Cooking
Most fish can be cooked. You will need to know how to cook, and have sufficiently high cooking skill to learn the recipe. To cook, you will need to stand next to a cooking fire (including many braziers in towns and cities). Almost all cooking recipes can be purchased from vendors. If you are Developing Your Fishing Skill, it is highly recommended that you train cooking at the same time.
While tasty, many cooked fish only recover health and mana when eaten. Consequently they have no special value, and should not normally be auctioned.
Some cooked fish gives a "buff", such as an improvement to attributes, or health or mana regeneration. Many of these dishes are highly valued. Catching, cooking, and selling them at the auction house is often the best way to make gold from fishing.
The prices listed here are for single fish. It is common to sell fish in stacks of 5, 10 or 20. Most people prefer to buy cooked fish. Raw fish may also sell, particularly where the cooking recipe is rare, as is the case for Savory Deviate Delight.
Valuable Buff Food
These cooked fish are often eaten, particularly by those venturing into the most difficult dungeons. All the dishes here are recorded by the scribe Alla' with a median auction house value of at least 2g. Use these prices as a rough guide only: They will vary a lot.
- [1] Changes the person eating it into either a pirate ("Yaaarrrr") or a ninja ("Flip Out")
Feasts are party dishes: Place the dish on the ground, and anyone in your group can eat from it. Feasts require cooking skill (425 for Fish Feast, 375 for Gigantic Feast/Small Feast) and level 70 to use. Since patch 3.1, feasts can be traded.
Many of the best dishes use Northern Spices. Northern Spices are gained by completing the daily Dalaran Cooking Quests. One quest each day, starting from the cooking trainers in the faction areas of Dalaran. Completing a daily quest gives 1 or 2 Dalaran Cooking Awards, plus a Small Spice Bag. The bag normally contains a few spices, and each Dalaran Cooking Award can be exchanged for 10 Northern Spices. Awards are also used to buy recipes. Read more about the Dalaran Cooking Quests.
Raw Fish
Most of the fish used to cook valuable buff food can also be sold raw. In addition, there are a few other fish which can be sold raw to cooks. These fish are used by those leveling their cooking skill without catching fish.
| Catch | Auction | Catching |
|---|---|---|
| Darkclaw Lobster | 2g | Where to catch » |
| Large Raw Mightfish | 2g | Where to catch » |
| Raw Whitescale Salmon | 2g | Where to catch » |
Learn More
- Cooked Fish Foods That Give Buffs - Complete list in the Fish Finder.
- Dalaran Cooking Quests - How to complete the Dalaran daily cooking quests.
- Wrath of the Lich King Fish - New fish and catches in WotLK.
- Catching Deviate Fish - How to catch Deviate Fish, which may be cooked to make Savory Deviate Delight.
- Cooking Skill - List of cooked fish foods by cooking skill.
- Also in Valuable Fish: What's Valuable?, Supplies, Valuable Gear, Minipets and Mounts, and Other Valuable Fished Items.
Comments about Buff Food
Below are readers' comments about "Buff Food":
El's Angling Made Me Rich
Kreight, April 2009:
Sort of.
I tried posting this in the Blizzard professions forum and got, at best, some indifferent comments. I feel, though, that the readers here will be a little more receptive. One of the comments I got was that as far as efficient money making techniques go this one is far from perfect, but it just so happens that it fits my time schedule well. It's also primarily based around fishing, in which everyone here is already well versed.
So it was El's that really gave me the original idea. I was already at 450 in both my fishing and cooking, but I was reading over the cooking/fishing leveling guide here. The thought was this... Could I just go out and follow that guide, fish up the amounts detailed therein, pick up the recipes, cookbooks, quest requirements, etc, and then sell them in one big package?
I decided to give it a shot. I think the first run through was maybe 5 hours total fishing and farming mobs. I didn't buy anything. When I was done, I used a friend's alt as a test subject. The idea was that we could just park the alt in Dal and use it to run the cooking quest and get Northern Spices. Incidentally, I only did 1-400. You can't get to 450 in one sitting, and 400 lets you cook the recipes bought with the cooking awards, so it was a good place to stop.
So it pretty much went off without a hitch. It was about 45 minutes, 1-400, and that included getting to Gadget for the artisan quest. 3.1 has made things easier as you can get artisan at the trainers, and you don't need to pick up the cookbooks any longer.
So once I knew it was doable, I gathered two more sets of mats and tried to sell them. I'm not sure what amount I tried at first, but soon after I set upon 1250g as my price. Things went so well I haven't stopped since.
If people are interested in specifics I'd be happy to share, but one of the complaints about my forum post was that it was too long, and people didn't want to read walls of text. The short version is this.... I've sold almost 70 of these kits in the last 3 months, and have probably made between 60,000 - 70,000g. (I don't always charge full price.)
One thing that makes this work is that I'm enjoying running an in game business. If you're a hard-core raider and most of your time is spent running instances this might not be for you. But if you'd like to try something new and make a little cash, you might want to give it a shot.
SlugSalter, April 2009:
I would be very interested in specifics, this sounds right up my street.
AbsolutRunner, April 2009:
I also am interested in hearing more. Perhaps you could link the post you put in the official forums, or flesh it out here, as you wish!
Desertbull, April 2009:
I like fishing, my guild has been disbanded, my wallet is always empty.
Tell us more please, fishers are used to be patient, so don't worry we couldn't manage to read a wall of text.e2thex, April 2009:
I have thought about selling "powerleveling packages" before but I've always been too lazy to try it. I'm glad to hear that you've been successful at it and would love to hear more.
Kreight, April 2009:
I actually wrote up a bunch of stuff already because a friend of mine wanted to try this. That was a couple of months ago, so I'm trying to run through and update things a little. I should be done pretty soon, though, so check back in a few hours.
Kreight, April 2009:
Ok, all done. Like I said, it's pretty lengthy. If anyone actually decides to go through with this, keep me in the loop. I'd be really interested to find out how things are working for you, and if you've done anything new that I hadn't thought of.
http://www.woodenbadger.com/wow/cooking.html
Aqusia, April 2009:
I got extremely excited when I read your document! I absolutely <3 fishing and cooking, so this is perfect for me ^_^ I am going to just try it for myself at first without the whole kits thing, but your walkthrough is comprehensive enough that I feel completely confident in printing it out, and follow your word to the letter when I do want to start my own business.
My only question is, can you have a guild bank without being a part of a guild? Is it possible to be the only person in the guild? I would like to try this with a guild bank tab, but I'm worried that another person would take all my beautiful mats. How do you achieve this without problems?
Rodge, April 2009:
Fantastic idea - I levelled up 3 chars to high level cooking and I'd certainly have paid 1250 gold rather than doing that!
My only question is, can you have a guild bank without being a part of a guild? Is it possible to be the only person in the guild? I would like to try this with a guild bank tab, but I'm worried that another person would take all my beautiful mats. How do you achieve this without problems?
What you do is you get a guild charter - then get 9 people to sign your charter (you can usually get people to sign up an alt for 1-5g fee in any city.
Then when you turn in your charter and create your guild, you can kick everyone out of the guild again. You don't even need to kick them out - as it's your guild then you're the only person with admin rights to the gbank so you can revoke all priveleges to everyone except yourself.Kreight, April 2009:
The only thing I have to add about starting your own guild is that they're a bit of a pain. Getting that charter means standing around begging people for signatures. I was offering 10g a pop at one time and spent maybe half an hour without getting any. Maybe it was just dumb luck. Before getting your own charter, you might try asking in trade chat if anyone has a guild you can buy.
Tabs increase in price each time you purchase one. They start at 100g for the first, then 250g, 500g, 1000g, 2500g and 5000g. The first 3 tabs are totally worth it, and even the fourth 1000g tab wasn't too bad when I was really running out of space. I can't quite bring myself to pay more, since I can always just make more alts for next to nothing. I realize that's not an option for everyone since some people have their 10-characters filled with alts they actually play.
I lucked out with my first bank and bought it outright; 3 tabs for 450g which was a great deal. What's more, the guy left a ton of crap in it and I probably made close to 200g selling it all.
My second bank on Khadgar was loaned to me by a nice customer I had that wasn't using it. It was only a single tab, but not having to go through the charter business made it totally worth it. I've since bought two more tabs. I'm not sure if he wants it back when I'm done with it, but even if he does, the 750g for the two tabs I bought it the cost of doing business. I've got full control of the guild, and he doesn't have access to my stock.
My last bank was from another past customer, and he's actually still the GM, so if he wanted to he could snatch all my stuff. Some people you just trust, though, and this guy is one of them. Technically I'm leasing his bank, since I paid him rent for several months.
So try to buy one first. If you can find someone who you really trust, you can try renting one without them giving up guild control. Or you can just make your own.
Kreight, April 2009:
Oh, I thought of a couple more things... Advertising via direct mail and coupons!
Coupons! No, I'm not nuts. Here's how you make an in game coupon. Unfortunately you need to have a crafting profession, so if you're all gathering you're out of luck. Get some mats and make up a bunch of one of your lowest level items. On Khadgar I picked up tailoring and made some linen cloaks. Now you've got some items that can't be duplicated, because your name is tacked onto them because you created it. (Not that anyone would probably care enough to try and cheat you, but having coupons is just cool.)
Now you've got a coupon you can hand out. You can give them to customers you've just trained, and tell them it's 100g off for whoever uses it, so they can give it to a friend or a guildmate.
I've also done referral fees with some success. For a while I was actually paying out 125g. The idea being that other people would do your word of mouth advertising for you and bring you customers, and you'd send them a little kickback. 125g might have been a little high. I like the coupon idea, with 100g off, and 50g for the referrer. That seemed to work well.
I tried a little direct mail, too. I wrote up an add, and then sent that to like 10 random people I saw standing around in SW, along with a coupon. That actually didn't work, too well. I only had one person use it. He actually used the coupon, though, which I thought was awesome. He's also the guy who lent me his guild bank.
Azaguth, April 2009:
AWESOME document Kreight. I read through it all, and I must say, I suddenly feel stupid for not having come up with something like this myself.
The only thing that held me back from coming up with something like this is the knowledge that many people are wary of "package deals" that require more than one secure trade, at least from my understanding. But of course, you blew that theory out of the water.
All I can say is, wow. Nice.
el, April 2009:
It's a very interesting idea - thanks for the write-up. Packaging up everything (including advice) one needs to power-level a profession has a lot of potential.
As a footnote, fish-to-order was done by Elite Fish Vendor, although Blizzard didn't seem to like the idea of that being advertised.
Aqusia, May 2009:
The only thing I did not see in your guide is a shopping list! So I made one for Alliance for the Cooking 1-300 portion.
Cooking 1-300 Kit Shopping List
Ironforge, Dun Morogh, Eastern Kingdoms
Recipes
Tansy Puddlefizz, Forlorn Cavern
o Longjaw Mud Snapper
o Rockscale Cod
o Mithril Head TroutFish
o 75 Raw Longjaw Mud Snappers
o 20 Raw Brilliant Smallfish
o 70 Raw Bristle Whisker CatfishStormwind, Elwynn Forest, Eastern Kingdoms
Recipes
Catherine Leland, Canals, Dock Near Trade District
o Brilliant Smallfish
o Bristle Whisker Catfish
Kendor Kabonka, Old Town, Upstairs of Pig & Whistle Tavern
o Curiously Tasty OmeletBooty Bay, Stranglethorn Vale, Eastern Kingdoms
Fish
o 15 Raw Rockscale Cod
o 45 Raw Mithril Head Trout
o 25 Raw Spotted YellowtailsMeat
Any Raptor
o 15 Raptor EggsSteamwheedle Port, Tanaris, Kalimdor
Recipes
Gikkix
o Spotted Yellowtail
o Poached Sunscale SalmonBay of Storms, Azshara, Kalimdor
Fish
o 25 Raw Sunscale Salmon
o 25 Darkclaw LobsterFeathermoon Stronghold, Feralas, Kalimdor
Recipes
Vivianna
o Lobster Stew
Northrend Fishing for Profit
el, December 2008:
I've done a few updates to the valuable fish chapter, to add price links to Wowecon and Allakhazam. No prices are shown, since precise prices were felt to be misleading. Prices are also still likely to change a lot: Ingredients becoming more common, evolving demands of raiders (such as a gradual shift away from Hit buffs as gear becomes better), and adjustment by players to WotLK inflation (most obvious in the level 80 daily quest income).
I thought it would be interesting to compare prices of catches (often cooked).
Prices are for single items (although most items will be sold in stacks of 5 or 20). Prices are based on the median auction house price as listed on Allakhazam. The list is split between items that do, and do not, require Northern Spices. Items shown "**" are gained from fishing, but hard to farm by fishing.
Un-Spiced
Baked Manta Ray - 2g
Dalaran Clam Chowder** - 5g
Eternal Water** - 24g
Grilled Sculpin - 2.5g
Pickled Fangtooth - 1.5g
Poached Nettlefish - 3g
Pygmy Suckerfish - 10g
Savory Deviate Delight - 1g
Slippery Eel - 1g
Smoked Salmon - 2gSpiced
Blackened Dragonfin - 9g
Cuttlesteak - 4.5g
Dragonfin Filet - 6g
Firecracker Salmon - 7g
Imperial Manta Steak - 5g
Poached Northern Sculpin - 7.5g
Snapper Extreme - 5g
Spicy Blue Nettlefish - 6.5g
Spicy Fried Herring - 4gOverall, Spiced food adds a 3-4g premium. Allakhazam gives a median price for Northern Spices of 11g. The implication is that currently it is most profitable to do the cooking daily and sell all the Northern Spices you can muster. I suspect that will adjust once most cooks are at 450 skill, and demand for spices reflects demand for the best buff food; rather than demand to try and reach 450 cooking.
Dragonfin dishes sell well, but obviously all need Northern Spices, so you cannot make a huge amount of money here.
Among the non-spiced food, Nettlefish seem to be the most profitable catch. That could simply be because those are found in a zone that many players have not reached yet and/or is not an obvious zone to fish in when training or trying to catch a Dark Herring.
Pools or Not?
The best-selling single catch remains the Pygmy Suckerfish, at around 10g each. That poses an interesting problem: Do you fish pools or not? By fishing pools you gain no suckerfish, but you tend to gain more buff food.
Let's try some simplistic analysis:
Start with Smoked Salmon/Pickled Fangtooth example. From 100 catches in inland open water, you'll gain about 22 of each fish you want, and 10 suckerfish. On average. That's about 33+44+100 = 177g per 100 catches. Roughly 350g per hour from open water.
Pools give a 90% catch of your choosen fish, with no suckerfish. Assumimg an equal number of Salmon and Herring pool, that's roughly 68+90 = 158g per 100 catches. And pool fishing takes more time, because you need to move. You have a better chance of crates or Crystalized Water, but even if we assume 24g per 100 catches (equivalent of 10 Crystalized Water), that doesn't make pools more profitable than open water.
But I started with the cheapest fish! The same analysis of Nettlefish comes out slightly different: A 30% catch from open water, plus suckerfish, gives 90+100 = 190g per 100 catches from open water. Pools (90% Nettlefish) give 270g per 100 catches. Given the proximity of pool spawns in the Basin, pool fishing is probably favorable to open water.
If you are primarily fishing to make spiced food, the value of suckerfish becomes far less important.
I also ignored Snapper Extreme in the first example: In small volumes, the "trash fish" can make money. So in the Salmon/Herring case, we would also gain about 18 Snapper Extreme (55 fish), generating an extra 90g per 100 catches.... but only if we could gain about 40 Northern Spices per hour of fish, which isn't practical if you fish for more than 20-30 minutes per day on average.
No easy answers.
I'm interested in any further thoughts. Both the balance between pool and open water fishing or profit; and any observations on what is actually selling - particularly anything not considered here so far. Oh, and are raw fish selling? Specifically for producing feasts.
Kahless, December 2008:
During my time fishing for the OTDGA I made ~3kg selling Pygmy Suckerfish and RAW Herring, Salmon and Bonescale.
I gave away to guildmates more Herring and Bonescale than I've sold.I didn't research it but my instinct was that the raw fish would sell better since people can use it to level cooking. By sell better I mean quicker, not for more money.
Suckerfish are selling on my server for 5-6g ea. Raw Herring and Salmon ~1gea and Raw Bonescale ~50s eaNorthern Spices are selling for ~7-10g ea. I'm not sure using them to cook fish will give you a profit over the raw spice.
Zahana, December 2008:
I haven't really looked into it, but I was looking to try and pick up some Dragonfin from the AH the other night and stacks were listed at like 150 gold.
Christhina, December 2008:
El,
Raw fish certainly are selling! I decided to visit the Auction House this weekend, and got a shock.
I have always taken the farming of one's own stat food for granted - both in the responsibility of doing so, and the capability to do so, especially by fishing.
It seems, perhaps, that not everyone does, though! I noticed prices for the raw fish, which were quite high, and, being the hoarder that I am, I always keep too much. So, I decided to list some to see how it went.
Pygmy Suckerfish, I'd already turned into oil on my alchemist, but these sold well, as did Glacial Salmon. Almost to the point where I wished I had more for sale - I'm guessing the caster types are the main buyers of this. Fangtooth Herring was not as popular, but still sold at prices I was very happy to part with. Having seen these results (after relogging to my banker late last night), I listed today some cooked fish I felt I had too much of, but don't know how they have sold yet.
But, assuredly, raw fish sells (at least on my realm). I suspect we will find some types of fish that always will sell, even when the price settles back a bit (Golden Darter, anyone?). It'll take time to find what those fish are, and what they'll sell for, as things settle down early next yer. Though, I will predict, Glacial Salmon will always be among them, and will be well priced due to supply/demand shortages.
The stand out of the market, and most interesting question to my mind revolves aroung Pygmy Suckerfish/Pygmy Oil. In the most humblest of opinions I hold, this is ridiculously overvalued on the AH at the moment (Oil @ 7g per on my realm). Despite its use in Guru's Elixir (sought after by all melee DPS), I don't expect the market to bear this price for much longer, simply because it is far too easy to obtain comparative to the current price. I would expect this price to decline in the future, but, if, for some quirk of economics, it doesn't, these will be an incredible income generator for any fisherman or fisherwoman with a little spare time on their hands.
Tsathoggua, December 2008:
Pygmy Oil sells, I suspect, not based on its use as an ingredient in other recipes, but rather like Deviate Fish Delight, for its side-effects. It's not an essential, but rather a cosmetic item. As such, I would expect the price to be -lower- whilst a heavy push is on leveling and raiding, and for the price to only go -up- in a year or so.
Marlburo, December 2008:
I've only sold raw fish thus far, but I can say on my server (lightninghoof) they sell all day long for 35g bid 40g buyout. Mainly been doing salmon and nettlefish. I put up about 5-12 stacks a day and haven't had any unsold. I feel like people like to have the opition to spice their own. I will probably end up hording all my spices for myself until there is a new way to aquire them outside the cooking daily.
Noodleguitar, December 2008:
Wish the fish were worth that much on my server :P
Some prices I could sell my fish for:
Snapper Extreme for 2g25s
Pygmy Suckerfish for 1g50s - 3g
Baked Manta Ray for 1g40sPeter, December 2008:
The best fish to sell are
Poached Nettlefish .. the alternative is worm meat which is difficult to farm
i'm selling these at 4.7g EACH
Snapper Extreme, 40 hit rating, there is no comparable food, selling these 7g each
Rhinolicious Wyrmsteak, 40 expertise, for tanksnorthern spices are down to 4.7 on my server
fish are very cheap to post on ah, so don't under value your food, our food gives 40stm instead of 30, but don't go into competition with cooked meat
The alternative to Glacial Salmon is Shoveltusk Steak and the alternative to Grilled Sculpin is Mammoth Meal, both meats are very easy to farm and sell, so i don't go after them or their fishing alternatives at all.
check your market and when you see a shortage of food in a particular area, post your stock up.
60AP
Grilled Sculpin
Shoveltusk Steak30 Crit
Poached Nettlefish
Wyrmmeat35sp
Glacial Salmon
Shoveltusk Steak12mp5
Rhino Dogs
Pickled Fangtooth40hit
Snapper ExtremeChipper, May 2010:
I'd be curious to see what the opinons are now on the best selling fish related items are currently. It's been about a year and some items have changed prices dramatically. I still see Dragonfin items selling well. What items do most of you sell now and what has changed the most since WotLK came out over a year ago?
Looks like Northern Spices prices have dropped quite a bit. WowEcon has them around 65 silver each on average.
I wonder if Cataclysm will have it's own cooking spice and if fishing will be even more important to the economy. I have a feeling that yes, fishing will only grow in popularity. I've heard rumor that the way they render water is changing. It might be even more realistic in Cataclysm. Who knows? Perhaps we'll even get our own fishing boats so that we won't need walk on water potions anymore. How cool would that be? You could get a basic slow boat and then work your way up to bigger and better goblin/gnome motors on them. Boats could be the new mount! (I'd like a speedy hovercraft personally)
Also, I wonder if underwater fishing will be possible with Cataclysm. At least perhaps spearfishing underwater would work if not net fishing too. Lots of possibilities.
el, May 2010:
Personally, I've noticed a big decline in sales of MP5 (Spicy Fried Herring) and Spirit (Cuttlesteak) food - which makes sense, because mana became near-infinite towards the end of WotLK. Dragonfin and Fish Feast still sell reasonably well. However, we're now in the pre-next-expansion phase, when raiding slows down.
On Cataclysm: Previous expansions made everything before worthless. More radical changes to the way fish are caught were suggested at BlizzCon. But, there was also similar talk before WotLK. Improved water is certainly coming (it can be seen in some of the official preview screenshots).
Trokair, May 2010:
el wrote:
Improved water is certainly coming (it can be seen in some of the official preview screenshots).
I'd be curious to see some of these... any idea where you can point us to check out the new water, etc?
I did a google search for Cataclysm screen shots and came up with this image below, which shows that the water now seems reflective (you can see the buildings reflecting in the water, appears to be Astranaar) and also in the bottom-left corner of the image you can see a school of fish!
http://www.systemshock.co.za/images/reviews/screenshots/world_of_warcraft_cataclysm/ss/world_of_warcraft_cataclysm_screen_01.jpg
Would love to see more water images for Cata...
