Hoarders: Azeroth Edition - A Salty Bloodsail Admiral

"I heard you want'd to see me, Admiral?"

"I did, helmswoman. The Capt'n wants Serenity out to sea by dawn's light. Have her sails been mended and her hull stocked?" inquired Bloodsail Admiral Kelebek.

"Aye, though what kind of crazy fish chase does the Capt'n have us on this time?"

The admiral took a moment's pause to stroke the blood red feathers of her favorite parrot, one of several who roosted about on the ship in question. With her attention still mainly focused on the bird she said "I don't rightly know. We could be chasin' after loot or we could be looking for some sort of legendary sea creature. I'm sure the Capt'n will let us know once we unfurl the sails and set a course." Kelebek ceased stroking the vibrant birds chest and looked the human in the eye. "Have the sacrifices to Neptulon been made? I don't want this ship and her crew to go through what it did last time."

"It has been done."

"Shiny. Get some rest, the Capt'n will be eager to set sail."

The dark skinned woman took her leave. Kelebek listened as the helmswoman's heavy booted footfalls thunked into the distance. She sighed and said to the bird "What do you think, Jane? This new little Kaelei seems to be doing well." The bird made an aggressive gesture. "Keep it up and I'll feed you to that River cat. This trip is going to be rough as is, ain't need you nor anyone else acting up, savvy?" The bird responded by ruffling up her feathers and then set off to roost somewhere on Serenity.

Kelebek took one final look at the sunset from her balcony at the Salty Sailor Tavern. With another sigh she thought to herself "My gut tells me that we're going to get a bit salty. Might as well get my bits of precious together and find the Capt'n. We got a job to do, even if I don't much care to find out what it is."

She turned gracefully in her black leather boots and crossed threshold of her quarters.

*******

Hello all and welcome to a very...errr...different type of Hoarders. I thought I'd take a bit of a break from my typical list style and try my hand a combination of wannabe role playing text, mixed in with a side of how-to. Chances are the lists that you all know and love shall be back soon enough, but if you all prefer this version of Hoarders to the standard set up, let me know!

Today I thought that we'd cover two different titles: Bloodsail Admiral and Salty. Both are summer flavored, fun, and a swashbucklin' good time to have.


Salty

One of the more rare and highly sought after non-raiding titles would have Salty. Whether you have a character whose name begins with an S, have a name that would go well with a title such as Salty (insert various perverted and clever names here), or simply just like to fish, chances are you'd be into getting your hands on this title. Here are some tips and tricks to complete the various achievements required to complete the meta for this particular title. Needless to say you will definitely need to be an Accomplished Angler to pull this one off.

Grand Master Fisherman
Now days it's rather easy(ish) to level your way up to a fishing skill of 450. Thanks to the skill changes with being able to fish anywhere instead of the old school way of only being able to fish in zones at your skill level or below you may now fish anywhere. Fancy that Giant Sewer Rat pet that can be gained in Dalaran alone, but only have a fishing skill of 10? No problem, plop your butt on the deck by the sewer's inn and go nuts. Just don't forget to do your fishing dailies and always remember to train!


The Scavenger
This achievement will require a bit of travel. The areas listed below are highly recommended spots to find various bits of wreckage, but if you'd like to know where you may stumble across a few other spawn points please see the comments section on Wowhead. If you're having difficulty finding one of these pools I highly suggest fishing up the surrounding pools to encourage these to spawn. Yes it is completely possible to come across these wreckages in other places than those listed below.

- Steam Pump Flotsam (Zangermarsh)
- Bloodsail Wreckage (Menethil Harbor, Stranglethorn Vale Coastlines)
- Schooner Wreckage (Hillsbrad Foothills, Wetlands)
- Waterlogged Wreckage (Stranglethorn Vale River, Theramore Beach)
- Floating Wreckage (Tanaris, Feralas)


Master Angler of Azeroth
There are two ways of obtaining this particular achievement. You can either win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza in Booty Bay or the Kalu'ak Fishing Derby in Northrend (please see each of the links provided for the quest details). Both require a lot of luck, some love from the RNG gods, and a bit of foresight. Here are some tips and tricks to help you along with your derby win!

- For a nice guide on How to Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza, please check out Jaedia's latest post. I personally fished more along the islands of the southern tip and worked my way up the eastern coast, but I've heard many success stories with the area she marked as well.
- Turn down ALL settings except for projected textures (you must be able to see the pool ripples) and shut off ALL but the most vital of addons. The last thing you want is to be hindered by even the slightest amount of lag.
- Set your hearth to the closest turn in point. For the SFE derby set it to the Salty Sailor Tavern ahead of time and familiarize yourself with where the turn in guy is. For the KFD you'll want to set your hearth to one of the non-sewer points. For Alliance that would be the Alliance specific inn (the name is escaping me) and for my Horde brothers and sisters, I'm sorry but you're a bit further away over in your specified area of Dalaran.
- If you are not a shaman or a death knight stock up on Elixir of Water Walking. These can be gain through drops, fishing dailies, or can be crafted by alchemists. The last thing you want to be doing is swimming to each pool or being stuck on the coastline alone.
- Keybind your cast! If your first cast doesn't land in a pool, recast instantly until it does. Keybinding your fishing cast will make this process much quicker.
- If someone is already fishing from a pool, skip it and move on! It's possible that they have already cleared out the pool save for one or two catches, so it's not really worth your time to stop. Find yourself a new pool and fish as much as possible from it.
- If you have speed boosts, use them instead of mounting! Unless you don't have any pools in the immediate vicinity, the time it takes to cast a mount is generally time wasted. Use ghost wolf/spirit walk/sprint/whatever else to get to pools that are only a short distance away. If you have any spec speed boosts such as Inner Will + Inner Sanctum/Improved Unholy Presence/any other class and spec speed modifiers, spec into them and use them! Having super epic (as I liked to call it) flying and guild mount speed perks can also come in very handy for these events if you can get your hands on them.
- Keep your head. Shaky nerves and trying to rage at people who steal your pools in General will greatly hinder your ability to win. Try your best to keep your cool and try to ignore everything in General save for the giant red /yell about someone winning.
- Do your best to stay away from the crowds. Each server probably congregates a bit differently, and the crowds may vary from week to week. Just try your best to stay away from the worse of the mobs.
- Put on your lucky underwear, pray to the gods of RNG, and do whatever good luck rituals you may have.

Saz's biggest tip to winning one of these tournaments: Try attempting this achievement during a major holiday. I saw maybe five or six level 80s where I was fishing when I did this on Easter two years ago (from the time of this post) and a small handful of twinks. The lower population cluster made this event much less stressful and enabled me to fish from the pools much more effectively with less need to move around.


One That Didn't Get Away
There are 10 different super rare fish that you can fish up in order to complete this achievement. I'm not going to list them all here with their drop chances and areas where they're fished up, so please follow the link above to the Wowhead page for more information. I personally suggest trying for the Dark Herring, which can be gained in Howling Fjord. As you can see in the screen shot after the intro of this post I managed to snag mine at the Winter's Breath Lake. It took me quite a few hours of just sitting around and fishing, but a movie and some good ol' guild chatting helped to pass the time.


The Lurker Above
This particular achievement is fairly easy. My personal suggestion is to don your favorite fishing outfit and ditch your most expensive gear into your bank...unless of course you're like me and unable to do such a thing. Why would you be stowing away your gear? Well, unless you go in with a decent little group of people, you're gonna die. You see, you only need to fish up the Lurker for this achievement, not kill him. It is possible to dodge all of the mobs up to the Lurker's pool (see the link provided and proceed to read the comments for tips on how to do that) and then you may just sit your little butt down to fish. Eventually he will come up, you will get an achievement, and more than likely he will nom your face off. It is possible to do this with multiple within a raid (no one can get locked out unless you kill the Lurker, and he will despawn if everyone is killed), but only the person who fishes him up shall get the achievement. I went in with a friend: we both fished at the same time, one of us got the achievement, proceeded to be killed by him, then we ran back in so the other could get it as well. It was kind of fun!


Northrend Angler
Another achievement that will require some travel, but shouldn't be too difficult so long as you have flying. Why you wouldn't have flying by the time you reach Northrend is beyond me, but you never know!

Borean Man O' War School - Borean Tundra coastline
Dragonfin Angelfish School - Dragonblights's Lake Indu'le and some rivers in Dragonblight
Glacial Salmon School - Grizzly Hills rivers
Imperial Manta Ray School - Any Northrend coastline
Musselback Sculpin School - Borean Tundra's Lake Kum'uya
Deep Sea Monsterbelly School - Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Howling Fjord near icebergs
Fangtooth Herring School - Howling Fjord lakes and rivers
Glassfin Minnow School - Crystalsong Forest
Moonglow Cuttlefish School - Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Howling Fjord near icebergs
Nettlefish School - Sholazar Basin lakes and rivers


1000 Fish
Easy enough, get your butt out there and fish! And fish! And fish some more!


The Old Gnome and the Sea
Successfully fish from a pool. Huzzah! You got an achievement!


The Fishing Diplomat
Half of this achievement is easy enough, simply fish in either Stormwind or Orgimmar. Chances are you're probably hanging out in one city or the other, depending on your faction. The other half of this achievement is a tad more difficult, especially since now these cities are now the center of everything for both factions. If you're not a stealth class getting into these cities and back out again in one piece is probably not going to happen. If you ARE a stealth class, your ability to get in an our shouldn't be too difficult, but the fishing still may be. Horde may have a bit of an advantage over Alliance since Stormwind has a few out of the way lakes outside of the actual walls that for the most part the Alliance won't bother you at. Alliance on the other hand? Well, good luck my brothers and sisters. Orgrimmar's pools are a tad bit more internal. There are however some mighty clever hiding spots once you manage to get in there. While you're there you should try for Old Crafty. Check out Tree of Life's guide on how to fish for him for some hiding spot ideas. Sorry Horde, you guys will still have to sneak into Ironforge for Old Ironjaw.


Mr. Pinch's Magical Crawdad
This achievement has two different - though relatively simple - parts.

Part 1: Fish up the Magical Crawdad from a Highland School. These schools are to be found in the lakes around Terokkar Forest that may only be reached if one has flying. If they were found elsewhere, they really wouldn't be "highland" now, would they?

Part 2: Get said Magical Crawdad to grant you a "wish." When you click on the crawdad he will do one of several things, but to get the achievement you need a bit of help from good ol' RNG. If things go well he will grant you a Magical Crawdad Box, which gives you both a pet and the achievement. If things go wrong, he will pee in your Cheerios and try to claw your face off.


Old Man Barlowned
Dailies. Fairly simple to do fishing dailies. You can find Old Man Barlowned just outside of Shattrash next to a lake in Terokkar forest. He offers one of five dailies, all of which you must successfully complete in order to get this achievement. Follow the links provided for more information on each of the different quests.

- Crocolisks in the City (This daily has a possibility of granted one of four baby crocolisk pets! You may collect them all if you have the patience for such a thing.)
- Felblood Fillet
- Shrimpin' Ain't Easy
- Bait Bandits
- The One That Got Away


Outland Angler
Same format as Northrend Angler. Relatively easy, just takes some time to fly around and find all the pools.

Brackish Mixed School - Terokkar Forest, Zangarmarsh
Mudfish School - Nagrand
Highland Mixed School - Terokkar Forest, only reachable with flying
Bluefish School - Nagrand
School of Darter - Terokkar Forest
Sporefish School - Zangarmarsh


Fish Don't Leave Footprints
Quite honestly you should probably go for this achievement first. To get this achievement you must fish up a trunk (generally these can be fished up from various wreckages, such as those required for The Scavenger) that contains a Weather-Beaten Journal. This journal will teach you Find Fish, which allows you to track fishing pools on your mini map. It also may potentially be acquired through the fishing dailies. Very, very handy to have for most of the fishing achievements.


The Coin Master
Ladies and gentlemen, be prepared to pull your hair out. This isn't a particularly difficult achievement (all you have to do is sit at the fountain in Dalaran and fish after all), but it's definitely one that will take both time and a lot of patience. It's completely RNG based. It's completely time consuming (if you have trouble sleeping, may I recommend taking on this task?). It will eat your soul! However, I found that the text flavor on the coins was very entertaining, and at the end I earned myself a pretty neat coin. My only tips that I can give to you all on this one is to toss the gold coins back into the well (I believe you get a bit of a "good luck" buff from them) and to vendor the copper and silver coins, that is unless you like to hoard coins. Start with your bags empty so you don't have to continuously stop what you're doing just to empty your inventory.

With enough time, patience, and a bit of luck, you too can be salty! Perhaps this isn't quite your thing though. While you may enjoy the salty spray of the ocean on your face, you may just bathe. Or maybe you just like to tell your crew (the silly sea dogs that they are) what to do. Your dreams to become a Bloodsail Admiral may very well be realized as you read the following words!


Bloodsail Admiral
Unlike Salty, in theory Bloodsail Admiral is fairly easy to obtain. Or I should say it was fairly easy to obtain. yes past tense. When you compare the two Bloodsail Admiral is indeed quite a bit easier simply because you're not fighting tooth and nail with RNG, but considering the fact that you have to kill the bruisers of Booty Bay.

What was once a relatively short grind at the end of the Wrath expansion (somewhere around 3 hours, depending on how fast you could kill things and if you ended up getting booted over the edge) has turned into an absolute nightmare for most folks. As it is right now, my more or less heroic geared (when I say heroic I mean heroics, not heroic raid geared) feral druid can take on one bruiser with a minor struggle. Unfortunately bruisers rarely come by themselves; oh no, bruisers love their mob mentality. Even bear form won't save my kitty butt from three or more angry bruisers. So what can you do to obtain this title? Is all hope lost? No, but proceed with caution my friend.

There are two options for you, Option A being the more difficult of the two choices but may potentially lead to a faster grind, and Option B potentially being the longer by far but is the more soloable option.

Option A - Get together some friends and head to Booty Bay. Preferably make a group with a tank, a healer, and a few DPS. Take on this task as if it was an instance. Make careful pulls, CC extra bruisers that come if possible, and use CDs if necessary. Once you get into the rhythm of things you should be able to chain pull, but do so with caution. There are a couple of spawn points that get pretty wild. You can also refrain from killing quest/vendor NPCs since they don't really give any rep, nor do they encourage spawn rates. Out of courtesy for the questers in the area please DO refrain from killing non-bruiser NPCs. With time you'll need less people to farm rep at Booty Bay and it should more or less become soloable again with more gear, but for now bring some friends and proceed with caution.

Option B - Farm Shakes O'Breen and the named mob pirates around him in Arathi Highlands. Shakes himself has a fairly quick respawn timer but the rep he gives is relatively low (about 5 points). The other mobs in the area have about a five minute respawn timer but the rep they give is a tad bit higher (Blackwater Raiders, about 27 points a piece). What I gather from the Wowhead comments is that you can grind out about 1,200 rep per hour, provided that no one else is in the area.

I personally may try Option B on my shaman once I get around to grinding out Bloodsail rep on her. While it may be a longer grind, it should be the easier of the two with my current gear provided I head out at an odd hour to lessen the possibility of running into someone else farming the same small handful of mobs. Who knows though, perhaps I'll just continue to slack until tier 13 and then take out all of the bruisers in my beloved Booty Bay.

Alright, so you're now Honored with the Bloodsail faction (aka hated by Booty Bay), now what? Well you need to find Fleet Master Firallon. Pick up the quest called Avast Ye, Admiral! from him, kill the three NPCs required to finish the quest, return to Fleet Master Firallon, and he will award you the Bloodsail Admiral's Hat. Once you gain your hat you shall be known as "Bloodsail Admiral *Insert Your Name Here*". He will then also offer you a quest called Dressing the Part, which will award you a Buccaneer's Uniform. The Buccaneer's Uniform contains a Bloodsail Shirt, Bloodsail Boots, Bloodsail Pants, and a Bloodsail Sash. Congrats Admiral, now you look the part!

A quick note: There is a quest that leads up to Avast Ye, Admiral called Avast Ye, Scallywag, handed out by Pretty Boy Duncan. It's not required in order to get your Avast Ye, Admiral quest but it is there for you quest junkies out there.

*******

That's all for Hoarders: Azeroth Edition this week folks. Remember that an orange sky in the mornin', sailors take warnin'. Orange sky at night, sailors' delight. May the wind keep to your sails and the Kraken steer clear of your rudders. Now back to work ye scallyways! *cracks a whip*