Professions Straight from LeCraft!

I’m so tickled that Jon LeCraft was the presenter of the Professions information on the WoW panel – woot!  Some day I’d like to have an actual conversation with him to ask all my burning questions about crafting, but for now this will have to suffice.  <I’m SUCH a nerd!>  Now let’s get to the goodies:

Fishing Changes in Patch 3.1

The first big news to my mind is… you can now fish anywhere while leveling up!  I really like this change, because it eases the path for high level characters to take up fishing without forcing them to hang out in low level zones.  On the test realm my rogue was fishing right in Dalaran, which is much more convenient to her since she doesn’t have to waste a hearth CD to get back to Northrend.  I mean, you end up with a lot of junk as advertised, but it’s not like we wanted the stacks of Brilliant Smallfish either.  At least the fishing junk is funny.

Daily Fishing Quests in Patch 3.1

Yes, as promised I’ve got an overview of the new Fishing quests from the Test Realm.  I would have had this up sooner but one of the quests was eluding me in the rotation.  For some reason the RNG god has the same problem with the Fishing quest as he does with the Cooking quest… there’s way too much love for the meatloaf.

Master Angler Swag!

Hubby and I have been working the past few days on a new project.  We wanted to take another stab at the online store, but we really didn’t want to do the typical thing of plopping our site name on a shirt and hoping you good folks would pay money to give us free advertising… so we wracked our brains until we thought of something more interesting.

WotLK Cooking 375-450

As I posted during Beta, Cooking is not easy to level and there’s been lots of commentary on that since Launch.  Blizzard seems to be of the opinion that green recipes are an acceptable path for a secondary profession and that capping isn’t necessary since there are no rewards for reaching it.  Despite the problems, I worked hard to cap Cooking this week and publish my findings.

Fishing in Northrend

During the Beta I had every intention of writing about Fishing, but I got sidetracked by a significant change in the skill-up ratio.  After one particular patch, I was getting skill points every 4-5 catches and I went from 375 to 450 in just a few hours.  I went to El’s web site to see if others were experiencing the same thing, but I was the first to post about it.  Within a few days the change was confirmed and it persisted through the rest of Beta.  Still, no one was certain if this was a permanent change.

Hallow’s End + Fishing = Death?!

Yes, that’s right.  Yesterday my guild leader was kind enough to invite me to a Lurker Fish Fry and walk me through the fishing achievement.  I’d heard that it was soloable, and apparently he’d gotten a tip from a nameless buddy on how to do it with Hallow’s End Pumpkin Treats.  The trick to reaching Lurker without pulling aggro from any other mobs is to walk across the water.  Now I’ve read on El’s site that you can do this any number of ways, but they require some sort of levitate *and* slow-fall ability, which not everyone has.  But using the pumpkin treats, this can be done by anyone.

WotLK Cooking Quest, JC Daily & More

Today I’m posting another random compilation of bits I’ve received from our Beta tester “MD” while I work on the slew of new Jewelcrafting recipes she sent me this morning.  You may have noticed that a new Beta patch went up early this morning with additions to JC, Engineering and Blacksmithing.  I’m particularly curious about Engineering since we’ve seen nothing in that department so far.  From what was posted on MMO-Champion it appears to be predominantly more of the same.  But I shall hold my speculation for when we get some screenshots :)

Wrath Fishing – El Style

Just a quick post to let all you fishing folk know that El (of El’s Extreme Anglin) has posted several pages related to WotLK Fishing: Wrath of the Lich King Fishing Changes.  El has the most comprehensive Fishing site available, so make sure you check it out if you are a major Fishing groupie like I am.  On a different note, does everyone have a Beta Key but me???  :(

At long last… my very own fishing hat!

After weeks of doing the daily fishing quest, I finally got the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat in my goodie bag. Woot!! Of all the various items that drop, this was the one I most wanted to have. Having been to the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza a handful of times, I have nothing to show for my efforts except the Eternium Fishing Line. It’s hard to feel like a Master Angler when you don’t have any beefy gear to help you look the part, so I was desperate to have this hat.