It seems like forever ago that we originally posted this series. We did a whole big thing about the artisan fishing and cooking quests along with where to get the books you need for training – and with 3.1 it all went poof. So we thought that an update was in order.
It also turns out that leveling fishing just got a WHOLE lot easier now that fishermen (and women) of any skill level can fish in any body of water. You’re only going to catch vendor trash if your skill isn’t high enough, but that’s better than nothing. Besides that, with the fishing timer getting cut in half, the whole process just got a big time reduction. Now you’ve got next to no excuse for leveling fishing, especially if you have plans to level cooking.
And we’ve always recommended exactly that. Some of the best raid buffs come from cooked foods, and even more specifically, cooked fish. We don’t want you to have to always buy everything from the AH, so here’s how to put those two secondary profession skills together to make leveling cooking a breeze.
And just like fishing got a lot easier in 3.1, cooking also no longer has an artisan quest or any book learnin’ involved, so you can do it all at the trainers. You’ll still have to buy most of the fish recipes, but we’ve got that covered for you as well.
To make this as easy as possible, we’ve include links to each recipe you will need as well as the page showing the very best fishing locations for each fish type. So here is the complete guide to leveling both at the same time. It’s short, sweet, to the point and very Dominating!
1 – 50: Brilliant Smallfish = 80. Mats (1 Raw Brilliant Smallfish)
- 80 Raw Brilliant Smallfish
- Fishing Holes
51 – 100: Longjaw Mudsnapper = 80. Mats (1 Raw Longjaw Mudsnapper)
- 80 Raw Longjaw Mudsnapper
- Fishing Holes
101 – 175: Bristle Whisker Catfish = 120. Mats (1 Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish)
- 120 Raw Bristle Whisker Catfish
- Fishing Holes
175 – 225: Rockscale Cod = 80. Mats (1 Raw Rockscale Cod)
- 80 Raw Rockscale Cod
- Fishing Holes
226 – 275: Spotted Yellowtail = 80. Mats (1 Raw Spotted Yellowtail)
- 80 Raw Spotted Yellowtail
- Fishing Holes
276 – 325: Your Choice – or combination of the following = 80.
- Mightfish Steak. Mats (1 Large Raw Mightfish, 1 Hot Spices, 1 Soothing Spices)
- Mightfish Fishing Holes
- Baked Salmon. Mats (1 Raw Whitescale Salmon, 1 Soothing Spices)
- Salmon Fishing Holes
326 – 350: Golden Fish Sticks = 40. Mats (1 Golden Darter)
- 40 Golden Darter
- Fishing Holes
At this point the recipes come from the trainer directly or from purchases with Dalaran Cooking Awards from doing the cooking dailies. As with any profession, it is much easier to do all of this at level 80. You’ll have to do the cooking dailies regularly to complete the rest of this guide, but that’s not the fault of the guide, the game just requires it.
351 – 375: Baked Manta Ray = 60. Mats (1 Imperial Manta Ray)
- 60 Imperial Manta Ray
- Fishing Holes
Here’s where you’ll actually have to use some beast meat for a little while. The mats are normally to be had on the AH, so you don’t have to go farm all of it yourself, but if you’re cheap you can look each one up and go get them yourself.
376 – 400: Great Feast = 40. Mats (1 Chunk o’ Mammoth, 1 Shoveltusk Flank, 1 Worm Meat, 2 Chilled Meat)
- 20 Chunk o’ Mammoth
- 20 Shoveltusk Flank
- 20 Worm Meat
- 40 Chilled Meat
401 – 420: Anything else, although Spicy Blue Nettlefish sells fairly well.
421 – 450: At level 420 you can cook all of the other recipes in the game except for fish feast. We recommend Dragonfin Filet using Dragonfin Angelfish as we cover in this post: Fishing For Gold. Dragonfin Filet and any of the other recipes you buy with the cooking awards will take you all the way to 450, where you can make the premier buff food in the game – Fish Feast.
It’s then that all your Dominating work will make you the most popular cook around. Everyone loves a fish feast, and you can make serious coin cooking up any of the foods you grab the recipes for. We highly recommend doing the cooking daily every day. It will maximize your buffs, and your gold earnings – especially if you can dominate it with more than one toon.
Now, even though leveling fishing doesn’t require running all over the place any more, it’s still a pain in the tookus. It might actually take longer. It’s easier, but a larger time sink. After about level 225 it’s 10 casts per skill-up and that means it will take you around 4-6 hours if you did nothing but fish.
We’ve also got a great little tip for how to get those last few skill points in cooking in the Leveling Cooking Tip post, as well as a nifty mod that makes getting all your recipes for cooking or any other skill a whole lot easier in the post Finding Recipes Made Easy.
This little guide should make the prospect of getting to those dailies on alts a bit less daunting. So grab a pole and a pan and get to work! Soon you’ll be cashing in, just like we do.