Countdown to Cataclysm: Fishing in Cataclysm
by Mathew McCurley 
Dec 5th 2010 at 1:00PM
Deathwing may be ravaging the countryside and tearing through the sky, striking fear into the hearts of the denizens of Azeroth, but his malice can never shake the iron will of Azeroth's brave fishermen. Rod and lure in hand, these salty heroes fuel our fish feasts, ride our turtles, and regale us with stories of Old Crafty and Old Ironjaw. Flip your Titanium Seal of Dalaran and hope it lands on adventure ...
Fishing in Cataclysm has been made easier and more fun, with the addition of new fishing dailies in your faction's home city. Not only do these new dailies give you a new bag of goodies, but they now award fishing skill points for fishing. Those of you veteran anglers know the drill -- your trade is a buff food bonanza, allowing you to cook up some of the best food in the game to give your group and raid the advantage they need.
I've always been a fishing fan, since the early days of World of Warcraft. Here's a quick rundown of some of the new fishing content for Cataclysm.
The new skill, Illustrious Grand Master Fishing, enables players to raise their fishing skill to 525.
New fish
Cataclysm is adding in a bunch of new fish in the new level 80 to 85 zones. While the world has been torn asunder, Azeroth's native sea creatures have survived Deathwing's fires, and things haven't changed other than some zone levels and fish caught there. Here are the new fish you'll be catching in each zone:Regular fish
- Algaefin Rockfish Twilight Highlands, Tol Barad, Vashj'ir
- Blackbelly Mudfish Uldum
- Deepsea Sagefish Twilight Highlands, Uldum, Tol Barad, Vashj'ir
- Fathom Eel Tol Barad, Uldum, Vashj'ir
- Highland Guppy Twilight Highlands
- Lavascale Catfish Deepholm, Uldum
- Mountain Trout Mount Hyjal
- Striped Lurker Mount Hyjal, Twilight Highlands
Miscellaneous fish
- Albino Cavefish Alchemists use the Albino Cavefish to create Deepstone Oil, so find an alchemist buyer for your extra Cavefish stock.
Fishermen are now able to fish up Volatile Fire and Volatile Water, two of the new component materials for most crafted items and recipes. Volatile water is a somewhat common catch in Cataclysm fishing pools, and Volatile Fire is fished up from Pools of Fire in the lava areas of Twilight Highlands and Mount Hyjal.
New achievements
A bunch of new fishing achievements have been added in Cataclysm for the dedicated fisherman.
Personal Achievements
- The Limnologist Catch all of the freshwater inland fish in World of Warcraft.
- The Oceanographer Catch all of the saltwater coastal fish in World of Warcraft.
- Fish or Cut Bait Complete all five of your factions new Azeroth fishing dailies.
Guild Achievements
- That's a Lot of Bait Catch 10,000 fish from fishing pools; rewards the ability to purchase the recipe for Seafood Magnifique Feast, Cataclysm's fish feast and best group/raid food buff.
- We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat Catch 50,000 fish from fishing pools.
- Like Shooting Fish in A Barrel Catch 100,000 fish from fishing pools.
Dailies
Five new fishing dailies have been added to Stormwind and Orgrimmar, awarding anglers a skill point to fishing and a Bag of Shiny Things. Sadly, these new bags do not contain the new fishing poles introduced in the Dalaran fishing daily, but they have the chance to contain a Strand Crawler companion pet and the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat.
New Alliance fishing dailies
All Alliance fishing dailies are given out by Catherine Leland in Stormwind.
- Big Gulp Find a precious locket by fishing up monkfish in the Valley of Heroes in Stormwind and filet it open.
- Diggin' For Worms Use an Overgrown Earthworm near Lake Olivia to catch a Crystal Bass from Olivia's Pond.
- Hitting a Walleye Catch 8 Hardended Walleye in Stormwind Lake.
- Rock Lobster Collect 6 Rock Lobsters from lobster cages below the Stormwind Docks.
- Thunder Falls Catch 4 Violent Perch from Thunder Falls.
New Horde fishing dailies
All Horde fishing dailies are given out by Razgar in Orgrimmar.
- A Furious Catch Head to the Southfury river and catch a Giant Furious Pike.
- A Golden Opportunity Using Razgar's Filet Knife, find a Drowned Thunderlizard in Thunder Ridge and cut off its tail. Then, use the tail to eletrocute 3 Golden Stonefish and bring them back to Razgar.
- A Staggering Effort Kill a Stag north of Orgrimmar and use its eye as bait to catch a Sandy Carp in the Valley of Wisdom.
- Clammy Hands Loot 10 Monstrous Clam Meat from big clams out east of Durotar.
- No Dumping Allowed Fish up 6 Toxic Puddlefish in the goblin area of Orgrimmar.
Fishing and cooking are best friends -- El's Anglin' has the best guides working up both your fishing and cooking skills at the same time, for both factions. Complementary to the fishing dailies are the new cooking dailies, allowing players to collect Chef's Awards to purchase seafood cooking recipes. Alliance chefs can pick up their dailies from Robby Flay in Stormwind and Horde chefs can grab their dailies from Shazdar in Orgrimmar.
Here's the cream of the crop for all you fisherman out there. The materials for a Seafood Magnifique feast should fetch a pretty decent price on the auction house, for those people out there who don't want to spend that time catching it up themselves. Save your leftovers, and you'll be sure to find a buyer on the auction house.
Fishing is fun, profitable, and can provide lots of fun achievements and miscellaneous cool things. As one of those professions that has gone through many changes in both function and use, fishing is a fun alternative to crafting professions, while still remaining a valuable skill to have. Don't let its potentially daunting nature get you down; take fishing slow, use it in conjunction with other skills, and have a great time becoming one of the greatest anglers Azeroth has ever seen. Salty salute!
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion (available Dec. 7, 2010), from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.Filed under: Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
squig_masta Dec 5th 2010 3:50PM
As stated earlier, it's a guild achievement, ie 10,000 fish caught by everyone, not just one person. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if most people who've learned it by mid expansion have never even trained fishing.
madeofrain Dec 5th 2010 3:23PM
Fishing...I treat it like having to take a dump in RL.. It's not something you look forward to.. But if your eating...It's going to have to happen...
3rd time around it's tough going. I was naughty and mailed food from my main to this new alt instead of letting her fend for herself, the skill increasing in tandem with her levels..In short it's now a level 80 neglected profession nightmare..10 fish for 1 point.../yawn...this...may...take....some......time..../sleep.
So start fishing early folks, that way your feeding your toon for free and you don't get a nasty 450 point trudge of doom.
moonraker Dec 5th 2010 4:03PM
Last May Blizzard CM Wryxian posted a thread called 'Profession changes for upcoming Cataclysm Expansion' in which as part of the Fishing part it said;
"Fishing
Lots of new fish and other fun items to catch! Fish are still used to make premium food."
Still waiting for the fun items. Also, there are still a lot of outstanding bugs unresolved in fishing which is a shame considering how close to release we are.
popeguilty Dec 5th 2010 4:58PM
Oh, I was misreading the achievement as being per fisher. That's different, of course.
Chucks Dec 5th 2010 5:57PM
I think fishing would be much more fun if they made the rewards more WTF. If, say, between every 6 fish you pulled up a lit stick of dynamite or some Worgen underpants, I guarantee the process of leveling fishing would not be such a horrible slog. I love fishing, but I get really bored really fast (like I'm sure a lot of other people raised on video games and TV do) so spicing it up would be so cool. Today I got the crab pet, it was so exciting! The Empty Rum Bottle is also more thrilling to me than a stack of Raw Bristlewhiskers. Just sayin', I love fishing but I wish it were more varied.
Drakkenfyre Dec 5th 2010 7:50PM
You want tiresome drops? Go fish in the Dalaran fountain.
Once you hit the no junk skill, ALL you pull up are Fountain Goldfish. Unless you get lucky and your bobber hits the edge of the fountain, then you can pull up stuff on the sewers drop table Or a coin.
Picviewer Dec 5th 2010 6:24PM
love the lobster one in SW with the L85 shark swimming the area, don't mind it on my tank but can imagine it's fun for a lowbie doing it.
never bothered with fishing since launch until maybe 2 or so months ago. since then I maxed it out and even spent a few hours a night going for the coins on one.
just wish the derbies were more than once a day as my first thought during the day isn't to log into a game at 2pm.
MisterRik Dec 5th 2010 6:49PM
There are a couple very simple things they could have done to make fishing "more fun".
1) Improve Casting Accuracy. There is absolutely no reason why it should take 17 tries to get the !@#$% bobber to land in the !@#$% pool. It shouldn't be that hard for a "Grand Master" fisherman to land a bobber inside a 10-foot-wide circle.
2) When I fish, I want FISH. Seriously. When my paladin or warrior drops a line in a school of Dragonfin Angelfish, I probably want Dragonfin Angelfish because I probably want to cook up some Dragonfin Filet. If I want Cobalt Ore, I'll send my mining toon to mine cobalt veins. If I want Borean Leather Scraps (I don't), I'll send my skinning toon out to skin low-level Northrend mobs. What I don't want is my fishing schools being exhausted early because off all the "special prizes" I get instead of fish. I paladin came across some Greater Sagefish schools the other day and decided to take the time to fish some up to cook some nice buff food for my level 40 priest. She fished 4 consecutive Ironbound Chests out of the same school. Instead of fish. Save the non-fish stuff for the "junk" schools (Floating Debris, Schooner Wreckage, etc.)
Raven Dec 5th 2010 7:12PM
MEEEAAALL STTTOOORRRRMMM made me squee my pants! XD
WatergrlDRAGON15 Dec 6th 2010 10:10AM
Well I did fished up Old Ironjaw last night just when I just took up fishing. I was around in my 160s fishing level with the IF fish attractor.
C4G Dec 6th 2010 11:05AM
Blech, I hate fishing in-game. Why didn't they do this sooner?
Oh that's right, they were waiting till I had painstaking plunged a butt-load of time to raise all of my alts fishing up to 450....*tongue in cheek*
nrmedsign Dec 6th 2010 1:24PM
Thanks for the guide
Quixota Dec 6th 2010 8:22PM
I'm with the Salty crew too! Four toons at max so far and all from honest (ie. non-bot) fishing! I almost wish fishing had remained harder, but that's probably being mean. Anyway, if you do want to level your fishing but don't want to feel like you could be doing something better with your time, just buy some lures and do it for 10 minutes at a time a few times a week. You'll be surprised at how quick that goes, and how often you'll just keep fishing... "Damn you, Mr Pinchy!"
Comito Dec 7th 2010 8:01AM
Maybe I'll get round to it eventually as my last prof to complete, main profs, then Archaeology......Cooking and first aid.....then finally fishing! Too much to do as it is in game haha