Sewer fishing for fun and profit (mostly fun)
I have a confession to make; I love fishing. Most people seem to hate it, and it's certainly not one of the more popular professions to level, but I could pass a perfectly entertaining afternoon ingame doing nothing more than chatting on vent and emptying pools of delicious and lucrative fish. Blizzard made a lot of effort towards improving the fishing experience in Burning Crusade, and tons of people wound up leveling it for a shot at Mr. Pinchy, the Find Fish skill, or the high-end raiding food buffs like Spicy Crawdad and Blackened Sporefish.
You'll find an array of new fish and pools in Wrath, but for my money the two great joys are fishing in the Dalaran sewers and the Dalaran wishing fountain. The fountain is actually the more interesting of the two for a reason we'll cover in a bit, but you'll also need the sewers if you're interested in a new noncombat pet and the Accomplished Angler achievement (the one rewarding the "Salty" title, which I'm sure no one in the game ever intends to abuse).
Spoiler warning: if you don't want to know the disgusting but highly interesting things you'll coax out of the Dalaran sewer system, just keep scrollin'.
In 115 catches down in the sewers (I spend most of my time at the fountain, I confess), I came up with the following:
64 Sewer Carp -- This cooks up into a basic health-restoring food, nothing too special. You're not down here for this stuff.
35 Magic Eaters -- Now this is where things get amusing. Spending at least 10 seconds eating this will...leave you a changed person. More accurately, it will change you from a person into a dragon whelp, a basilisk, a wasp, or a wisp, or it will give you a random food buff like +60 attack power or 12 mp5 in addition to +30 stamina. El's Extreme Anglin', which is still by far the best resource on WoW fishing, has the exact numbers here. Think of it as a fun little thing to experiment with when you're bored with Savory Deviate Delight
6 Partially Eaten Fish -- You'll see a lot of rats running around the sewers. This is off the carte du jour.
3 Drowned Rats -- What happens when the rats swim too soon after eating said fish, I can only assume.
2 Leaded Vials -- You'll occasionally get lower-level alchemy vials like this and:
5 Empty Vials -- Give 'em to an alchemist friend or just vendor them.
More importantly, what I didn't fish up -- a Giant Sewer Rat. This little (sort of) guy is the object of the I Smell A Giant Rat achievement, which is a sub-achievement of the Accomplished Angler, so if you want "Salty" in front of your name, you will eventually need to get him.
The good news? The rat should be (on average) easier, or at least more straightforward, to get than the crawdad pet, which was only a 20% drop on what was already a 1 in 500 chance. The bad news? You're still going to spend a lot of time looking for it anyway. The consoling news? You'll need 1,000 catches under your belt to get the 1,000 Fish achievement, which you also need for Accomplished Angler.
And they do mean fish; I tested this and found that no amount of fishing up boxes, coins, etc. counted toward the achievement. So if you're hanging around Dalaran in Wrath in much the same way you hang around in Shattrath now, and you want to put some work in toward the achievement, head for the sewers rather than the fountain if you don't yet have the pet. After you finally get the rat (no hard numbers on the drop rate as yet; El's Extreme Anglin' theorizes it's less than a 1% drop), it's probably a more effective use of your time to hit the fountain for work on the fishing achievements you'll need there (you can also get fish from the fountain, just not as commonly as in the sewers). Between those and the fish you'll probably be getting outside of Dalaran for cooking, getting 1,000 actually isn't as tough as it sounds; I'm at 332 catches right now in the beta without really even trying. More to come soon on the Dalaran fountain.
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