I first tried out Archaeology on my druid, right after the expansion hit. Despite the nice little hits of experience every time she surveyed, I quickly grew antsy about completing the new content. And left her Archaeology hovering in the low 100s.
I tried out archaeology again on my undead shadow priest, using it to pass time between dungeon queues. But the PUGs for my horde battlegroup were uniformly horrible, so that didn’t last long either. I think she may have just barely hit 100.
Fast forward to my gnome mage hitting 83, and my not being enthusiastic about pushing a 4th character through all the Cataclysm content again so soon. Dutifully, I headed over to the archaeology trainer, then set out on my flight path to my first dig site. And this time, it stuck. I spent hours zooming from place to place on my mage, herbing as I went. Racking up the experience. I got my first rare pretty quickly– the Fossilized Hatchling. At which point I started to get the crazy gleam in my eye– oh yes, Vial of the Sands, one day, I could have you!
And the rest, as they say, was history. I kept at the archaeology, and hit 525 with it not too long after the mage hit 85. Almost all of it just from surveying dig sites.
And no, I don’t have the Vial of the Sands yet. But I know if anyone can extract that from the Uldum sands, it’s my lucky little mage.
Note that I am not including rare quality tailoring gear here at this time since it is PvP oriented, or ilvl 333 and under. Also note that overall, until there’s data showing that mastery is worth it for shadow priests, I am leaning towards gear without it when there is a choice to be made.
UPDATED 4/25/11 with new dailies added in Patch 4.1
The patch brings us new fishing dailies in some of our other capital cities, so we can add some variety to our daily routine. I know I’ve grown tired of doing the same old quests, and quite honestly, I miss the Undercity. I’ll be decamping for there after the patch lands.
New Alliance Fishing Dailies in Darnassus Quests come from Astaia.
A Slippery Snack. Gather 6 Baby Octopi from the shallow water near Rut’theran Village.
An Old Favorite. Catch 8 Kaldorei Herring by fishing in Rut’theran Village.
Happy as a Clam Digger. Gather 10 Teldrassil Clams from the shores near Rut’theran Village.
Stocking Up. Catch 5 Lake Whitefish by fishing in Darnassus.
The Sister’s Pendant. Retrieve Aquinne’s Moon Pendant from the belly of a Giant Catfish. You should be able to catch them anywhere you can fish in Darnassus.
New Alliance Fishing Dailies in Ironforge Quests come from Grimnur Stonebrand.
Cold Water Fishing. Catch 5 Arctic Char by fishing in Helm’s Bed Lake in Dun Morogh.
Fish fer Squirky. Catch 3 Blind Minnows in the pool in the Forlorn Cavern and feed them to Squirky.
Live Bait. Use Grimnur’s Bait on yourself, then jump into Helm’s Bed Lake in Dun Morogh.
One fer the Ages. Catch a Young Ironjaw in Ironforge’s Forlorn Cavern and display it in the Library near the Empty Plaque.
The Gnomish Bait-o-Matic. Use the Bait-o-Matic Blueprint with 5 Shiny Baubles, a Hair Trigger, and 3 Rat Traps to create the Gnomish Bait-o-Matic.
New Horde Fishing Dailies in The Undercity Quests come from Armand Cromwell.
Fish Head. Fish up a Severed Abomination Head in Undercity
Like Pike? Dig up a Corpse Worm in the Ruins of Lordaeron courtyard and use it as bait to catch a Corpse-Fed Pike. Corpse-Fed Pike can be fished up in Brightwater Lake, northeast of Undercity.
Moat Monster! Use the Alliance Decoy Kit to summon the Moat Monster in the Ruins of Lordaeron. Then use the Bloated Frogs to feed the monster.
New Horde Fishing Dailies in Thunder Bluff Quests come from Kah Mistrunner.
Craving Crayfish. Gather 10 Stonebull Crayfish from Stonebull Lake in Mulgore. You can fish them up dive in and grab them by hand.
Pond Predators. Catch 8 Azshara Snakehead fish from the Thunder Bluff pond.
Shiny Baubles. Collect 20 Shiny Stones from around the central rise’s base.
The Race to Restock. Gather 2 Randy Smallfish and 2 Amorous Mud Snappers from Stonebull Lake in Mulgore.
The Ring’s the Thing. Fish up Blind Cavefish from the Pools of Vision in Thunder Bluff and fillet them until you find the ring.
Original Post from December 2, 2010
I’d planned to hold off on this post until I’d actually gone through all 5 of the quests both Horde and Alliance side, but after a week-and-a-half, I’ve still only had the same 3 each side, and have been receiving prods about writing this post, so here you have it.
New Fishing Achievements
Illustrious Grand Master Fisherman. Obtain 525 skill points in fishing. The previous fishing skill achievements were earned upon training the ability to earn another 75 skill points. I like this change to getting the recognition once you finally get that last available skill point.
The Limnologist. Catch 48 different fresh water fish. This big list of fish includes fish from Azeroth, Outlands, and Northrend. Despite my many fishing dailies, and my having fished up all of the previously existing fish on the list many times in the past, my achievement in progress for this is a big wall of gray. Blergh. I would mind redoing this less if it were only the new Azeroth fishies, as I want to explore all the new content anyhow.
The Oceanographer. Catch 33 different saltwater fish. Like Limnologist, these fish can be found in Azeroth, Northrend or Outlands (Jaggal Clams for the latter in case you were thinking to yourself what on earth could have been in saltwater in Outlands.)
New Alliance Fishing Dailies in Stormwind
Hitting a Walleye. Catch 8 Hardened Walleye. A very straightforward, fast daily. Make sure you are at the correct lake — you should see an on screen indication that you are at Stormwind Lake. At 450 fishing, I caught one of these fish each cast.
Rock Lobster. Collect 6 rock lobsters. This quest is completed under the Stormwind docks, and is a collection quest (checking the crab traps) not actually a fishing chore. There is a level 85 shark patrolling those waters, noted by the quest to be viscous (sic), so watch out.
Thunder Falls. Catch 4 violet perch. Head out of Storwind’s city gates, and head immediately to the right, and look for a steep but accessible path up the cliffs. You’ll come to a small house with a smidge of water and a dock near the water falls. At 450 fishing I typically caught my four fish within 10 casts at worst.
Diggin’ for Worms. Find an Overgrown Earthworm near Lake Olivia and use it as bait to catch a Crystal Bass. Look for cogwheels over hard to see mounds of dirt around Lake Olivia to grab your earthworm. After applying the worm to your hook, it’s buff will last 10 minutes which should be more than long enough to catch your fish at Olivia’s Pond. This one also happens to reward 2 fishing skill points instead of the usual 1. This body of water is near the Pumpkin Patch for the cooking daily, accessed through an exit from the Dwarven District.
Big Gulp. Catch Royal Monkfish and fillet them until you find the Precious Locket. So far, this is my least favorite of the fishing dailies due to its randomness. One day I fished up 26 monkfish, over the span of 11 or 12 minutes before I got a locket.
New Horde Fishing Dailies in Orgrimmar
Clammy Hands. Collect 10 Monstrous clam meat. The clams are collected (not fished) from the sea floor under the docks in Bladefist Bay, outside of Orgrimmar.
A Staggering Effort. Head out the North exit of Orgrimmar to kill a stag and collect its eye to use as bait to catch a Sandy Carp in the Valley of Wisdom.
A Golden Opportunity. Cut off a thunder Lizard’s tail with the quest item knife, then click on its tail to kill Golden Stonefish, retrieving 3 Golden Stonefish from their electrocuted bodies. You should be able to use that one lizard tail to easily kill all three of your fish.
No Dumping Allowed. Fish up 6 toxic puddlefish. A very quick and straightforward daily.
A Furious Catch. Catch a Giant Furious Pike in the Southfury River right outside Orgrimmar. Be sure to head South, not North, as you exit Orgrimmar through the Valley of the Spirits, as you want to remain in Durotar for this quest.
Other New Fishing Miscellanea
The new dailies reward you with a Bag of Shiny Things. Overall, the rewards bag has been disappointing. No cool grey or white items that serve as bank alt bling. No vendor trash that earns you a great sell price. No adorable pets. OK, I take back the latter — if you don’t already have a Strand Crawler from your Dalaran fishing bags, you have a chance at that.
I would guess that the overall cheap quality of these rewards is due to the fact that your level 10 characters can pick up these quests, and no one wants a filthy rich level 10 just from doing the fishing dailies. It would be nice though if there was a new pole, or a pet, or lures, or even unique bobber icons that could be either earned over time or randomly awarded through these new dailies. Oh well. they promised to make fishing more fun in Cataclysm, but so far I am not sure what it is they have in mind exactly. We shall see.
Are you going to grab a tackle box? It’s a new profession bag, fashioned by engineers. I am not seeing that for me it would be worth it over all. I typically send all my fish to a bank alt, and at any given time have a solid tab full of fish and meat. I am much more likely to go out into the world with regular bags and fill them up. But then again it might come in handy when roaming the world working on one of those new “catch one of every fish” achievements.
I do like the change of our mouse-over for the bobber now being a fishy. It’s very cute. Now if only they’d give us a way to earn ourselves one of these cute goblin fishing chairs…
Horde Cooking Dailies in Thunder Bluff Quests come from Aska Mistrunner.
Corn Mash. Pound 6 bowls of corn kernels into cornmeal.
"Magic" Mushrooms. Gather 6 "Magic" Mushrooms from the Pools of Vision.
Mulgore Spice Bread. Use Mulgore Spices with Spice Bread to create 5 Fresh Mulgore Spice Bread, or obtain them from someone else.
Perfectly Picked Portions. Obtain four "perfect portions" from merchants stalls around Thunder Bluff. You will obtain one each of Succulent Sweet Potatoes, Savory Spices, Fresh-Caught Fish, and Fresh-Hunted Fowl from Thunder Bluff merchant stalls.
Pining for Nuts. Obtain 30 Pine Nuts by toasting Mulgore Pine Cones.
Original Post
I've slowly but surely started working on my Cataclysm cooking achievements and cooking quests, thanks to all being activated with patch 4.0.3a. I've already achieved the Let's Do Lunch achievement on my Alliance characters after only a week of dailies.
Achievements: Alliance
Let's Do Lunch: Complete each of the Stormwind cooking dailies listed below.
The Cataclysmic Gourmet: Cook 15 then 30 of the new recipes.
A Fisherman's Feast. Obtain 5 gigantic catfish, via fishing or stealing barrels of fish from beleagured Stormwind fishermen.
Orphans Like Cookies Too. Steal bags of confectioners' Sugar (or buy them from NPCs in the Inns around SW).
The King's Cider. Obtain 12 juicy apples that have fallen from the trees around Stormwind. Herbalists have a leg up on this as the locations of fallen apples will show on your mini map like herb nodes do.
Feeling Crabby? Collect 10 canal crabs. You'll want to get a warlock's underwater breathing buff or be a druid in seal form to swiftly swim through the canals in search of the crabs.
Penny's Pumpkin Pancakes. Obtain 6 Stormwind Pumpkins. Gathered from a pumpkin patch North of Stormwind. The hardest part of this quest is finding the tiny pathway out to the pumpkin patch from the far reaches of the Dwarven District.
Horde Cooking Dailies in Orgirmmar
Careful, This Fruit Bites Back. Obtain 8 pieces of prickly fruit from Orgrimmar cactus. Herbalists have a leg up on this as the locations of the cactus fruit will show on your mini map like herb nodes do.
So far of these, all are pretty fast and easy to complete other than Feeling Crabby, which is likely to flare tempers the same way the Dalaran mushrooms did in the early days of WotLK. 3 completed quests earns you enough Chef's Award tokens to purchase a recipe. Or 2 tokens can be turned in for a Crate of Tasty Meat that can be used to create some of the new recipes.
There are 11 recipes that may be learned with 450 cooking skill; 3 with 475 cooking skill; 11 with 500 cooking skill; 1 with 505 cooking skill; and 2 learned with 525 cooking skill. NOTE: the two 525 recipes will require a spend of 5 tokens instead of the 3 needed for the lower level recipes. Alliance recipes are purchased from Bario Matalli, while Horde recipes are purchased from Shazdar.
Now that the final countdown has started for Cataclysm, as the earthquakes become more frequent, and the elementals start popping up everywhere, my thoughts have turned to professions. I’d been wondering how Inscription would fare, given that they’ve changed our glyph usage so that it’s buy once and know it forever, which will long-term reduce that facet of the viability of inscription as a money-making profession.
Thanks to the good folks over at WoWHead, I’ve gotten my question answered: we’ll be making toys and the key component to one of the new buff foods. Some nice relics for ourselves, and shoulder enchants that are better than the rep enchants as well. But so far, no sure-fire best selling items, unless it turns out we are the primary source for level 85 offhands for the first few months of the expansion.
Origami Beetle. Use: Release a small swarm of beetles. (15 Sec Cooldown). No source information yet for the BoP technique.
Mysterious Fortune Cards
Now, these items are interesting. When you make a Mysterious Fortune Card, you can not be sure of exactly what you will end up with. No, it's not another Darkmoon Card redux. That's further down this page. Instead, you end up with a Fortune Card. Most of the time, you get the white item that provides a fortune but also acts as the primary material for creating a Fortune Cookie, a buff food that provides you with 96k health and mana, and a 90 stamina/90 other useful stat buff for an hour. But there is also a chance to create an uncommon card that vendors for 20g, a rare card that vendors for 50g, or, drum roll please: one of two epic quality cards that vendor for 1,000 G or 5,000 G. Now that's what I call fortunate!
BoE Gear
Book of Blood. Rare quality, level 81 spellcaster off-hand item.
Forged Documents (horde) (alliance). This item begins a quest that you turn in either at Stormwind or Orgrimmar, rewarding you with a bulging sack of gold.
Darkmoon Card of Destruction. Creates a random new Darkmoon Card, full sets of which can be compiled as decks and turned in for:
I tried out my Northrend Glyph Research which had not returned anything new for over a year and was rewarded by learning Glyph of Living Bomb. No learning from my second try at it this morning. Learned Glyph of Colossus Smash from a Book of Glyph Mastery; no further learnings from a second book.
Note that the Dalaran trainer does not have anything the IF trainer didn't have, and that if you have already learned your limited quantity glyphs from the Dalaran supplier, there is nothing new for you there either.
Kandira was 2 bars away from 70 last night when I got pulled in to ICC 10, filling in for a raider’s no show (our three standby folks had also not turned up.) Raid time was followed by dinner, then back to the Outland salt mines to finish up for the big ding.
I dinged turning in a quest in Shadowmoon Valley, just a few minutes after completing my Outland exploration achievement. My first pit stop was my bank vault, to pullout the materials I’d been saving up for my turbo charged flyer. I was pretty close except in one area — Khorium. Despite having mined a few nodes over the course of leveling, I had only 17 ores and had to buy the rest. OUCH! That’s all we’ll say about that.
So now the little lock is almost grown up. I suspect that these last 10 levels in Northrend will take a while. I hope she won’t sit out here a year like the poor neglected Alliance toons…
If you haven't already made your way into Icecrown Citadel and checked out the quartermaster, you may not be aware that unlike ToC and Ulduar 25-mans, wherein many yummy crafting patterns fell from the bosses, you will be needing to purchase your 3.3 epic crafting patterns. Specifically, you will need to have appropriate reputation levels (honored for one pair, revered for another pair or patterns) plus a primordial saronite to purchase each pattern.
There are two ways to obtain the primordial saronite — they drop at 50% or less off the bosses in Icecrown Citadel 25-man raids, or you can buy them for 23 emblems of frost. Personally, I don't see a lot of folks taking the latter route straight out of the gate since we'll all be needing to spend hundreds of those emblems on purchasing our tier 10 gear.
Our guild is still undecided about how to handle the saronites as they drop. We do have a guild crafter rank, Swashbuckler, already in place. For runed orbs, our guild sold them to guildies, from the gbank, at half the going auction house price. I've proposed that we either give them to the guild crafters, as they hit the appropriate rep levels, or sell them to them at no more thank 1/4 the going auction house
price. Even the latter would be a pricey proposition for crafters.
Personally, having acquired a substantial number of patterns both before and after being named a guild crafter, and so far having made about a dozen pieces for guildies and friends of the guild, and nothing for myself, find it a little hard to rationalized spending my gold on buying primal saronite for four patterns, when it's unlikely I will make the items for myself (at best, I could see myself crafting a pair of boots.)
One of the rules of being a guild crafter is that since you get priority on dropped patterns you don't charge guildies for crafting the items. Thus, if we don't give guild crafters the saronite, we are basically saying "oh hai please spend 3k per pattern in costs you will not be able to recoup unless you shop yourself out in trade chat for a few weeks." I doubt most of the folks would do so — or would even have the cash reserves to do so even if they wanted to.
How's your guild handling the primal saronite? Or how would you like to see it go?
