Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza Guide

STV Fishing Extravaganza Video Guide

Winning the STV Fishing Extravaganza on a Fresh WoW Account: https://youtu.be/y9qm-KXYVTU

(Updated 4/10/23) This guide used to have its own section on the website, but I've downgraded it to being part of the "Leveling Guides" category. After I finish coverage of Patch 10.1, I plan on making more guides related to leveling preparation (how to get heirlooms, which consumables to purchase, etc). Once those guides are finished, I'll make a new "Leveling Preparation" section on the website separate from "Leveling Guides", and this fishing guide will be moved there.

If you're interested in World of Warcraft Speedleveling, you'll likely learn about the Dread Pirate Ring very early on. This heirloom is one of the rewards that you're offered if you win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, and since it's one of the only two Heirloom Rings you can wear, it's effectively mandatory for anyone seriously planning to get into WoW Speedleveling. However, winning this fishing tournament is no small feat even for veteran anglers, as only the first 50 players in each region who complete the tournament objective can pick the Dread Pirate Ring as a prize. You're in luck though, since I've put together a broken strategy for the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza which will give you a MASSIVE edge against the competition.

Rules of the Fishing Extravaganza

Before we discuss strategy or preparation, it's important to first establish how the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza actually works. Every Sunday at 2 PM Pacific Standard Time an NPC named Riggle Bassbait will send an announcement across Stranglethorn Vale, and this signals the start of the fishing tournament. At this point a world quest will activate within the zone which tasks you with collecting 40 Speckled Tastyfish. These Tastyfish have a chance of being fished up from any pool within Northern or Southern Stranglethorn Vale, and once you've reeled in all 40 you'll want to quickly head to Riggle Bassbait within Booty Bay in order to turn in your fish and complete the world quest. As previously mentioned, only the first 50 players in every region will be able to hand in their Tastyfish and collect a prize, so you'll need to plan ahead if you want to beat the competition.

Preparation

While there are a ton of items or skills you can prepare which will theoretically give you a edge in the competition, some are more important than others. If you want to stand a serious chance at winning, you MUST complete the following steps:

Learn Master Riding. This is essential for decreasing travel time between fishing pools.
Raise your Classic Fishing Skill to 300. Having a higher fishing skill increases your chances of casting Tastyfish, so naturally you'll want to make sure your base skill level is maxed out.
Set your Hearthstone to Booty Bay. This allows you to quickly teleport over to Riggle Bassbait the moment you obtain all 40 fish.
Learn the Find Fish Skill. This is taught by the Weather Beaten Journal, a rare drop from Trunks or Crates that you'll find while fishing. These boxes can technically be fished up from regular pools, but they have a SIGNIFICANTLY higher drop chance from wreckage pools such as Schooner Wreckage. In my experience, the best zones for farming wreckage pools are the Wetlands, Stranglethorn Vale, and Zangarmarsh. However, if you're preparing for the tournament from scratch I'd recommend fishing in Wetlands or Stranglethorn Vale, as it allows you to level up your Classic Fishing Skill, killing two birds with one stone. I've also heard reports that the Journal can be fished directly out of pools in recent expansions zones, but I can't confirm this myself.

While those steps are technically the only ones you NEED in order to win the fishing tournament, there are a few more items and consumables you can prepare to increase your chances. A really helpful consumable that should be easy to obtain is Elixir of Water Walking. This will allow you to fish while standing directly on top of the water, meaning you won't need to waste time finding the perfect place to stand on the shoreline. Shamans and Death Knights can use Water Walking or Path of Frost, respectively, meaning they don't need to buy these elixirs.

Another important consumable for the fishing tournament is Captain Rumsey's Lager. These can be picked up for a fairly low cost on the Auction House, and drinking them will grant you 5 additional fishing skill for 3 minutes. The duration of this buff can stack up to 15 minutes, so I'd recommend chugging 5 of them right as the fishing tournament is about to begin. The final two items you'll want to get are the Angler Glove Enchant and a pair of item level 50 or lower gloves. This enchant will give you another +5 to your fishing skill, but since it has an ilvl requirement, you'll need to use the enchant on those item level 50 gloves.

Now, if you're an experienced fisher, you may have noticed that I haven't discussed any of the traditional fishing equipment such as poles, hats, or boots. This is partially because the benefit they grant is extremely minor compared to the time it takes to acquire them, but there is another important reason which I'll discuss shortly when explaining my strategy. That being said, if you want to go the extra mile and get all of the best equipment, I'll include some notes in the expandable lists below.

As discussed during the Strategy section, Fishing Poles are disabled within Chromie Time, so this section if only relevant if you DON'T plan on using Chromie Time. If you are still interested in getting the theoretically best fishing pole for the tournament, you have a few options. For standard fishing, the new Khaz'gorite Fisherfriend is the clear winner, largely because it's the only pole with the new Perception stat. However, it's unlikely that perception actually affects the catch rate of Tastyfish (though I haven't tested this myself, so I can't claim it's impossible), which means it doesn't matter for the purposes of the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. To my knowledge, the only thing that affects the catch rate is additional skill, so the "perfect" pole would be any that provides +15 fishing skill. This means the best pole is actually a tie between the following options:

With all else being the same, Underlight Angler technically ends up being the best rod, since the utility can be considered a MINOR advantage.

As for Fishing Lines, which are special enchants that you can apply to your pole, the best one is Ancient Fishing Line. This item is a rare drop from Slithon the Last, a rare mob found on Eredath (aka Mac'aree, the Argus zone that got name changed due to Blizzard drama). If you want a slightly weaker line that's much easier to obtain, I'd recommend picking up Rook's Lucky Fishin' Line, which is a treasure in Talador.

Lastly, Lures are temporary skill buffs that you can apply to your fishing pole, and the current best lures provide +10 fishing skill. The four +10 skill lures are the following:

Heat-Treated Spinning Lure
Worm Supreme
Day-Old Darkmoon Doughnut
The temporary lure provided by Nat's Drinking Hat or the regular Nat's Hat.

While fishing poles are disabled within Chromie Time, fishing hats will continue to function as normal and provide their stat buffs. The uncontested best option is Nat's Drinking Hat, as it provides +8 fishing skill. However, this hat can take quite a long time to acquire, so here are some +5 skill alternatives that are easier to obtain:

Just like hats, boots will continue to function in Chromie Time. The best option by far is Boots of the Bay, as it provides +10 fishing skill and comes with a teleport straight to the Booty Bay Tavern. However, in order to get these boots you'll need to have already won the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, so it's not incredibly relevant for this list. There are two alternative pairs of boots, Nat Pagle's Extreme Anglin' Boots and Anglin' Art's Sandals, both of which provide +5 fishing skill and are much easier to obtain.

We've already covered all of the equippable fishing gear, but there are a few additional niche items that may help you out. For starters, an Oversized Bobber can be a useful tool to have, especially if you're trying to compete with other players over the same pool. While it provides no actual fishing skill, it could potentially be the difference between a successful catch or a misclick, so it's probably worth grabbing a few.

Finally, there are two more items which grant temporary bonuses to fishing skill, that being the Sharpened Tuskarr Spear and the Trawler Totem. Both of these items are extremely difficult to get for how unimpactful their bonuses are, to the point where I haven't even bothered to obtain the Trawler Totem on my account. If you have them, you may as well use them, but they are ABSOLUTELY NOT worth farming for. These are vanity items, not actual fishing equipment, and they will never be impactful enough to affect the results of the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza.

Strategy

Northern Stranglethorn Map Finally it's time to discuss the strategy for the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, and if you follow these steps, your chances of winning will dramatically increase. The first thing I'll cover is the location in which you should fish, as I'm sure that's the main question on everyone's mind. The short answer is that Lake Nazferiti and its nearby rivers are the best spots to fish at due to the high density of pools in the area. The long answer is that since everyone already knows this is the best spot, there's a chance it will be extremely crowded, making it no longer an efficient place to fish at. Shortly before the tournament begins, you should fly around Lake Nazferiti to check for other players, and if it's mostly empty, you should be fine to fish there. However, if this area is swarming with other players, you should check out other areas of Stranglethorn Vale until you find an empty spot. It'll always be better to fish alone in an empty area than to fight with other players over a desirable spot.

That being said, if you use my next trick, this probably won't be an issue, as I was able to fish in Lake Nazferiti for the entirety of the contest without encountering another player; all I had to do to accomplish this was to turn on Chromie Time. If you've been watching my channel for a while, you probably already know what I'm talking about, but in case you're unaware, Chromie Time is more than just a system for leveling alts. When you enter Chromie Time you're phased into a completely different version of the world that only low level characters can enter normally; however, if you use the party sync feature, it's possible to phase your main character into Chromie Time, allowing you to fish in Stranglethorn Vale with zero competition. If you want more information on how to easily utilize party sync to phase your main into Chromie Time, I have a video embedded below which discusses all of the important details.

While this trick will massively boost your odds of winning the tournament, since you're able to fish with infinitely less competition, it does have a few notable downsides. Whenever your main character is phased into Chromie Time, their level and stats will be scaled down to 60. This means nearby mobs will aggro onto you if you get too close to them, and if you're not careful, this can cause your fishing to be interrupted. The other problem with Chromie Time is that, for some reason, it disables all fishing poles, and this includes any active lures. Assuming you had the perfect pole, line, and lure, this amounts to a loss of 31 fishing skill, which is a pretty significant bonus. That being said, I was still able to fish up a Speckled Tastyfish on nearly every cast when I was in Chromie Time, so the skill difference clearly doesn't matter too much. This is part of the reason why I skimmed over the fishing gear earlier, as poles being disabled removes a massive part of the prep work required for the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. Although hats, boots, and the tuskarr fishing spear still work, these are much more difficult to acquire despite providing a much smaller bonus.

The final tip I'll give you in this guide is a bit more niche, and that is to participate in the Fishing Tournament as a Highmountain Tauren. This is because one of their racial abilities, Waste Not, Want Not, has a chance to proc additional Tastyfish. The chance of this happening isn't incredibly high, so playing as a Highmountain Tauren only gives you a marginal advantage compared to everyone else. That said, if your only goal is to obtain the Dread Pirate Ring, it may be worth leveling up a Highmountain Tauren alt just to get that small additional edge against the competition.

Lastly, if you want a complete idea on what to expect during the tournament, I recently finished a leveling run on a Fresh WoW Account where I reached level 40 and used that character to win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. The video was a ton of fun to record, but it also showcases a lot of useful tips on how to prepare for and win the fishing competition. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in watching, you can find the video here: https://youtu.be/y9qm-KXYVTU

Changelog

4/10/23: This guide was moved to the "Leveling Guides" section of the website.
2/26/23: The Fishing Extravaganza Guide is created.