First!

First of all, welcome to Balsymcgee's Salty Blog.

This blog will chronicle what I, Balsymcgee (Hyjal), have to do to earn the "Salty" title for my Alliance Warlock.

I have done a little research, and the time that this normally takes, from what I understand, is nothing short of mind boggling. There are regular accounts of players having to cast over 5000 times to earn just one part of the achievement. To put that in perspective, according to El's Extreme Anglin' Guide (the best source for WoW fishing info that I've seen), you can expect to make about 50 casts per hour. That's about 100 straight hours for one achievement, which is only a small part of earning the "Salty" title.

And that's not the hardest part, either.

One of the requirements is to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. Hyjal is a mid-to-high population server. We have queues most evenings. Basically, there's probably going to be a LOT of competition at this weekly contest. I've done it a few times before, but it was probably over a year ago and I wasn't too terribly serious (or hopeful) about winning. Good thing, because I only had a handful of the requisite 40 Tastyfish needed to win when the actual winner was announced.

Anyway, I assume most of you are familiar with WoW fishing, the relatively new achievement system, and some of the titles and rewards given from those. For those that aren't, here's what needs to happen before you're "Salty."

1. Catch 1000 fish.
2. Successfully fish from a school.
3. Become a Grand Master Fisherman
4. Fish up a Weather Beaten Journal which will allow you to track schools of fish.
5. Fish 23 seperate copper coins out of the well in Dalaran.
6. Fish 15 seperate silver coins out of the well in Dalaran.
7. Fish 15 seperate gold coins out of the well in Dalaran.
8. Fish from 5 specific types of "Junk Nodes" located throughout Azeroth.
9. Fish something up in both Orgrimmar AND Stormwind.
10. Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza (maybe the hardest one of the bunch).
11. Fish up Mr. Pinchy and obtain the Magical Crawdad pet (it doesn't necessarily happen on the first catch, either).
12. Catch a rare, max-weight fish (any one of 10 - they're all super rare).
13. Fish up Old Crafty in Orgrimmar.
14. Fish up Old Ironjaw in Ironforge.
15. Fish up Gahz'Ranka in Zul'Gurub (this has prerequisites, and is also a 20-person raid instance).
16. Fish up The Lurker Below in Serpentshrine Cavern (also a raid instance).
17. Complete each of Old Man Barlo's 5 daily fishing quests.
18. Fish from six specific schools of fish throughout Outlands.
19. Fish from ten specific schools of fish throughout Northrend.
20. Fish up a Giant Sewer Rat in the Underbelly of Dalaran.


Now to give you a little bit of information regarding my progress as an angler so far.

I levelled my fishing to 375 during BC in about three days, primarily so I could catch fish and make food for my guilds' raids. Also because I wanted all my professions at max level. It helped quite a bit when I was farming the 5000g for my epic flyer. Golden Fish Sticks and Spicy Crawdad were pretty good sellers at the time. My guild eventually collapsed, and I largely abandoned fishing until Wrath of the Lich King was released.

Now, with achievements, titles, and other things to motivate me, I'm back in the game. Big time. I want the achievements. I have the patience. As maddening as some say it is, casting a few thousand times is less stressful to me than a total wipefest pug on an easy heroic. To make the decision to do this is made easier by my weird schedule. I work from 8pm to 8am Friday through Monday (Tuesday morning). I generally play from the time I get home until around noon, and at various times when my wife is asleep during the week. Basically it's tough to find a decent guild to raid with early in the morning, and I have to pay attention to my wife. My job told me I would be in deep doodoo if they found out I was playing WoW at work again (who f'ing cares what I do when it's totally dead all night? That's a rant for another time, though...). So, like everyone else, I have to be sort of responsible and play at semi-appropriate times, or people get pissed.

So since raiding seems to be out of the question, and I'm close to having the best gear I can get outside of a raid (don't get all theorycraft on me about this - I said close, and I KNOW my trinkets suck), that leaves achievements. As I was wondering around Mulgore, covering the zone for my Explorer achievement, I had the bright idea of going for the "Old Crafty" achievement. I really thought I was one of, if not the first to think of this. I basically stripped naked and ran right through the front door of Orgrimmar, through the plaza, hopping around like a naked madman, trying to get to the pond in the Valley of Honor, where I could hide behind a rock & fish in relative peace. Well, I made it all the way there without anyone following me, hid to the best of my ability, and started fishing. I was laughing to myself the whole time about the sheer audacity of it all, thinking to myself that I was such a crazy guy for streaking through what is arguably the most densely horde-populated area in the game. Who else but me would have the nerve to do a thing like that? I found out about three minutes later when another naked human ran to the exact spot I'd picked out, said "What's up?" and started fishing. Talk about deflating. But it was still really hilarious to me.

So that's where I am right now. Camped out behind a rock in Org, fishing naked for Old Crafty.

I haven't installed Fishing Buddy yet, but I will before I start fishing again in a few hours.

Here are the achievements I have earned so far:

1000 Fish
A Penny For Your Thoughts
Silver in the City
The Old Gnome and the Sea
Grand Master Fisherman
Fish Don't Leave Footprints

So I have a few of the easy ones.

Old Crafty is said to take as little as a few casts to well over 1000 casts to fish up. There is a bug that can supposedly be exploited to cut this time down drastically in most cases (has to do with the Baby Crocolisk daily), but unfortunately, I didn't find out about it until earlier tonight, and I'm already hunkered down all nice and cozy in Org. I think I might just stick it out so I don't have to run back through everyone, possibly attracting some bored teenager whose idea of fun would be to corpse camp me for a few hours. Another thing I've learned that would have been helpful knowledge before I dug in, is that I'm fishing right underneath a hunter trainer. Invisibility potions would have kept me from being tracked. Oh well - live and learn. Maybe I can buy some off the next naked ally I see run madly out of The Drag to ninja-fish with me.


This concludes my first of many posts to come. I hope to provide my small-to-nonexistant audience with a general idea of the effort it takes to earn the "Salty" title. Bear with me, because this is probably going to take a while. I'll try to make it entertaining, but no promises.

Thanks for reading. See ya soon.