Cataclysm Daily Quests, Part 1: Daily basics and profession dailies

This article has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

Read the entire WoW Insider Cataclysm Daily Quest Guide series!

Since their introduction in the Netherwing quest line in The Burning Crusade, daily quests have become an integral part of World of Warcraft's design. Chances are you're familiar with the concept of dailies themselves and probably did your fair share of them during Wrath of the Lich King, but it's a whole new world out there. In this article, we'll go over the new daily quests in Cataclysm, their rewards, and how to get the most out of them.

To make sure we're all on the same page, let's go over the basics of daily quests. In addition to or instead of normal, one-time-only quests, certain NPCs throughout the world will offer "daily" quests. These quests are repeatable and bear a blue exclamation point rather than a yellow one to indicate their status. In the quest log, they'll be marked (Daily) and once you complete one, there'll be a counter at the top of your quest log showing how many daily quests you have completed that day.

When dailies were originally introduced, it was only possible to complete 10 per day, which meant you had to pick and choose which ones you'd complete. The limit has since been raised to 25, meaning you can spend a far greater amount of time on daily quests and also reap greater rewards. To break up the monotony somewhat, many daily quest givers will change their quests each day, picking from a set table of quests they offer. Generally speaking, the number of dailies offered by a particular quest hub will remain the same from day to day, though the specific quests may rotate.

Why do dailies?

The first reason to do dailies are the large gold rewards for completing quests at max level. Players can easily use this as their primary method of attaining gold if they have no interest in playing the auction house.

The other rewards for daily quests, however, should not be discounted. Almost all daily quests provide reputation with an associated faction, and many provide additional rewards such as skill-ups for profession dailies, commendations for Tol Barad dailies, and achievements for certain Therazane and Uldum dailies. Perhaps most importantly, however, daily quests are currently the only way that level 85 characters can perpetually contribute on a solo basis to guild XP. We'll discuss this aspect of dailies later; for now, let's take a look at the specific quests available.

Stormwind and Orgrimmar: Cooking and fishing dailies

If you've been eagerly anticipating Cataclysm, these are probably the first new daily quests you encountered in the shattered world. To ease the leveling process for secondary professions cooking and fishing, Blizzard has added daily quests that provide skill-ups in their respective professions as well as gold and rewards.

Unlike the other dailies discussed in this article, the cooking and fishing dailies are available to low-level as well as max-level characters. Cooking dailies have the added bonus of a Stormwind Cooking Award / Orgrimmar Cooking Award upon completion. These awards are the only way to purchase Cataclysm cooking recipes, so you'll need them if you want to level cooking to 525 and finish The Cataclysmic Gourmet. However, low-level characters will not be able to stockpile Cooking Awards for level 85; there is currently a maximum limit of 10 awards stored in your currency panel. Lowbies can spend their awards on the Crate of Tasty Meat, which costs 2 Cooking Awards and contains Cataclysm-level cooking materials that can be sold or saved to level cooking later.

The cooking dailies

The NPCs Robby Flay (Alliance) and Marogg (Horde) each offer one cooking quest per day, randomly selected from five options. Completing all five of these quests awards the achievement Let's Do Lunch (Alliance / Horde). Completing each quest awards one skill point in cooking, one Cooking Award, 7g 40s, and Alliance or Horde reputation.

The different quests will send you to various areas of the city to collect items, and unlike the Dalaran daily cooking quests, none of them require you to actually cook. Interestingly, one of the Alliance quest options, A Fisherman's Feast, actually allows you to use fishing skill to complete it; in addition to stealing the items, you can simply fish them out of the canals near the fishermen. It's also notable that troll characters receive an alternate version of the quest Stealing From Our Own requiring them to steal from the goblins rather than from trolls, as all other Horde races do. Cooking awards can be used to purchase goods from Bario Matalli (Alliance) or Shazdar (Horde).

The fishing dailies

The fishing quests are given by Catherine Leland (Alliance) and Razgar. Each offers one fishing quest per day, randomly selected from five options. Completing all five of these quests awards the achievement Fish or Cut Bait (Alliance / Horde). Completing each quest awards one skill point in fishing, 7g 40s, and a Bag of Shiny Things. If you have yet to pick up the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat or Strand Crawler pet, this bag has a chance to drop them for you. Unlike the cooking dailies, most of the quests do actually require you to fish.

These profession dailies are a great place to start off, not only because they're conveniently located in capital cities but because of the skill-up rewards they provide. Of course, once you reach maximum skill in cooking and fishing, these quests become a bit less valuable; the cooking quest continues to provide Cooking Awards, of course, but if you've already gotten the rewards you want from the fishing bag, you may find yourself skipping the fishing daily in favor of other options.

Next time, we'll take a look at the daily quests in the new Cataclysm zones. Stay tuned!

Read the entire WoW Insider Cataclysm Daily Quest Guide series!

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.