025: Gone fishin'

When I posted yesterday I realised that bloggers clock is entirely different from mine. Normally that doesn't matter, but I've signed up for NaBloPoMo and should be getting up one blog each day. Fair warning: I'm not even going to try and figure out what bloggers day rhytm is, and definitely not adjust myself to it. Too many other and more important things to do. So expect there to be some inconsistencies in the blog dates here in Mana Battery land - two posts in one day and none the next, etc. Regardless, I will make a fair try at having 30 reasonably spaced apart blogposts up at the end of November, which is the most important thing.

DING! 375 fishing!

Yes, I ding in tradeskills too, because gosh darnit it deserves some recognition to finally finish leveling things like tailoring and fishing. The ding itself happened rather quietly in the middle of my first appearance in the Stranglethon Fishing Extravaganza. A couple of weeks ago we got a new mid-level guildie who then promptly brought in his lvl 70 Tree because we were just that awesome. Turns out he's a fisher! Up until that point, I'd been pretty much the only person in the guild that seemed to care about reaching 375 fishing and obsessing over those Pure Water pools in Nagrand. Now we were two! Last weekend was supposed to be my debut in the fishing contest but life happened, as it does, and I went to bed about an hour before the contest started so I could have some precious five hours of sleep before the raid that night. The new Tree won and got a shiny new fishing rod.

(I really need to come up with some better nicknames, we have an awful lot of Bears and Trees now. Unfortunatly this Trees awesome existing nickname is untranslatable.)

Fishing is slow. Skilling up happens every 10-12 catches or so once you get past 300, which means you need close to one thousand catches before you see 375. It sounds like an awful lot but it wasn't really that boring. I fished whenever I felt like it and skilled my cooking on the side. The key really is to not push yourself, as fishing two-three hours in a row will get pretty damn dull. (Unless you've parked yourself by the Stormwind canals with a guildie and he's running back and forth to the AH to model different tailored RPG-costumes for you, inbetween trick or treating and explaining to people where you got your sexy red dress.) I also made it a rule to fish whenever I was waiting for a boat to arrive.

The Fishing Extravaganza contest occurs every Sunday in STV between 2pm and 4pm server time. It's announced in a yell and everyone starts roaming the western coast up and down, hunting for fishing nodes. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect so I'd brought along the mini-mage (currently a Buccaneer, which makes flying to and from Booty Bay really interesting) as a bodyguard to handle self-confident mobs and any possible gankers. The new Tree was there too, hoping to catch one of the rare fish he didn't already have and ready to answer all my questions.

I'll spare you from a play-by-play cause a fishing contest isn't all that thrilling. Suffice to say that I almost won - I had 38 Tastyfish when the winner was annoucned and got the remaining two within a minute - and that we all stayed until the end of the Extravaganza in the hopes of some rare fish consolation prizes. The Tree caught two (bastard!) and I caught one, earning myself some shiny new +5 fishing boots. That might sound like a tombola prize, but in fishing every single skillpoint counts. There are waters out there were you need an insanely high amount of fishing skill in order to avoid the tiresome 'Your fish got away!' messages, and lures just don't provide enough boost. Ideally, a serious fisher should have the Extravaganza fishing rod (+35), the hard-to-get rare fish prizes of eternium line (+5), boots (+5) and hat (+5), a separate pair of gloves with a fishing enchant on them (+5) and a decent lure attatched to the pole.

Sounds extreme, I know, but simply to fish in certain lakes in Terokkar, you need a base fishing skill of 405. That's 375 fishing skill and lure. However 'just' 405 will mean that several of your catches will get away and be a waste of time. To fully stop any fish from getting away, you need to pack 500 fishing skill. 500! With your core 375 skill and a +100 lure, you still need 25 points. If you use the rod you get from the Shattrah quest, you've got an extra +20. You still need either the enchant or one of the Extravaganza prizes to climb the last points, and that's skipping the fact that +100 lures aren't the easiest to come by. At least I don't think they are. Limited supply at some vendors and engineer made only, I believe. Thankfully I have some engineering hookups I can abuse.

Why do we bother? Cause there's money to be made selling you our tasty catches, of course. You want food buffs? We can whip up +20stam/+8mp5, +44heal/+20spi, +20agi/+20spi, +23spelldmg/+23spi and +30stam/+20spi.

Love the fish. Love your fishers.