Sunday, October 16, 2016

Ode to Fishing and Cooking

Ode to Fishing and Cooking
(and a little farming)

Continuing the theme of "Odes," Demon Hunter Mahakeya took an extended break after reaching max level 110. She is now extending that break to level up both Fishing and Cooking professions. No family member has maxed either. Tiphaine has the most experience, with 365 fishing skill and 394 cooking skill. That's still a long way to max level 800 skill. Too bad Tiphaine's daughter, Plumrosefist, is Horde. She has close to 700 skill in both. Oh well.

Keya doesn't even own a fishing pole. Rather than research higher end poles she might be able to acquire, she impatiently grabbed a level 1 pole, fished up 10 fishing skill, and bought a +5 pole. She raised her fishing skill to 20/800. Keya has no idea what she is getting herself into.

Rumor has it that Pandaria is the mecca of learning the Fishing skill, and that Cooking can be earned right along side the fishing. Keya plans to do most of her leveling in Pandaria. As for cooking, golden carp can be fished just about anywhere there's water and can be made into food via Cooking skills.

It seemed simple, but then it never is. Keya was successful at completing the series of quests to gain access to Pandaria. She even figured out how to establish the Pandaria Portal in Dalaran. But things went sour when she wound up in a forced march through low level quests that so far have been endless. She can't fly in Pandaria, because she doesn't have Wisdom of the Four Winds flying training in Pandaria. Apparently, if one is a demon hunter, and a boosted one at that, the only way to earn flying in Pandaria is to buy the license for 2400 gold.

In many ways Keya is still a child, ignorant of many things that the more experienced take for granted. Like going all the way to the Shrine of Two Moons on her ground mount in Pandaria, only to discover that the shrine is for Horde, not Alliance. You'd think that a level 110 demon hunter could handle a few level 90 elites . . . except it didn't work out that way. She died, overwhelmed by an entire city of hostile elites.

Setting all that aside, flying in Pandaria is a luxury, not a necessity. All she needs is a fishable pool of golden carp somewhere. That means doing the Pandaria quests required to rid the land of the nasties so that lakes and rivers are pure. Which means doing the quests.

Just for completeness sake Keya tried fishing in the tunnels beneath Dalaran. There, she found the Black Market. Those tunnels are very dangerous and the waters stocked with level 110 elite fish that have no qualms about attacking above water as well as below. Keya found that out the hard way when she was fishing there. Keya couldn't help herself when a level 110 elite showed up and those hanging around tried to kill it. She joined in the fun, forgetting that she was holding her fishing pole instead of her artifact weapon, and died within seconds of attacking the elite.

Keya still believes all this is worth the trouble. She has her goal in front of her. Eventually, Keya will make a little trip to a tiny, floating island just north of Legion's Dalaran to complete her level 800 fishing skills. Eventually.

While Keya works on her projects, Sista insisted on getting some time as well, and she had Chaitee on her side. The issue is Embersilk Bags; ie, the lack of Hypnotic Dust to make the bags, which are a large part of her auction house work. It takes 15 hypnotic dust to make one bag. Generally, the dust costs 15 gold each, and at that cost Chaitee can make a tidy profit. The Dust, however, is getting harder to get and the price is hovering around 20 gold now. Sista wanted to try her hand at farming the materials to see if it would be worth the time to farm them.

The best place to farm hypnotic dust is in the Bastion of Twilight, an old level 85 dungeon in the Twilight Highlands. The dungeon is perched on the highest spire of the land. Her mission - to slaughter everything in the first chamber, and do it the maximum number of resets allowed per day, which is ten. The loot from those kills returned the following: 11 pieces of gear that can be disenchanted, about 200 embersilk cloth, and various junk. After sorting it all out, she was able to get 7 more disenchantable gear by crafting spiritmend robes with the embersilk.

All told, Sista finished with 28 hypnotic dust for an hour's work. That's not quite enough to make two embersilk bags. Assuming she did make two bags, she could make about 700 gold from the sale. If she sold the 28 dust at, say, 19 gold each, she would make 532 gold. Making the bags is still the better choice, but her idea of farming the hypnotic dust for profit? Well, an hour farming Bastion of Twilight is easy work, so why not take what it offers? And by the way, she did come away with a fascinating head piece called Tsanga's Helm.









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