Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza with ease (in-depth guide)

[Rabitted]

Hello Ownedcore, this is my second guide and this time I will explain in detail how you will get the advantage needed to win the STV Fishing Extravaganza.

General Information:

• The event runs every Sunday starting at 14:00 PST and ending at 17:00 PST.
• To win the event you must fish up and deliver 40x Speckled Tastyfish (Soulbound with 4 hour real time duration).
• The event is held server wide (merged servers are competing against each other) while the fishing pools are shared Cross Realm.
• The first 3 players who deliver 40x Speckled Tastyfish are awarded the Master Angler of Azeroth achievement, which is part of the Accomplished Angler achievement.
• You can fish up Speckled Tastyfish regardless of your fishing skill. Higher fishing skill or fishing items do not increase your chance to win.
• You can turn in your fish and win the event even if you are hated with Booty Bay, just try to avoid any conflict with nearby guards.
• I have been told (not confirmed by me) that if you have the following quests in your quest log you will not able to spot any fishing pools and thus you are unable to participate in the event.
  The quests are: Bwemba's Spirit and To Fort Livingston
• Speckled Tastyfish do not have their own fishing pool but is instead fished from any other existing pool in the Northern and Southern Stranglethorn Vale.

Now that you know the basics, let's dig deeper into how you can get the advantage needed to win.

Step 1 - Early preparations:
Preparation is the key to success, below I will explain in depth how you should prepare for the event.

Where to go, what to play and useful items.

• Visit Booty Bay and set your Hearthstone in its Inn. To do so, simply speak with Inkeeper Skindle portrayed in the left picture. The entrance to the inn, seen from the outside of Booty Bay, is located within the red circle in the right picture. The pink circle shows the NPC:s where you turn in your fish in order to win the fishing event.
  
  
  
• You turn in the Speckled Tastyfish to an NPC called Riggle Bassbait. To speed up this process I suggest you do the following:
  Go into your key bindings option and bind "Interact with target" to an accessible key. Then make the following macro: /target Riggle Bassbait
  This macro together with the "Interact with target" key will be useful especially if there are a lot of other players blocking the NPC. Additionally, make sure you have decided which reward you will choose beforehand, because you want to hand in the fish as fast as possible in order to guarantee your victory.
  
  
• You will use your mount a lot when moving between fishing pools. Having access to flying mounts, flying in azeroth and the maximum speed of 310% flight speed is highly recommended. In order to have access to this your character has to be at least level 60.

Choosing the right class.
Some classes are better than others for this competition.

• Low priority: Warrior, Rogue, Priest, Hunter, Mage, Warlock. They have some mobility increasing abilities that allows them to move swiftly between pools, but that's about it.
  
• Medium priority: Death Knight, Paladin, Monk. The DK's advantage is their Path of Frost ability, allowing them to walk on water. The Paladin will be able to Hearthstone at half the speed thanks to their Glyph of Righteous Retreat, saving them 5 seconds off it's standard 10 second cast time. Why faster HS cast is important will be explained further below. The Monk can use the Glyph of Zen Flight to hover mid-air while fishing, safe from any NPC aggro and potentially out of range from hostile players as well. (Thanks TehVoyager)
  
• Top priority: Druid, Shaman. The druid is on the top thanks to their instant flight form, allowing them to move between each fishing pool at a much faster rate than all other classes. The Shaman is also superior because of two abilities, the first being their Water Walking ability. Their second advantage comes from their Astral Recall ability. It functions just as your regular HS, but because it is an ability its cast time will be affected by the haste of your shaman. On my troll shaman alt I was able to cast Astral Recall with a 4.5 second cast time after using Bloodlust, Berserking and Elemental Mastery with 14.46% base haste as seen below.
  

Useful consumables and items.

• Elixir of Water Walking (Requires level 35)
• Draenic Water Walking Elixir (Requires level 90)
  These two elixirs are useful if you decide to play any other class than Shaman or Death Knight.
• Anglers Fishing Raft (Vendor cost of 800g, requires The Anglers - Revered.)
  This item is purchased by Nat Pagle in the Anglers Wharf in Pandaria. It has unlimited uses and lets you travel on water and fish without breaking its effect.

The Find Fish ability.

• To more easily spot fishing pools along the shores, make sure you have obtained and learned the find fish ability on your chosen character.
• This ability is taught from the Weather-Beaten Journal which drops from containers that you fish up in fishing pools with floating wreckage.
• The ability is toggled on in the tracking option next to your minimap:
  

Step 2 - Zone and Server:

Knowing the most efficient areas.

• This part of the guide will be based solely on my own experience (4x First place, 2x Second place and 3x Third place) but fear not, for I will share all of my secrets so that you can win this event with ease. Let's start off by having a look at the map and point out the better spots:
  
  On the image above I have encircled the areas in different colours. Below is a definition:
  
  
• The green areas are your highest priority to check for pools. The three most northern circles cover my favorite area because only a few travel so far north to fish and you will often find an unoccupied pool there, especially around the isles. The two more southern circles, covering the Savage coast where the south and north zone meets is also flourishing with pools, however this spot is often heavily occupied. But are reasons to why I chose this area as one of the best. First of all, despite the heavy population there, most competitors only bother checking the shore on the southern STV and leave the northern half alone. You will want to fly back and forth between the borders, checking both the north and south half of the Savage coast for a good spot. The second and possibly more important reason is a common bug during the event. It has been reported countless times and I have experienced it myself but I am pretty sure it has not been fixed yet: The zone-wide yell which starts off the event sometimes do not show up in your chat if you are located in the northern STV. Therefore it is important that you attempt to start off in the southern half of the Savage coast close to where my character is located on the map. Below are some example pictures of the amount of pools spawned within the green-encircled area in northern STV:
  
  
• The yellow areas are your second highest priority, go there if you find all pools at the green areas to be occupied or if there are very few pools up.
  
  
• The red area is your lowest priority. It is often very populated, combined with there often being a long distance between each pool. You rather want to check your green/yellow area once more than heading over to this area.
  
  
• The Blue area is marked this way because I have no personal experience fishing there and can not give you a certain judgement on its quality. I have heard it hosts quite some pools but it has also risen in popularity recently. Go there at your own risk.

Finding a suitable server.

• Although you only compete with players on your own (and merged) server(s), you can fish on whichever server you prefer.
• Your main requirement should be to find a PvE server (if you aren't on one already) to avoid any PvP conflict during the event.
• Secondly, look for a server where you spot very few players at the more populated areas such as the Cape of Stranglethorn and the northern isles. If the server you begin fishing on suddenly becomes very crowded it can be useful to have addons like ServerHop or Cross Realm Assist installed. These addons allow you to quickly join a group in the LFG tool and get transferred over to a different server.

Step 3 - Warm-up:

System, Interface and keybinds.

• Even if you play wow on very low settings, a few minor changes can vastly increase fishing pool visibility.
  The first thing you want to do is make sure you Liquid detail is at least set to "Fair", Outline mode is set to "Allowed" and Particle Density is at least "Good".
  Additionally if you have headphones or speakers it is a good idea to turn on sound effects so that you can easily hear the bobber when you catch fish.
• Make sure you turn on Auto Loot to faster loot each catch.
• Make sure your ability to fish on a comfortable keybind in case you need to re-cast it multiple times in short succession.
  I would also advise you to have your mount, hearthstone, elixir of water walking or similar abilities bound to convenient keys as well.

Do not cast your first bobber of the day when the event starts, do it earlier.

• It only takes a few casts to get the feeling of what is the proper distance between you and the fishing pool.
  Go to STV and get at least 5 minutes of fishing done to be ready for when it matters.
  You would want to be there at least 15 minutes earlier just to find the perfect anyway.

Find your starting point.

• If you've found the right server and you're done warming up, find a suitable fishing pool and stay right next to it. By doing so you let others know that you will start here. Also when there is less than a minute until start, begin casting your bobber into the pool and wait for the event to start. If you get a catch before the event, just recast without looting the fish. This is profitable because your loot is not decided until you click on the moving bobber and therefore you save a couple of seconds off your first cast if you've spent those seconds waiting before the event even started.

Step 4 - Important choices:

Is it in or is it out?

• When you fish from a pool, the bobber sometimes appear to be far outside the pool's visual ring. But do not be fooled by the pool's visual effect and learn from the pictures below:
  
  
  
  
  On the images above I am fishing from a pool of Raw Sagefish. Notice the how the bobber appear to be outside of the visual ring in both images but the second cast triggers as fished inside the pool, while the first cast does not. Knowing when a cast is valid for loot is important and to practice this knowledge you can simply try to predict if a cast yields the correct loot the next time you fish along the visual border of a fishing pool.

Two players, one pool.

• If there are many other competitors near you, chances are they will start fishing from the same pool as you. When this happens there are a few things you should know.
  The average pool in STV lasts for about 4 casts. With that in mind try to remember how many casts you finished before a competitor arrives at your pool.
  
  
• If you had one or less finished cast and you're on your second when he casts his first line - finish your ongoing cast, cast one more and then move.
• If you had two or more finished casts and you're on your third when he casts his first line - finish your ongoing cast and then move.
  If the pool does not despawn from your last cast in either example described above, it is very likely that the second cast by the competitor might despawn the pool before you get to finish another cast. Therefore do not risk throwing the bobber once more, because you might end up catching fish just moments after the competitor despawns the pool.
  
  
• To follow up on this, always check for other nearby pools while fishing in one. If you spot a player fishing in another pool, try to count how many casts he finishes before it's time for you to move. It's almost never worth it to land at an already occupied pool, but if the other player just arrived you can probably get at least two casts which might be worth if there are no other pools nearby.

Very minor optional tips.

• Engineering perks such as Nitro boost on your belt can be helpful when moving short distances. This also applies to all items with the "Speed" tertiary stat added to them. Swiftness potion could also be helpful in these situations, although it is definitely not necessary. Additionally if you are stuck fishing on a PvP server, you could always ask a friend to come and guard you from hostile players.

My final words:

• After reading this guide you should be fully prepared to take on and hopefully win the next Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. I tried to make the guide a more advanced version compared to what has been posted already, covering details that no other guide would provide. Hopefully even the more experienced anglers learned something new. If you have any questions or want to share some of your own tips that I have missed, feel free to comment below!

Thanks for reading - Hope you liked it.

[Dirrrty]

Nice well thought out guide buddy. Always wanted to try for it as I only have that to do to get Salty!

[tialk]

well written guide, ty

[Rabitted]

Thank you both for the kind words! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you next sunday @Dirrrty

[Sklug]

Excellently put together. GJ! Remind me to +rep you once I spread some more around lol

[KcBlack]

Thanks for the guide! I snagged first on my server yesterday using this. I only had 2-3 people near me but I never had to leave the green zones.

[plexiswe]

Great guide, might be worth mentioning that 280% req lvl 70, and 310% req lvl 80 as well, though

[TehVoyager]

Disagree with the monk low priority thing.

monks have the Glyph of Zen Flight.

you can fish from zen flight, and swap mounts from it too... meaning you never have to deal with mobs, and it makes it more difficult for players to attack you.

[Rabitted]

TIL about Zen Flight fishing. Maybe I should dust off my old monk, heh. Thanks for the input @TehVoyager.

[TehVoyager]

I'd do it soon, from the looks of things, its going byebye in Legion.

[TommyT]

Set hearth to booty bay
Fish near the giant whirlpool in the middle of stranglethorn
Hop servers to respawn the pools with server hop addon
easy win