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5.4: Jewel Danio

In Patch 5.4, now being tested, the Vale of Eternal Blossoms loses most of its water. Open water can only be found above and outside Guo-Lai Halls. There are no pools in the zone, so Jewel Danio School have disappeared. Update: Mad Qao-Pao's Fish of the Day event may still trigger, but no pools or anglers appear in the Vale. All this will make Jewel Danio much harder to catch.

13 June 2013 · Patch 5.4, Jewel Danio, Vale of Eternal Blossoms · Link

Introducing El's Extreme Philosophy

Contemplating yourself while fishing? El is too! Introducing El's Extreme Philosophy.

01 April 2013 · 1 April, Philosophy · Link

5.2 Fishing

Patch 5.2 is the biggest mid-expansion patch for anglers since 3.1. Fishing highlights:

For a description of all changes and additions, read Patch 5.2.

05 March 2013 · Patch 5.2 · Link

5.2: Darkmoon Catches Vary by Skill

Another variation to the role of fishing skill has emerged on Patch 5.2's PTR, in addition to Pandaria's junk changes: On Darkmoon Island, the entire set of fish caught is determined by your personal fishing skill. Update: This change did go live.

Context: An Explanation of Catch Tiers

Old Azeroth's open water catches are grouped into tiers. The Gazetteer identifies 6 specific Zone Groups - sets of zones with the same set of catches. Each Zone Group has separate coastal and inland catches. Two of those groups define their catch further, into four 6-hour time segments. Many named fish appear in more than one zone group, typically with different catch rates in each group. Each Zone Group has the same Zone Base Fishing Skill. There are a few exceptions to this pattern, like Northern Barrens' Deviate Fish, but generally Old Azeroth's open water catch adheres to these 6 tiered Zone Groups.

The new lands found in The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria are organised slightly differently: Each expansion has one or two common trash fish, such as Golden Carp, which can typically be caught in every zone in their respective expansion's waters. In addition to the common fish, individual zones, or sets of zones, have different more valuable fish in their open water. There is a strong correlation between these groups of catches and base fishing skill of their waters, as in Old Azeroth. There are exceptions, and a few quirks, such as Northrend's coastal fish only appearing in coastal waters named something other than the zone name. But generally expansion waters adhere to this principle.

Now, it happens that (almost) all coastal waters in each expansion contain precisely the same fish. So for coastal waters we can construct a simple 10-tier structure of catches, where the first 6 tiers are Old Azerothian Zone Groups, followed by a tier for each expansion. Only the most common catches are listed below:

  1. Zone Group 1: Raw Slitherskin Mackerel
  2. Zone Group 2: Raw Rainbow Fin Albacore and Raw Slitherskin Mackerel
  3. Zone Group 3: Oily Blackmouth and Raw Rainbow Fin Albacore
  4. Zone Group 4: Raw Rockscale Cod and Raw Spotted Yellowtail
  5. Zone Group 5: Raw Glossy Mightfish and Raw Spotted Yellowtail
  6. Zone Group 6: Darkclaw Lobster, and Raw Summer Bass or Winter Squid
  7. The Burning Crusade: Giant Sunfish
  8. Wrath of the Lich King: Imperial Manta Ray, Moonglow Cuttlefish and Rockfin Grouper
  9. Cataclysm: Deepsea Sagefish and Murglesnout
  10. Mists of Pandaria: Giant Mantis Shrimp, Golden Carp and Reef Octopus

Outland has no coastal water, but Isle of Quel'Danas (added in the final patch of The Burning Crusade) does have coastal waters and fish.

Application: What's Happening on Darkmoon Island

When fishing open coastal water around Darkmoon Island, your personal fishing skill determines which tier of fish catches the water contains. The first 6 "Old Azeroth" tiers increment every 50 skill points (until 300), with each of the final 4 "expansion" tiers covering 75 skill points. All the coastal fish contained within the groups outlined above are possible to catch at their respective tiers, but only the most common catches are listed in the table below.

"Darkmoon" Skill Tiers and Common Coastal Catches
Fishing SkillTierCommon Catch
1-50Zone Group 1Raw Slitherskin Mackerel
50-100Zone Group 2Raw Rainbow Fin Albacore and Raw Slitherskin Mackerel
100-150Zone Group 3Oily Blackmouth and Raw Rainbow Fin Albacore
150-200Zone Group 4Raw Rockscale Cod and Raw Spotted Yellowtail
200-250Zone Group 5Raw Glossy Mightfish and Raw Spotted Yellowtail
250-300Zone Group 6Darkclaw Lobster, and Raw Summer Bass or Winter Squid
300-375The Burning CrusadeGiant Sunfish
375-450Wrath of the Lich KingImperial Manta Ray, Moonglow Cuttlefish and Rockfin Grouper
450-525CataclysmDeepsea Sagefish and Murglesnout
525-600Mists of PandariaGiant Mantis Shrimp, Golden Carp and Reef Octopus

Further notes and observations:

The way in which rare and conditional (such as quest-only or unique) fish appear when caught has changed a couple of times over the last 7 years. Notably at the start of the Wrath of the Lich King, when the loot system was quietly overhauled to enable progressive de-randomisation for quest items. Historically El's Anglin' has not documented whether a rare or quest fish is caught alongside another fish or separately. While the Sea Pony and Mimic Octopus observations above may suggest a pattern, be wary of drawing definitive conclusions: The Tiny Carp catches added in patch 5.2 are caught individually, in spite of being "very rare" and (in the pet journal, if not the caught item) unique and not trade-able once learnt.

Implication: Another Change to the Role of Skill?

Some aspects of this new Darkmoon approach to the role of skill are incomplete or buggy. The change only appears to apply to Darkmoon Island, a rather private location for most of each month. All that suggests the programming and design is still evolving, and/or that we might never see this change on live realms.

If applied universally, the approach is flawed: There is no way to reduce an angler's personal fishing skill, but highly skilled anglers might sometimes want to catch lower-tier fish. One possibility is that the system will only apply up to a zone's native tier. For example, Outland waters would never yield anything higher than the Outland tier, so anglers could always return to Outland if they needed to catch Outland fish.

The main advantage of the change would be that new anglers could catch a wide variety of fish as they improved their fishing skill, without moving between different zones. Catching 1,500+ Golden Carp by developing skill in Pandaria is ruthlessly efficient, but exceptionally boring! Unfortunately while the Darkmoon system makes that training process more interesting, it doesn't fit with MoP's changes to Cooking, which allow new (high level) cooks to train their Cooking skill from 1 to 600 without using ingredients from previous expansions.

So perhaps any major re-working of pre-MoP fish catches also requires an overhaul of pre-MoP Cooking? There are no tangible changes to Cooking on test realms yet, but there are some oddities emerging: For example, over the last week characters' Cooking skill has been reset to 1. That could be an innocent bug, or it could point to something else being tested in private. Crafty, isn't it?

Update: When asked what the odds of a "revamp for fishing" were, designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street replied, "Odds are high, but not for 5.2." However, major changes to fishing were first discussed almost 5 years ago, so it may still be too early to gamble on something big in patch 5.3.

For the latest explanation and analysis, read Darkmoon Skill Tiers. For more on the fishing changes we are expecting to see go live in this patch, read Patch 5.2. To understand how skill influences catches before patch 5.2, see The Role of Skill (Revised).

10 February 2013 · Patch 5.2, Skill · Link

5.2: Pagle Reputation and Catch Changes

In Patch 5.2, each rare fish that grants Nat Pagle's Friendship awards 600 reputation with him (before bonuses), up from 500. In addition, Mumper says:

"Rare [Pagle] fish catches are essentially twice as good."

Update: On average, 4.4% of catches from both open water and pools in Pandaria will have a Pagle fish attached. Slightly better than twice, especially as this feels much less variable than the 1 or 2% in patch 5.1. Detailed catch analysis below:

There are 6 different groups of waters Pagle fish may be caught from: Each of the 3 fish may be caught from pools or open water. One specific type of water was tested to represent each of these 6 different groups. At least a thousand regular (non-Pagle) fish were caught during each test. The results are shown in the table below.

Note that Pagle fish are now caught alongside a regular catch. So in the first case, 1,018 regular fish were caught from Swarm of Panicked Paddlefish, and 45 of those were caught with a bonus Flying Tiger Gourami. Some Pool migartion pools were tested, but other observations suggest their contents are precisely the same as normal pool types, such as Krasarang Paddlefish School. Since Pagle fish are unique, every Pagle fish caught was immediately thrown back in, allowing further Pagle fish to appear. Unique fish would not appear if the same named fish was already in one's inventory. All open water testing was done with sufficient skill to avoid catching extra Carp (formerly junk).

Proportion of "Pagle Fish" by Water
Pagle FishSample WaterPagle Fish CatchTotal Regular CatchPercentage of Regular Catch with Pagle Fish
Total/Average27562354.4%
Flying Tiger GouramiFlying Tiger GouramiPool (Swarm of Panicked Paddlefish)4510184.4%
Open Inland Water (Townlong Steppes)4610174.5%
Mimic OctopusMimic OctopusPool (Reef Octopus Swarm)4310354.2%
Open Coastal Water (Krasarang Wilds)5311034.8%
Spinefish AlphaSpinefish AlphaPool (Sha-Touched Spinefish)4510504.3%
Open Sha-Touched Water (Kun-Lai Summit)4310124.2%

All the catch percentages shown above are between 4 and 5%. There is no evidence that any one Pagle fish is more common than any other.

There is a very slight bias towards open water catches: 4.5% average from all open water, vs 4.3% from all pools. This could be a statistical glitch. However, the pool data was gathered with an Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm active, and it is possible that the Charm only affects the regular catch.

For example, with the Charm active, 20% of the regular catch will be 2 fish, rather than one. So when fishing pools, our Charmed loot window will have opened about 170 (a sixth) fewer times during each test than when fishing open water: 170 of those pool lootings contained two catches, rather than one, so we reach our thousand target with fewer loot windows.

So the Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm probably does not explain the small difference in catch rates between open water and pools. And the Charm may indeed increase the chance of catching a Pagle fish from any one successful cast, although perhaps not by enough to offset the extra time spent moving and casting into pools. Probably and maybe because the sample sizes are too small to be sure. The theory that the Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm adds to the chance of catching a Pagle fish is important, because it suggests that even rarer catches are influenced by the Charm. A 20% bonus when trying to catch a Tiny Red Carp or Sea Turtle could save a lot of time!

In practical terms, all this suggests that all sources of Pagle fish have identical catch rates. Charmed fishing of densely packed pools (such as those found during pool migrations) will be comparable to fishing open water with sufficient skill. The choice is yours.

The Quests chapter contains a full guide to gaining Nat Pagle's Friendship. Or for information about the other fishing changes in this patch, see Patch 5.2.

05 February 2013 · Patch 5.2, Nat Pagle · Link

Older News

Non-fishing news from 2008 to 2011 is now archived at El's Professions. There is no archive of news before 2008 (which was limited to single line announcements on the front page).