchase an updated one!