Developping your fishing skills...

Necrophagos Wed Jan 07, 2009 6:10 am

Developping your fishing skill is a time consuming and sometimes boring undertaking. According to the great Nat Pagle himself it's only good for thinking and ingesting huge quantities of alcoholic beverages. When you decide to work on this skill, don't make it take longer than necessary...

When you start working on this skill, you will probably do so in one of the starter areas, catching fishes in low level bodies of water (Bloodhoof Village in Mulgore, Valley of Honor in Orgrimmar, etc.). At first you'll go up a level with every fish you catch, but after sometime you start to gain a level only after two, then three, then four fishes and so on. A common mistake is that people think they have to move on to a higher leveled body of water in order to level the skill faster. THIS IS NOT TRUE!!!!
It seems there is a formula which determines after how many caught fishes you gain a skill level: (Your current fishing skill - 75) /25 However, I can't vouch that it's 100% accurate....

It makes absolutely no difference for the frequency with which you gain a skill level, whether you are fishing in Mulgore or Icecrown.

If you cast your line in an area corresponding to your skill level you only run the risk of getting the message "Your fish got away". Of course you can boost your skill artificially, by using better fishing rods or bobber-buffs (buff-bobs?), but why spend your gold unnecessary, unless you need to fish in higher lvl bodies of water in order to catch special fish for other quests or (cooking/fishing) achievements???

From this point of view you will boost your skill faster, staying comfortably in Org or Mulgore, with lots of vendors close by whom you can sell all that fish to and make a profit from levelling to boot.

If you must insist on fishing in more challenging waters, your skill must exede the skill level required for those waters by +/- 50 to eliminate the chance of having fish escape... There are several possibilities of compensating this. Think of better rods: Nat Pagle's Extreme Angler FC-5000 for example gives a +25 buff. Other options are the different sinkers: shiny baubles give a +75 buff. Through (daily) quests from for example Old Man Barlo at the lake north-east of Shattrath City you can get even more goodies like special hooks. Another option is participating on Sundays from 14:00-16:00h server-time in the fishing tournament in Booty Bay, where you can win amongst others an Eternium Fishing line.

But, to wrap it up, if you just want to gain fishing skills the fastest way possible: don't seek further than picturesque Bloodhoof Village, or sparkling Orgrimmar and don't unnecessarily waste precious time you can spend on questing.....