Fishing for druids in WoW Forever

If you’ve stood at a fishing trainer in Forever wondering whether a PvP druid has any business in a profession that’s mostly watching a bobber, or you’ve already started and want the quickest Horde route from 1 to 300, this guide covers both. The short answer is to take it to 300, because what you catch on the way feeds your potions and your food, and the case for it is argued below.

Whilst I’ve fished and cooked on druids on both factions for years, Forever has been live for three days, and Restokins sits at Fishing and Cooking 225 with Enchanting and Engineering as primary professions and no Alchemy (which matters once we get to potions), so the last 75 points, the Artisan rank and about half the catches, are still ahead of me too.

The short version

Here are the sixteen calls the guide turns on, each linked to the section behind it, and if you’d rather have it on paper, the cheat sheet prints on its own.

Before we start

The guide assumes you’re Horde, of any class (with notes where a druid differs), and that you’ll level Cooking alongside, which costs you no primary slot because Blizzard’s camping article gives every character all three secondary professions (Cooking, Fishing and First Aid) on top of their two primary ones. There are no gold prices and no trading advice here, since a three-day-old auction house can’t tell you anything yet. Where a live source backs a claim (Blizzard’s notes, the launch client or a live Wowhead tooltip) it’s stated plainly, and anything resting on Classic or on a guide written from the beta says so in the sentence.

Tim Howgego’s El’s Extreme Anglin’ zone table is the one everybody copies, Furious at Warcraft Tavern and Rachelle Riddle at Blizzard Watch give the two catch counts this guide sets side by side, and Old Guardian at Method (a guide site) and the WoW-Professions team wrote the best Forever guides so far. Everyone else, Wowhead’s Forever database included, is credited in Sources.

What changed in Forever

The cast itself is still Classic’s, whilst nearly everything around it has changed. The live tooltip still tells you to equip a pole, find water and right-click the bob when it splashes, and describes a 30 second channel that lands 10 to 20 yards away.

The camp features

Blizzard’s camping article turns the Cooking Fire into a Basic Campfire that holds up to 3 camp features. The first come at skill 20 from starter zone quests or a profession trainer, and anything needing 140 or more drops in dungeons and raids. Fishing has three, and their live tooltips give the following:

• The Fish Bowl, from Fishing 20, which “allows you and others sitting nearby to gain 8% increased stats”, is exclusive with Blessing of Kings, needs a campfire, and shares a 1 hour cooldown with every camp feature. It’s made from a Raw Brilliant Smallfish and an Empty Vial.
• The Fishing Rack, from Fishing 140, which lets you catch uncommon fish for an hour, provides lures and includes the Fish Bowl. Its blueprint drops, from Gelihast in Blackfathom Deeps by Old Guardian’s account.
• The Fishing Hut, from Fishing 300, which lets you catch rare fish for an hour, provides lures and “provides all of the benefits of a Fish Bowl”.

The food rework

Blizzard’s deep dive promised “over 600 new recipes across professions and level ranges” and food “that can grant a small experience bonus and stat boosts”. Every fish food tooltip this guide checked heals over 21 to 30 seconds and, after 10 seconds of eating, makes you Well Fed for 15 minutes with one stat and 5% more experience from kills (Clamlette Surprise and Dirge’s Chops, neither of them a fish, have no experience line). None of them restores mana any more, so Nightfin Soup, Classic’s mana food, is now +22 Spell Damage, and Bristle Whisker Catfish, which only healed in Classic, gives +8 Fishing for the grind.

The bobber and the Interact Key

Kaivax’s 16 October development notes say “Ensured your own fishing bobber is always targetable”, under Gamepad Support, so whether keyboard and mouse get the same comes down to a range setting, which is covered in Settings that help.

What didn’t change, as far as anyone has said

Blizzard’s notes, Known Issues and hotfixes say nothing about skill-up rates, caps, trainers, books, quests, lures, poles, pools or the Extravaganza (Stranglethorn’s fishing contest). Nevermore at Warcraft Tavern writes that Forever adds new uncommon and rare fish, a Bait and Tackle crafting menu, the legacy talents Luremaster and Working Overtime, and more than one Extravaganza winner, but cites no primary source, and none of those names appear in the client’s interface code, so if Bait and Tackle is real it’s most likely a tab in the retail-style Professions window.

Why fish all the way to 300

The recommendation is to fish to 300 on a PvP druid, and to do it before 60 rather than after, because the hours buy three things:

• Free Action, because Oily Blackmouth starts the one potion every carrier and every druid in the battleground guides wants on the bar, and you catch it on the coasts from 75 to 300 without trying, four fish to a potion with an alchemist doing the rest.
• Food, because Forever turned fish into 15 minute stat buffs, +28 Spell Damage for Balance and +40 Attack Power for Feral (the food table further down has the rest), with 5% more experience on every kill whilst you level, and those recipes sit at 250 and 275 on the coasts where you finish fishing.
• The camp features, because the Rack adds uncommon fish and lures at 140 and the Hut adds rare fish at 300, though what the Hut’s rare fish are worth nobody knows yet. An earlier version of this guide counted the Fish Bowl as a reason to go all the way, and it isn’t one, because it needs only Fishing 20.

So what does it cost? About 4 to 7 hours of casting, or about half that from 225, plus the travel. Set that beside the Darkspear Raiders reputation, where that guide’s sums put Revered at about 70 hours of matches (from beta figures and Classic’s thresholds). If you’re fishing from 225 anyway, Cooking to 300 comes nearly free, because its 100 or so cooks use fish you’re already catching. So fishing is a few evenings spent on consumables you’ll use every night you queue, which makes it a consumables profession rather than a gold one. Do you carry the flag? Do you play Balance and want the +28? Do you queue with friends who’d sit round a fire? If any of those is a yes, the hours are worth it.

That said, there’s a fair case against. Free Action Potions, Blackmouth Oil and the 275 foods can all be bought from the auction house or from a guild alchemist and cook, and the best Stamina and Intellect foods aren’t fish at all, so if your evenings are short and your gold isn’t, buying is quicker. The recommendation stands because the bar fills as a side effect of a route that also feeds your potions and your food, and a druid who makes their own supply never queues without it, but spending those hours in a battleground and buying the results is a sensible call too.

The route from 1 to 300

The route is a list of where to stand at each skill, always in water where your skill plus your lure lands every cast, and no harder. Every zone has a base skill (the lowest skill that can fish there), and below base plus 95 some bites get away (getaways, shown in Figure 04 in the skill-ups section), so a 130 zone lands every cast from 225 and a 205 zone from 300.

The bases, the getaway rule, the first two rank caps and each zone’s fish are Classic’s, the lures are live, and the order owes most to Furious and WoW-Professions. The ladder below gives each band, and the numbers in brackets are spots on the map after the four route sections.

1 to 75, at home

Durotar by Sen’jin (1), Stonebull Lake in Mulgore (2) and Brightwater Lake in Tirisfal land every cast from 25, or from 1 with a Shiny Bauble, and then the city water or the Barrens takes you to 75. Train Journeyman at 50, and keep every Raw Brilliant Smallfish, because from Fishing 20 they’re your Fish Bowls.

75 to 125, the Barrens coast and the forests

Fish the Barrens coast by Ratchet (3) with Nightcrawlers, then from about 100 move to Mirkfallon Lake in Stonetalon (4) or Zoram’gar in Ashenvale (5), where 100 plus Nightcrawlers is exactly the 150 that base-55 water needs for no getaways.

125 to 225, the coasts

At 125, go to Booty Bay (6) for the Expert book, then stay in Ashenvale with Nightcrawlers to 150, or start on a 130 coast with Bright Baubles, which is a 75% catch rate at 125 and every cast from 150. From 150 the recommended coast is Dustwallow (8), because Nat Pagle stands there for 225, and Stranglethorn (7), Desolace (9) and the Swamp of Sorrows (10) are the same water with different company.

225 to 300, Tanaris and Feralas

At 225, take Nat Pagle’s quest on the Dustwallow coast (8). The recommended way to do it is to collect his four fish in one trip, the Sailfin (7) and the Mahi Mahi (10) in the Eastern Kingdoms, then the Striker in Desolace (9) and the Feralas Ahi (12). Only the Ahi wants Bright Baubles, because the other three are 130 water, which by Classic’s getaway rule lands every cast at 225.

Hand them in to Nat Pagle in Dustwallow (8), after which 225 plus Bright Baubles is exactly the 300 the 205 zones want. Furious recommends the Tanaris coast by Gadgetzan (11) and WoW-Professions the inland Feralas lakes by Camp Mojache (12), and this guide’s recommendation is to let the cooking decide, with Tanaris first, where Dirge Quikcleave’s quest gives Artisan Cooking in Classic, then Feralas once your Cooking reaches 250. Skip Jademir Lake and Azshara’s Bay of Storms, which are 330 water, and expect 400 to 630 catches by the two Classic counts, which is about one and three quarter to three and a half hours at the estimated pace.

A pool (a school of fish or floating wreckage) is worth a cast wherever you see one, because the live tooltips for Floating Wreckage, the Stonescale Eel Swarm and the Greater Sagefish School read only “Fishing Pool”, with no skill, and in Classic a pool uses its zone’s base.

The fish, and what to keep

When your bags fill up, this table says which fish earn the slot, and its Keep column is this guide’s recommendation. What each fish makes is live, whilst its water and skill are Classic’s, by the credited sources and the Warcraft Wiki.

Poles, lures and gear

Gear works as insurance against getaways, because in Classic it adds to the skill that lands a fish and not to the one that earns skill-ups, so a Strong Fishing Pole and the right lure are all the route needs. The bonuses below are live, and where each item comes from is Classic’s.

The FC-5000 is the one pole this guide recommends a detour for on the way up, because Katoom’s quest is a short fight for +25 you keep forever, whereas the Big Iron pole is a 1% drop and the Extravaganza is a Sunday race for gear you only need past 300.

Lures

A lure is essentially ten minutes of extra skill on your pole, and the values below are live. The engineers’ Attractor is strongest in 205 water from 200 to 225, where its +25 over Bright Baubles turns getaways into catches, though it lasts half as long. Its live recipe is 2 Bronze Bar, 1 Nightcrawlers and 1 Coarse Blasting Powder, and in Classic it’s taught at Engineering 150. From 225, Bright Baubles already reach that water’s 300, so by Classic’s getaway rule the Attractor buys nothing there.

The Fishing Rack and the Fishing Hut provide lures too, by their tooltips, though the tooltips don’t say which.

What each fish becomes in a fight

For a PvP druid, what matters about a fish is what it turns into and what that does in a fight, as shown below:

Free Action

The Free Action Potion “Makes you immune to Stun and Movement Impairing effects for the next 30 sec. Does not remove effects already on the imbiber”, with a 2 minute cooldown from level 20. Two Oily Blackmouth and an Empty Vial make one Blackmouth Oil, then two oils, a Stranglekelp and a Leaded Vial make the potion (both steps are Alchemy in Classic).

It’s the potion the Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley guides put on every druid’s bar, because potions work in forms in Forever (Blizzard’s Hunter and Druid deep dive says “All potions and almost all similar consumables are now useable” in a form). A druid already shifts out of roots, so for us it’s a stun immunity you drink before the stun lands, and it won’t help against a Fear or a Polymorph if Forever keeps Classic’s rule, where it stopped neither. Notably, the Swiftness Potion uses no fish at all (Swiftthistle, Briarthorn and an Empty Vial by its live recipe).

The other potion fish

In Figure 03 the Stonescale Eel’s Greater Stoneshield Potion and Elixir of Greater Defense suit a Bear carrier under a Warrior, and the Firefin’s Fire Protection Potion suits everyone. The Fire Oil elixirs (Fire Power, and Holy Power on Classic’s Greater Firepower IDs) are no use to a druid, whose damage is Nature and Arcane.

Food, by spec

Forever’s fish food is a 15 minute stat buff with a heal attached, and every buff below is live, whilst the recipe vendors are Classic’s, by the Warcraft Wiki. Fifteen minutes covers about one battleground, so the recommendation is to eat between queues. In Classic you could have only one Well Fed buff at a time.

Which food suits which spec is this guide’s recommendation, worked out from those numbers:

• Balance eats Baked Salmon, or Lobster Stew if you find the lobsters, with Nightfin Soup or Spotted Yellowtail as the cheaper step down. Grilled Squid’s crit may cover spells too, but its tooltip doesn’t say.
• Feral eats Poached Sunscale Salmon, or Mightfish Steak, with Grilled Squid as the alternative, and which is stronger in Cat or Bear Form depends on form scaling that isn’t settled for Forever.
• Restoration has no fish food of its own, because whether “Spell Damage” raises healing in Forever isn’t settled. If it doesn’t, the recommendation is Runn Tum Tuber Surprise (+15 Intellect) or Clamlette Surprise (+12 Stamina and Spirit), neither of them a fish, and anyone the other team focuses wants Dirge’s Kickin’ Chimaerok Chops (+25 Stamina), also not a fish.

Sagefish, the only mana left

Raw Sagefish (149 health and 303 mana over 21 seconds) and Raw Greater Sagefish (545 health and 848 mana), both eaten raw and seated, are now the only mana fishing gives. Cooking throws the mana away, since Smoked Sagefish is now a +4 Spell Damage food and Sagefish Delight a +7 one, so the recommendation is to keep it raw, because 848 mana, small as it is at 60, is worth the bag slot to a caster druid between fights.

The Fish Bowl

The Fish Bowl is essentially Blessing of Kings in a bowl, but where Kings needs a paladin the bowl needs only a fisher at 20, so any Horde group can make its own. It works out at 8 for every 100 of a stat, so a druid with 300 Intellect and 250 Stamina sits by a fire for 24 Intellect and 20 Stamina. What isn’t settled is whether the buff lasts away from the fire and survives the trip into a battleground, though WoW-Professions says the camp gives “one buff with everything the camp items give, for an hour”. If it does both, a bowl by the battlemaster is the cheapest stat buff a Horde group can bring.

Cooking from 225 to 300 alongside

Cooking’s last rank comes down to a quest in Gadgetzan and a lot of fish you’re catching anyway, and the recipes and vendors are in the food table. The 225 cap before it comes from the Expert Cookbook (Cooking 125).

Artisan Cooking, Clamlette Surprise

The quest is “Clamlette Surprise”, from Dirge Quikcleave in Gadgetzan, and its live tooltip asks for 12 Giant Egg, 10 Zesty Clam Meat and 20 Alterac Swiss. In Classic it needs level 35 and Cooking 225 and rewards Artisan Cooking. WoW-Professions gives the Horde lead-in as “To Gadgetzan You Go!” from Zamja in Orgrimmar, with the eggs from Rocs in Tanaris, the clams from Steeljaw Snappers and Surf Gliders on its coast, and the cheese from vendors, though their guide says this part couldn’t be tested on the beta.

The recipes and the fish

Cook from 225 to about 250 on Spotted Yellowtail, Cooked Glossy Mightfish and Grilled Squid from the Tanaris coast, then Nightfin Soup and Poached Sunscale Salmon from Feralas, adding Baked Salmon at 275. Cooking won’t hold you up, because it needs about 100 fish against the 400 to 630 catches between 225 and 300. That rests on WoW-Professions’ count of about 65 cooks from 225 to 275 and 35 more to 300, with each recipe taking one raw fish by its live cook spell and both 250 recipes “yellow from 290” (a sure skill-up every cook until 290, and a chance after).

The fish table carries the hours and seasons, by the Warcraft Wiki, so Hot Smoked Bass, from Raw Summer Bass, waits for summer if Forever keeps Classic’s seasons. Lobster Stew wants Darkclaw Lobster from the Bay of Storms (330 water), and nobody has placed Large Raw Mightfish in Forever yet.

The ranks, and where each comes from

Fishing has four ranks, each a cap on your skill and each a different errand to get. The rank spells’ live tooltips show no level, skill or cost.

Apprentice and Journeyman, from any trainer

In Classic, Apprentice is level 5 and 1 silver and Journeyman is Fishing 50, level 10 and 5 silver, by Rachelle Riddle, though Method and WoW-Professions both say Apprentice has no level requirement in Forever. Furious’s Horde guide lists the Horde trainers, among them Lumak in Orgrimmar, Kah Mistrunner in Thunder Bluff, Lau’Tiki by Sen’jin, Uthan Stillwater at Stonebull Lake, Kil’Hiwana at Zoram’gar, Lui’Mala at Shadowprey and Katoom the Angler at Revantusk, and says they teach only those first two ranks.

Expert, from a book in Booty Bay

Expert Fishing - The Bass and You needs level 20 and Fishing 125 on its live tooltip and allows “a maximum of 225 fishing skill”. Old Man Heming’s live NPC tooltip puts him in Booty Bay at about 27, 77, and says only “Fisherman”. In Classic he sold it for 1 gold along with Nightcrawlers and Bright Baubles, and Method says the book can be traded.

Artisan, from Nat Pagle

Nat Pagle stands on the Dustwallow coast at about 58, 60, by his live NPC tooltip. In Classic, Artisan comes from his quest “Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme”, which needs Fishing 225 and level 35. The live tooltip names the four fish and their waters, and the zone bases and map spots beside them are Classic’s:

Method adds that the fish only bite whilst you’re on the quest, and the Warcraft Wiki that they won’t drop in a raid group, so fish them solo or in a party. Hand the four in and you’re an Artisan. Congratulations! That leaves the last 75 points between you and the Fishing Hut.

How skill-ups and getaways work

Getaways are why the route stands where it does. A getaway is a bite you lose (“Your fish got away!”, a line still in the Forever client), and in Classic your chance to land a fish rises a point at a time from 5% at the zone’s base to 100% at base plus 95 (Tim Howgego’s rule, with the 5% start from cmangos, the open-source server code). The zone bases are in the table under the chart.

Skill rises only on a catch (Rachelle Riddle’s “You only gain skill points when you actually catch a fish”), and Furious writes that “Fishing skill modifiers added by fishing poles and lures don’t change how you will skill up”, and cmangos agrees. They part ways over the zone, because Furious’s Horde guide says water far below you acts “as if the skill were green, and you will gain skill points more slowly”, whereas cmangos never looks at the zone. So the recommendation is water where every cast just lands, rather than easy water you’ve outgrown or the hardest coast you can reach.

How many catches, and how many hours

From 1 to 300 it’s 4 to 7 hours of casting before travel, or about half that from 225. That rests on this guide’s estimate of a catch every 15 to 20 seconds without getaways, or 180 to 240 an hour (an estimate, not a Forever count), at which 900 catches take 3 hours 45 to 5 hours and 1,280 take 5 hours 20 to about 7. The two Classic counts disagree by about 40%, as the chart below shows.

Druid notes

A druid fishes like anyone else, with two forms that help, one rule that gets in the way and one Tauren change:

• Aquatic Form, from level 16, which on its live tooltip costs 20% of base mana, adds 50% swim speed, gives underwater breathing and makes you immune to Polymorph, so it reaches a school offshore. The Warcraft Wiki says it now comes from the trainer rather than Classic’s quest chain.
• No fishing in a form, because Fishing is a channelled spell and the wiki says you can’t cast in Aquatic Form, and the Forever client still has the “You are in shapeshift form” error, so swim out, shift back and cast from where you stopped.
• Travel Form between spots, trained at 30, at 40% speed and only outdoors (its live tooltip is linked in the Darkspear Islands guide), so from 30 you cross between schools faster than anyone on foot.
• No help from being a Tauren, because no Tauren racial touches fishing in Forever, and Cultivation, which was +15 Herbalism in Classic, now grows a duplicate herb instead.

Settings that help

These make a long grind easier on your hands, each one from the launch client’s code, and the settings guide and console variables guide cover them too:

• Enable Interact Key, with Interact With Target bound, in Controls, which may let you click the bobber with a key. Interact Key Sound Cue adds a sound, and Interact Key Icons on Show All (in Accessibility) shows icons on objects you can’t normally target, which may include your bobber.
• Sound in Background, in Audio, which is Sound_EnableSoundWhenGameIsInBG (in the console variables guide), so you hear the splash whilst the game is behind another window.
• Auto Loot, in Controls, which takes the fish without a loot window, and over a thousand catches that’s a thousand clicks saved.

The Interact Key needs care, because the launch client’s code suggests it won’t reach a far bobber without the command below (a reading of the code rather than something seen in game). Its reach, SoftTargetInteractRange, defaults to 10 yards on keyboard and mouse and 20 in Blizzard’s gamepad code, and SoftTargetInteractArc at 0 means “directly in front”:

/console SoftTargetInteractRange 20

Fishing is the quietest grind in Forever and one of the most useful to a druid who queues every night, because the fish you keep on the way to 300 turn into the potions on your bar and the food in your bags. Fish water where every cast just lands, keep the right fish, sit by a fire before you queue, and may the bobber splash on the first cast.

I’m fishing my own way up from 225 now, and as the live game settles what still rests on Classic, the corrections go into this guide’s change log. The battlegrounds all of this is for start with the Darkspear Islands guide and its neighbours, and the build that eats the food is the Restokin build.

Contributing to this guide

If you’ve checked something here in the live game, or found a number that’s wrong on the live client, I want to hear about it, and I’ll credit you by name. The way to make sure it isn’t lost is an issue on the Restokins GitHub, with a screenshot of the tooltip or chat line. Every claim this guide still rests on a precedent for is listed on the open questions page as a question anyone can settle in game.