Herding Khats

Not too long ago, I mentioned in IRC that I'd hit Zen Master Fishing on my whole team. In the interest of having something to post, I decided to blog a little about fishing.

Granted, this isn't anything new. You can find posts random posts going back forever on multiboxing fishing, so it's not really a how-to post. It's just a random time-waster post about my experience with it.

Kina
Çroaker
Messkit
Wìdowmaker
Lìfetaker

It's no secret that fishing sucks. It's pretty damned tedious sitting there staring at a half inch of your screen endlessly. It almost feels like being a raid healer back in the day, lol.

Since Ive always done cooking to feed myself, my guild or my bank, I've always had fishing at least partially leveled on my main. But the thought of ever leveling fishing again - despite what, 3? 4? more? buffs to the fishing time investment - just made me ill. I couldn't even be bothered to continue leveling it on my main in Wrath or Cata. Whatever skillups I got were incidental from doing dailies. But to level it all over again on my slaves? Hahaha. I didn't want the 12g or whatever from the dailies THAT badly.


When I started using Interact with Mouseover and saw how well that worked for my slaves for things like Command Boards and mailboxes, I decided to see exactly how well it worked - first by using it on ground spawns. Large things like the cactus fruits for the cooking daily were no problem. So I decided to try it on smaller things, like plants. And of course, that worked too. Then one day, I decided to give it the ultimate test and headed off to old Lumak in Org to train fishing and buy me some supplies.

Early attempts weren't exactly what I'd call a rousing success. It worked well enough, but there was always the issue of slightly different points of view because of terrain and the fact that my team is 2 Blood Elves, 2 Orcs and a Troll. So even if the ground was totally level, there was still height issues.

The first problem was easy to fix. Since I run with a Death Knight, I've always got Path of Frost available, so I just always fished on water instead of from land.

The height issue required a little more finesse. I was able to compensate a little simply because the game gives you a pretty large area where you can click the bobber, but I still needed to "stagger" my stacking by height so that my troll was a little further behind my orcs and my blood elves were a little in front of them. It was time-consuming trying to get close enough positioning, but it worked well enough to do the dailies.

While I got points here and there, I never skilled up very high just doing dailies. And so it went for however long I was actually playing my team during Cata.

Then came MoP and the Order of the Cloud Serpent and Anglers dailies.

They want me to catch fish? *shrug* I can catch fish.

And people want to pay me 20g EACH for these Golden Carp?? LOL, sure thing, come to Mama. {Yeah, sometimes my server imbalance is awesome.}

I have no idea how many times a day I was reported for botting as I stood 5-deep outside the Arboretum or Angler's Wharf, but I always drew a crowd. Even if I was off in some secluded corner somewhere, I seemed to attract gawkers like there was no tomorrow.

After realizing exactly how much fishing I was going to be doing, I decided to put a little effort fixing the last of my issues - the height problem. I kept thinking "Man, if I could go back in time, I'd never have rolled a troll. Wouldn't it be awesome if my whole team could be orcs?" Yes, I love orcs. If I could have female Orc Paladins, I'd have a spontaneous orgasm be ever so happy.

*cough* Yes, well... *cough*

Maybe they can't be orcs, but they can all be Elves with Kalytha's Haunted Locket. I'm sure there's other ways to get a long duration, consistent and repeatable disguise, but *shrug* this was easy and I save bazillions of gold only having to buy mounts and stuff once {not to mention what I've made selling off extra pets}. So this was pocket change to me. I made far more than that off selling all my extra Golden Carp and other random fish at the start of the expansion than I spent anyway.

Now I love fishing. It makes me giddy every time I stack up and play whack-a-mole with 5 bobbers. I love watching people watch me fish, especially when they try and cuss me out cross-faction or think they can "screw up my botting" by fishing in the same spot or flying/swimming in my bobbers. It makes my life so much easier when I can pop out for an half an hour and come back with enough fish for a couple weeks. I love when I can fish out a pool in 1 or 2 casts instead of dozens of recasts. It all just makes me unreasonably happy. Yes, I am this lame, lol.