Power Leveling, Fishing, and Cooking (WoW)  

Before you can set your eyes on the lofty title of Chef and Salty, you need to start at the bottom rung.

Cooking and fishing can be somewhat boring to level... if you don't keep them up as you get xp, they'll fall behind and you'll then have to visit lower level zones. But who wants to stop and fish for a dozen hours when there's level to be gained? The eternal dilema.

Weither you decide to use this guide once at level cap or while leveling doesn't matter, this guide does however try to make you win sometime by showing you how to strategically fish in order to increase your cooking skill.

A couple things to know

Fishing is pretty much always going to be lower than your cooking. Fishing just takes a lot more time and patience than cooking ever will.

The formula for leveling fishing is has follow:

current unmodified fishing level - 75) / 25 = total # of catches required to level

Minimum of 1 catch per level.

Fishing in higher level water can still be done, and you will still catch things... just rarely fish. You'll get gray item such as Sickly Fish and Tattered Cloth. Those still count as 'catches' and can still give you skill up. Raising your skill level increase your chance to actually get fishes or other valuable items and speed up your cast time. Lures are useful because of this and mostly dirt cheap, so there's no reason not to grab a few.

You can definitly level from 1 to 450 in Stormwind City, Orgrimmar or Dalaran. It works. The reason why this guide makes you move around is because it attempts to make you catch the fish you will need to level cooking.

During your travels, you'll most likely come across school of fishes or wreckages. Those can be fished out of. You have an increased chance of getting the fish for which the pool is named after by doing so. Fishing out of a pool is a bit counter-intuitive, you simply need to be standing in front of it and cast your line... and hope it falls in it. It can take several cast and there's no real way to improve your odd. In Azeroth, most of the fish school are used to get fish that are Alchemy components, and thus won't be much use for someone trying to level cooking. Things change in Outland and Northrend however.

This guide will send you all over Azeroth and Outland to gather cooking recipes, whenever possible, you should grab all possible recipes from the vendor, not only those suggested in the guide, as knowing more recipes will help you get Sous Chef & The Outland Gourmet.

Getting Started, 1-100

The first thing to do of course, is to get Fishing and Cooking. You can click on the link to find out where the trainers are, or simply ask a guard.

Once that's done, find the nearest body of low level water - Stormwind and Orgrimmar are two good spot, but other lowbies zone such as Elwynn Forest, the Barrens (off the coast) work just as well.

You'll want to buy Recipe: Brilliant Smallfish and Long Jaw Mudsnapper. As you can see, there's plenty of place to buy those from, but if you've picked Orgrimmar or Stormwind as your first fishing spot, the Fishing Supply Vendor right beside the trainer will sell those.

Just keep fishing until you get up to 50 fishing and cook every fish you ge, keep any mudsnapper in your bag. Once you hit 50, you can learn how to cook them and that recipe will stay orange until you hit a 100, at which point you need to move out.

It's not a bad idea to raise your cooking to 125, even if the recipe become yellow and green - the extra cast will past your fishing skill and being able to become a Journeyman cook right away will save you having to come back to train during the next step.

Getting Serious 100-150

Make your way to Hillsbrad Foothill. You'll need to buy Recipe: Bristle Whisker Catfish from either Lindea Rabonne in Southshore or Derak Nightfall in Tarren Mills. Now head over to the river that split the zone in two, find a comfy spot, sit down, grab a few cold ones and fish away :).

You'll need to fish here until you hit level 150 and get up to 175 cooking from those fish. If you did not train journeyman cooking, never fear, you have to go back to train fishing anyway. Just make sure you keep an ample supply of fish in your bag.

Since you're in Hillsbrad, this is a good time to get some achievement done. You should find some floating wreckage in the sea, fishing from one of those will give you The Old Gnome and the Sea as well as give you credit for the Schooner Wreckage toward the The Scavenger achievement.

You might as well totally fish out any wreckage you find, you have a good chance of fishing out a crate that will contain at Weather-Beaten Journal, which on top of granting you the Fish Don't Leave Footprints achievement will also give you Find Fish which is a very useful ability later on. Don't obsess over getting the book however, you'll have several occasions to get it later if you don't fish it out now.

If you're Alliance, make sure you grab Recipe: Mithril Head Trout from Lindea Rabonne and train up to journeyman from Donald Rabonne before you leave.

Journeyman 150-225

The Horde and Alliance path split up here, Alliance players should already have their Recipe: Mithril Head Trout, Horde players will need to ever to Desolace to buy it from Wulan. They'll also find a fishing trainer, Lui'Mala there. Alternatively, you can also buy the recipe from Shankys and train there as well.

Once you're all set up, it's time to fish again. There's several place to get the Trouts, but you might as well go to the closest one.

For the Alliance players, from Hillsbrad Foothill, the closest spot are the ponds in front of Stromgarde Keep in Arathi Highlands. Just head over there and start fishing.

Since the Horde just flew all the way over to Desolace, backtracking to the Arathi Highland would be a pretty big time waster - your closest spot from there is Thousand Needles. There's a small lake by the centaur camp, you can fish the trouts there. Don't forget to hit the Floating Wreckage by the coast of Feralas on your way there.

If you've decided to train in Orgrimmar, than it's up to you weither you want to go back to Arathi or hit Thousand Needles.

This one of the first of many long stretch in fishing, you have to fish those trouts until you hit 225 fishing. Your cooking will easily reach 225 from cooking them all. At this point, it's time for another visit at the trainer and a change of scenery.

Expert 225-300

You'll want to head over to Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris. If you're high level and have access to Dalaran, the simplest way to get there is to take the portal to the Cavern of Time in the Violet Citadel and simply ride over. Here, you'll want to buy the Recipe: Nightfin Soup, Recipe: Spotted Yellowtail and Recipe: Poached Sunscale Salmon from Gikkix.

From there, you can simply fish in the nearby water for the Yellowtail and gets to 250 cooking fairly quickly. The water near Raventusk Village actually have a better rate for those fishes, but since you're already in Tanaris, this is probably the better spot.

Once you hit 250 cooking, learn the 2 other recipes and head over to the Verdantis River in Feralas.

Don't worry if your fishing isn't at 250 when you go there, getting some lures can more than make up for it. Here you'll be fishing for Sunscale Salmons and Nightfins. Which one you get depends on the time of the day, but it ultimately doesn't matter since you can cook both and they will both give you the same amount of skill up. You could technically get to cooking 300 from these, but at around 290 they become green and gives skill up extremely slowly, save yourself some time and follow the next step.

At 275 cooking, Horde players will want to go see Sheendra Tallgrass and Alliance player Vivianna in order to buy Recipe: Lobster Stew and Mightfish Steak. Then you head over to Azshara, Scalebeard's Cave to be precise and fish there for Mightfish and Lobsters.

I would not worry about getting fishing to 300 at this point. Your cooking will reach 300 fairly easily, but fishing will really start to drag. You'll probably have to make an habit of using lures for the next few steps of this guide, unless you're actually patient enough to increase your fishing to 300... I wasn't. Once you're at around 270ish fishing and have some lures, you will be ready for what comes next.

I personally found this stretch to be one of the toughest and most boring one of the fishing grind. Skill up will start taking noticeably longer at this point and you have no achievements or quest to keep you occupied. Bear it out, it gets better in Outland.

Interlude: Finishing up Azeroth

You're about to leave Azeroth and if you've done things correctly, you simply won't have to come back here for a long time. So you might as well get a few things done.

On the achievement front, you should make sure you've visited Stranglethorn Vale - Coastal and Rivers, Hillsbrad Foothills and Feralas for the Bloodsail Wreckage, Waterlogged Wreckage and Floating Wreckages. This will put you one short of the achievement. The only one you're missing is in Zangarmash in Outland, and you'll be heading there soon enough.

There's also Deadliest Catch, which is described in the link. If you're not at level cap yet and using this guide as you level, I would suggest waiting. However, if you're at level cap, there's no reason not to go grab it. It will give you an excuse to go to STV to get those wreckage as well as to go see Nat Pagle.

Speaking of Old Man Pagle, you should seriously consider grabbing his quest for the +25 fishing rod it'll give you. The quest is easy, but it does involve a certain amount of traveling. The great thing about it is that it'll most likely give you a bunch of skill up in fishing as well, and at this point your fishing will most likely be way behind your cooking.

Make sure you train both fishing and cooking, grab a bunch of lures and head over to Outland.

Outland 300-375

Once in Outland, the focus changes. Since all out of Outland is encompassed between the 300 to 375 fishing range, if you have a good fishing poles and some lure, you can effectively fish and get good catch anywhere. I would highly suggest mixing your fishing and cooking with achievement collecting and quests. This will help make the whole thing feel like less of a grind, since at this skill level, skill-up are going to coming in much slower.

The quests here are those given out by The Rokk and Old Man Barlo. Completing them all will give you Kickin'It_Up_a_Notch and Old Man Barlowned. Doing The Rokk's quest is also the only way to get some of the rare recipees to earn The Outland Gourmet.

Even if you're not interested in the achievements, Old Man Barlo's quest reward will give you a lot of very strong lures (+100) and can also earn you the Weather-Beaten Journal if you haven't fished it out yet. The Rokk's reward will always include plenty of fish and meat, which you can cook for cheap skill up.

But onward with the guide!

The first thing you'll want to do is head over to Zangarmash. There, you'll want to buy the Recipe: Blackened Trout from Doba if you're Alliance and from Gambarinka if you're Horde. You can start fishing in Zangarmash, the trouts are a fairly common catch here and you'll even find school of them. You might as well find some Steam Pump Floatsome and complete your The Scavenger achievement as well. Once you have about 20 or so Trouts, cook them all to reach 320 and head over to Nagrand.

In Nagrand, you'll find Recipe: Poached Bluefish from mob:Uriku if you're Alliance and from mob: Nula the Butcher if you're Horde. As you can probably guess, the next step involves fishing for Bluefin in Nagrand.

It isn't much of a step up, but Recipe: Golden Fish Sticks sold in Terokkar by Innkeeper Biribi and Rungor will yield you a couple more fishing skill up as well as another change of scenery - the golden darter can be fished out of the rivers of Terokkar.

The last step in the cooking process here is reached when you hit 350, at that point you'll be able to learn Spicy Crawdad, which will easily get you to 375 and above. This recipe is also sold by Biribi and Rungor. The crawdads however, can only be fished out of Highland Mixed Schools and requires a high fishing level in order to yield any decent catch. Using lures is favorable here. The school require a flying mount to get to and are found near Skettis in Terokkar Forest.

While flying over Outland, make sure to keep an eye out for the 6 different school of fish, since fishing from all of them yield Outland Angler.

You might also want to make a pit stop at Serpent Shrine Cavern and fish the Lurker Below for the achievement. And if you're particularly patient, you can even try to fish out mr. pinchy from one of the Highland Mixed Schools for yet another achievement.

In short, no matter what you do, you'll have to net over 600 catch to go from 300 to 375. You don't really need to hit 375 to go to Northrend, but you should most likely at least get 350. So don't be afraid to find way to make this more fun or to entertain yourself with the quest and achievements, which ultimately help you with skill ups anyway. Think of it this way - you're better off working on those achievements while you're getting skill up from them to spend countless hours doing them while you're at 450.

Northrend: The final goal

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