“Ah, Fishing. Yes. Fishing.” That’s a modified /silly from the male dwarf and the closest feeling that I can find in-game to how I (and presumably many others) feel about fishing. Prior to Burning Crusade, fishing was not something I felt I absolutely needed access to. I leveled the fishing on my priest mostly because it was my third character to hit the level cap and I wanted to do something I’d never done before. Hence, I started running up fishing.
Getting myself to 225 was a Sisyphean Task. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. In fact, I never hit 300 fishing before heading to Outland. By getting my engineer to send me lures, I was able to eke out just enough skill to be able to cast in Zangarmarsh. As soon as I could fish in the waters near Allerian Stronghold, that became my new favorite fishing hole. The call of the darter was too strong.
So, why should anyone learn to fish? Good question.
- Fishing can be at least semi-profitable. Golden Darter was going for at least 1G apiece last time I checked. For a fairly low-risk activity, this is an awesome return.
- Fishing provides a method to get to 300 Cooking. Apparently, something was mis-aligned in a previous fix that (almost) requires fish to cook to reach 300 cooking.
- Fishing can provide nearly free pet food for some pets. Not all pets will eat fish. I know my raptor won’t, but there are pets that do.
- Fishing provides materials for alchemy. Granted these can be purchased on the auction house, but fishing is essentially free.
All of these are great reasons to learn this remarkable secondary skill. But what are the real downfalls of this activity.
- It’s slow and boring
- It’s slow and boring
- It’s slow and boring
- It’s slow and boring
Fishing is not like other skills. There aren’t any orange, yellow, green or grey fish. You can spend your entire fishing career in the sewers of the Undercity or the Stormwind canals. The only thing that choosing a particular pool over another accomplishes is the type of fish you catch. The only way to get skill points is to successfully catch fish. If you aren’t catching fish where you are (“Your fish got away”) try applying some bait. Bait comes in several skill-up values. Shiny Baubles will add 25 (the least) while Aquadynamic Fish Attractors add 100 (the most).
The approximate number of successful catches needed to gain a skill point is determined by the following equation
# successful catches per skill pt = (Fishing Skill – 75)/25
That means that you’ll need to catch over two thousand fish before reaching 375 skill. That’s successful catches. This isn’t counting “Your fish got away.” This is summarized in the following graph:
All this really means is the better you get at fishing, the harder it is to get even better. I suppose that's somewhat like life.
I suppose this post is already getting long, but I did want to address what you can do to increase your fishing. Above I mentioned the lures available. There are various fishing poles scattered about the world. And there's the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza on Sundays. Winning that contest awards you with the best fishing pole in the game with a whopping +35 fishing skill. Other rare fish that spawn during that event can award hat, boots or fishing line that give +5 fishing each.
As much as I"ve disparaged the fine art of fishing, it really is worth it. On at least one of your characters.
5 comments:
A lot of times when I make a new character I think "This is the character I'm going to level up fishing with!"
And then it never happens. Because I have a hard time with fishing, it seems to take like five minutes for each skill point.
Managed to hit 100 on my main, and stopped there... I keep saying I'll go back to it though.
If you're leveling fishing, do yourself a favor and go out to Desolace and swim under the dock of the Horde town out there. You'll see some cages. Open as many cages as you can and you can hope you'll find an Iron Fishing Rod. This is the best pre-60 rod you can get w/out winning the fishing competition.
Fishing the worlds most boring activity, NOW INTERGRATED INTO YOUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES! This is one feature of wow that go and die. And I mean DIE DIE. Yes it practical but it's also retarded. Its like trying to save the princess even tho YOU KNOW she's in a diffrent castle. OR reading the simmarillian (lotr text book). IT'S HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE DULL. Out of all the thing they could of put in WoW they put FISHING!!!
Way to go blizzard you fail.
(This is neshura on the wrong computer...)
Personally I think that the implementation is GENIUS. It's not "somewhat" like real life, it's exactly like real life.
1. It cannot be hurried.
2. You catch a lot of stuff you wouldn't want to eat but that you might feed to your pet.
3. People obsess about it.
4. People take their obsession to unholy levels, including wasting a perfectly good weekend afternoon, or 10 of them, in pursuit of something elusive.
5. Gear.
6. Gear.
7. Obsession.
8. Wasting time.
9. Wasting time.
10. etc...
Not to mention that they changed it so one of the bosses in Serpentshrine Cavern, "The Lurker Below" can only be fished up. I don't know what level fishing you need, but I imagine it needs to be maxed. :)
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