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The OverAchiever: The Limnologist, part 2

Allison Robert
Updated ·7 min read

Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we're done with the Bloated fish and are thus happy.

Greetings, eager fishermen everywhere (all three of you). Today, we'll be finishing up our look at The Limnologist, WoW's freshwater fishing achievement. If you're looking for our previous Cataclysm fishing guides, you'll find those here:

As stated earlier, my intent with these guides is to get you through these achievements with a minimum of fuss, but the second portion of The Limnologist is a very travel-intensive undertaking.



Okay, folks. Assuming you've read through the first part of our guide to The Limnologist, we've accounted for 19 of the 48 fish currently required for this achievement -- the five super-rare "Bloateds" and 14 from the Eastern Kingdoms. As a reminder, only 45 will be required as of patch 4.1, assuming that the changes implemented on the patch 4.1 PTR do in fact hit the live servers. If you're one of those people agonizing over the five rare fish needed for Limnologist, you may want to park yourself until the patch drops.

Don't forget -- you won't find any of the fish for The Limnologist on the coasts. Stick to rivers, streams, and lakes!

Cataclysm zones

Each Cataclysm zone except for Vashj'ir (which is obviously all ocean) and Tol Barad has at least one unique freshwater fish, so you won't be able to condense the hunt the way you could with The Oceanographer.

  • Deepholm The Albino Cavefish, Lavascale Catfish, and Sharptooth can all be fished up here. The Cavefish have schools all over Deepholm, but the Catfish and Sharptooth are solely open-water drops. Fortunately, neither is rare.

  • Twilight Highlands You can find the Highland Guppy and Striped Lurker here. The Guppy can be found in both schools and open water, the latter solely in open water.

  • Mount Hyjal The Mountain Trout can be fished from both schools and open water. On your way down to Uldum after you nab a trout, stop in the Northern Barrens along the way (see below).

  • Uldum This is where you'll find the Blackbelly Mudfish in both schools and open water.

Kalimdor

While you're traveling from Mount Hyjal to Uldum, stop in the Northern Barrens to finish off the requirements for fish from classic Azeroth.

  • Northern Barrens You'll only ever find the Deviate Fish here, and you might want to fish up a stack as long as you've got to make a special trip. The Savory Deviate Delight still sells pretty well on a lot of servers.

Got everything you need from Azeroth and the Cataclysm zones? Here's where we'll break from our Oceanographer guide, if you're doing both achievements at once. There are no "coastal fish" in Outland, but there are quite a few needed for Limnologist. Port over to the Blasted Lands from Orgrimmar/Stormwind, and let's get going.

Outland

Outland is arguably the most interesting continent in which to fish for this achievement because there are so many fish with eccentric catch conditions (which, in a strange way, I really miss from The Burning Crusade). We'll start in Hellfire Peninsula and work our way west-southwest.

  • Hellfire Peninsula You can grab a Felblood Snapper from the lava around the Pools of Agonnar, but that's it.

  • Zangarmarsh Here's where things get good (as you might expect from a flooded zone). The Barbed Gill Trout, Huge Spotted Feltail, Spotted Feltail, Goldenscale Vendorfish, and Zangarian Sporefish can all be nabbed here. Of these, the Barbed Gill Trout and Spotted Feltail can both be fished up from open water (of which there is a huge abundance in Zangarmarsh, so it doesn't matter where you go). The Zangarian Sporefish can also be found in open water, but there are likely to be a million pools of them around. And that's a good thing, because you're most likely to get the Huge Spotted Feltail and Goldenscale Vendorfish (best fish ever) as random drops from pools. They're fairly rare catches from open water, but they're about a 1% random drop from any given pool in Outland. Fish up all the pools you see in both Zangarmarsh and elsewhere, and you should nab both before too long.

  • Terokkar Stop alongside the forest floor to grab a Golden Darter from the rivers here (pools or open water), but you'll need your flying mount to reach the Highland Mixed Schools. These are only found in Terokkar's mountain lakes above Stonebreaker Hold, the Allerian Stronghold, and in Skettis. The Furious Crawdad (which once provided the best stamina buff in the game and were thus the target of feverish tanks everywhere) are all drops from the Highland schools, as is Mr. Pinchy, if you're still after Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box. If it weren't for the horrifyingly low drop rate on Mr. Pinchy and the added agony of the RNG afterwards, I'd think that was one of the best achievements in the game.

  • Nagrand The Icefin Bluefish and Figluster's Mudfish can both be fished up here from pools or open water as you prefer.

Northrend

Freshwater fishing in Northrend is a lot more time-consuming than its oceanic counterpart; you can't just hug the southern coast here and then be merrily on your way. Roughly counter-clockwise around the continent:

  • Borean Tundra It's easiest to find the Musselback Sculpin in pools around the zone's central lake, and Bonescale Snappers are very common catches from open water.

  • Dragonblight The Dragonfin Angelfish can be found in pools below the waterfall from Wintergrasp, in the zone's rivers, or in the lake in the ghostly tuskarr town northwest of Moa'ki Harbor. The relative scarcity of this fish (and the once-upon-a-time need to catch two of them per Blackened Dragonfin) was once the bane of my bear tanking existence in Wrath.

  • Howling Fjord Fish up the Fangtooth Herring from pools or open water here. Circling the lake southwest of Camp Winterhoof to get all the pools there was once the best way to try to knock off One That Didn't Get Away and Turtles All the Way Down at once, but I have 40,000 useless catches to my name as an argument against relying on this tactic.

  • Grizzly Hills Glacial Salmon pools should be all over the place here.

  • Dalaran and Crystalsong Forest While you're flying over from Grizzly Hills, stop at the river beneath Dalaran and grab a Glassfin Minnow from the pools in the river. Afterwards, head up to the city. The Fountain Goldfish from (where else?) the Dalaran fountain will be a familiar catch to anyone who's worked on The Coin Master. The Shimmering Minnow and Slippery Eel are both common catches from the pond around the Violet Hold, and then you'll need a quick trip to the sewers to get a Sewer Carp.

  • Wintergrasp The Giant Darkwater Clam is the only quasi-difficult catch to grab in Northrend; it's a rare drop from open water in Wintergrasp (around a 4-5% drop rate). If you're already level 85, you probably don't need to worry too much about being attacked by anyone who has a genuine interest in holding the zone, but as always, keep an eye out for opportunistic attackers.

  • Sholazar Basin The Barrelhead Goby and Nettlefish are both found here. There should be plenty of Nettlefish schools around, and the Goby is a common open-water catch.

Working on achievements? The Overachiever is here to help! Count on us for advice on Azeroth's holidays and special events, including new achievements, how to get 310% flight speed with achievement mounts, and Cataclysm reputation factions and achievements.