Gone fishing

My new hunter is the first of my WoW characters who has done any serious fishing. Previously I had just tried it for 10 minutes, found it boring, and then never bothered. But for Waldin, the hunter, fishing turns out to be his best tradeskill. I'm making more money from fishing than from skinning or leatherworking. The fish needed for alchemy, Oily Blackmouth, Firefin Snapper, and Stonescale Eel, sell very well. And the other fish I inevitably catch while looking for the expensive ones serve to increase my cooking skill, and as pet food.

This weekend I even participated in the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza event, which happens every Sunday between 2 pm and 4 pm. Goal is to be the first to catch 40 Speckled Tastyfish, which can only be caught from special fish circles on the coast of Stranglethorn during the event. Difficult, because the circles disappear after you caught a few fish from them, and you have to find the next one. As my hunter is only level 22, there aren't many places where I can safely fish in Stranglethorn, but the Yojimba island was okay for that. I didn't win the fishing contest, but I did get 40 fish in less than one hour. For all the participants that don't win, these fish sell for 23 silver per batch of 5, so I made nearly 2 gold pieces from the event. Not bad at my level!

Apart from fishing, I also braved the dangers of pickup groups and went twice to the Deadmines. It was fun, and I managed to get a blue two-handed axe, plus the blue leather armor quest reward for killing Vancleef. But I also experienced the bad sides of pickup groups. The first group reached the pirate ship, but then two people had to go and we didn't finish. The second group killed Vancleef, but was visibly going to lose against the henchmen. So I looted his head before dying, to get the quest finished, predicting correctly that the others might not want to run back all the way to loot him. But besides the head for the quest, Vancleef dropped a blue leather armor, and *all three* paladins in the group pushed on the *need* button for it, in spite of the armor being bind-on-pickup. Well, it wasn't that bad, because the quest reward was also a blue leather armor, but it is annoying anyway to play with people who don't follow simple loot rules. Blue bind-on-pickup items are very valuable to the people that can use them, but the paladin who won the leather armor will just sell it for 10 silver to a NPC vendor.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next dungeon, Blackfathom Deeps. I'd also like to do Shadowfang Keep, which is one of my favorite places, but I guess it will be difficult to get a group for that together, as there are no Alliance quests for it. Same problem for Wailing Caverns, but I just did that one recently with a Horde rogue, and the caverns aren't as nice as the keep. Up to now my strategy to play on the new server for getting easier into low-level groups is working out well. And I've read that Blizzard is aware that their group-finding tools are sub-optimal, and are working on that.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:19 AM Permanent Link