Insider Trader: The fishing splash -- wait for it ...
Insider Trader is your weekly inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.
This week, Insider Trader offers up two insider tips, one for frustrated fishers and another for level 29 PvPers searching for the strongest possible gear.
Fishing means chilling with some good music, a tall drink and a chat window full of the latest guild gossip -- or at least, it used to. As of patch 2.1, fishers were transported back into twitch-gaming mode if they hoped to snag catches at the end of the fishing timer. It's all about the splash; when you hear a splash while fishing, you've hooked a fish and can click to either loot or "miss" it. It used to be that you could reach the end of the fishing timer with no splash/hook. You could look away from your fishing timer while fishing, as long as you were quick about getting back to the bobber when you heard the splash. If there was no splash, you most likely lost a little time until you noticed you hadn't heard anything and looked back over to re-cast ... But no lost fish. No harm, no foul.
Post-2.1, there's always a splash at the end of the timer. Sounds great, right? Always a splash, always a hook and an opportunity for a catch? Unfortunately, there's now no time for a catch on end-of-timer hooks unless you click the bobber at exactly the same moment as the splash – requiring you to watch that timer like a hawk and click right on time. The bobber vanishes simultaneously with the splash, instead of fading out and giving you time to react to the splash. While it's still possible to catch (or miss) the fish with a perfectly timed click, frustration seems just as common. And the it sure ruins the peaceful, laid-back aspect of fishing.
No word on whether or not the grace period for fishing will be reinstated. For now, if you're dead-set on catching every available fish, bring your game face and prepare to keep your eye glued to the timer bar.
High-end enchants for low-level PvP
Old-world enchants are standard fare for low-level PvPing, since Outlands enchants can't be put on items under level 35. It can be hard to tell what the exact level is of some items (without a mod, anyway), since Blizzard doesn't include level labels, but you can bet that anything marked "Requires level 34" or lower is unenchantable with the newer enchants.
Level 29 PvPers can push the envelope with quest rewards. The coded level of a quest determines the level of the items it gives as rewards -- and you can find a number of level 35 and 36 quests that are possible to accept in your late 20s. The rewards from these quests are Level 35 and 36, meaning you can in fact enchant them with Burning Crusade-era enchants.
Consider, for instance, the quest "To Steal from Thieves," a Horde quest available in the Undercity at level 27. It's a level 36 quest, and one of its rewards is a level 36 cloth caster bracer that can be enchanted with any of the Burning Crusade bracer enchants, including +12 stamina, +12 intellect, +15 spell damage, +30 healing and more.
You can find quests of the appropriate level on sites like WoWHead. Scroll down the Browse menu to "Quests" and search by area, then click on "Level" to sort by level.
Lisa Poisso is a freelance writer, when she's not waiting for the splash.
