Fishing as a Gold Source in Forever
Fishing splits into 3 separate money questions that most profession guides run together: what raising the skill actually returns, what the camp stations produce while you do something else, and whether Forever runs a contest at all. Only the first 2 have anything published behind them.
Raising the skill pays nothing by itself
Fishing is a secondary skill, so it sits beside 2 gathering trades without costing a primary slot. That is the whole of its advantage at the start. Raising it adds nothing on the Legacy side, because tradeskill points come from the non-gathering primary professions and the secondaries are left out of that list entirely. The hours do not move the experience bar either, in the same way a gathering loop does not. A character fishing through an evening ends it with stock and with the level it started on.
One beta account gives the scale. A player describes 2 characters at level 17, both with Fishing above 50, both with their profession slots worked while levelling, and 2 gold on hand between them. Nothing in that sounds like a mistake: the skill climbed, the time was spent, and the coin did not pile up, because the catch in that range sells into the same thin early market as everything else. Weigh the hours against the cost of riding training before deciding how much of the climb fishing is meant to cover.
The one perk aimed at the skill is Luremaster, written as a 50% chance of an extra fish while a lure is active. Testers on the beta report that it does not fire, and a character can hold only 16 Legacy points active at a time, so anything spent on a line that does not work is allowance taken away from one that does. Fish a stack with the lure on and a stack without it before committing points. The gear behind all of it sits with tackle, poles and lure costs.
Camp stations fish while you do something else
Camping is where fishing stops being a route. Profession objects unlock at skill 20 through an early quest, and 2 of them are built for this skill: a Fishing Rack that gives uncommon fish for an hour, and a Fishing Hut that gives rare ones. Each player at a camp may set down 1 object from their own profession, and how many a camp holds is decided by the cook's kit — 3 at the first tier, 5 at the second, 10 at the third.
Read as income, a station is production without travel. It works while the character is doing something else, which is a different shape from standing at a pool and clicking, and it competes with nobody for a spawn. What either object yields in an hour has not been published, and nothing has been said about whether fish from another player's station are available to everyone sitting at the camp, so treat both as things to check on a live character rather than as planning figures.
The saving is not free. A camp carries a bill in materials and in the skill needed to place the better objects, which we work through in what a campsite costs to run. Open water keeps its own ceiling: pools sit in the world the way nodes do, so how many players share your copy decides how many you get to work before the loop ends.
Tournaments are a format, not a confirmed event
In earlier versions of the game a recurring fishing contest ran in a single zone, with a catch target and a prize for whoever finished first. Nothing has been published for Forever about whether an event of that kind exists, where it would run, how often, or what it would hand out. Anybody quoting a schedule is describing a different client. Treat the format as something that might arrive rather than a line on a calendar.
If it does arrive, the economics read the same way they always have. Hours go in and an item comes out, so no coin is created, and the reward only touches the market at all if it can be traded. The crowd is the real cost: a contest puts every fisher in the region into the same water on the same evening, and players sharing your copy decides whether you reach a pool. Everyone who does not win takes home the ordinary catch.
That makes it the opposite of the other player-run event covered here, where gold entry fees at duel tournaments move coins from the entrants to a winner. A contest of this kind costs an evening instead of a balance, and the honest comparison is with whatever the same evening would have produced on a normal route or at a camp.
What the fish are worth once they are caught
Fish are an input rather than a product. Cooked food in Forever carries stats and a small experience bonus, which gives it 2 buyer groups at once: raiders stocking a night and everyone still climbing to 60. That demand repeats, unlike a crafted item retired by the next tier, and it is why meat and fish are underpriced in the opening weeks, when sellers list them as clutter. The levelling half of that demand is contested by sources nobody pays for, set out in free and paid experience bonuses.
Raw stacks go into the same channel as every other material, which in Forever is one market per playstyle rather than a realm market, covered in one shared sales channel. Choosing between listing raw fish and cooking first is the ordinary craft-or-sell test: the materials at today's price, the finished stack at today's price, the cut and the deposit taken off, and the time it took. Where the dishes land on a raid night sits with the weekly consumable bill.
What nobody has published, and what we are not going to estimate:
- What a Fishing Rack or a Fishing Hut yields in an hour, and how long either one lasts.
- Which recipes consume which fish, and which of them are worth cooking rather than selling raw.
- Whether a fishing contest of any kind runs in Forever.
- The auction cut, and the deposit lost on a listing that does not sell.
Questions
Does fishing cost a profession slot?
No. It is a secondary skill, so a character can carry it alongside 2 gathering trades and First Aid without giving anything up. That is the main argument for taking it at all, because the skill itself is slow and the early catch sells into the same crowded market as ore and herbs.
Does raising fishing earn Legacy points?
No. The tradeskill points land at 150, 225 and 300 in the non-gathering primary professions, and the secondaries are outside that list, so fishing at any skill value adds nothing to the account total. Points for a fisher come from class levels, PvP, dungeons, raids and exploring instead.
Is a camp station better than fishing at a pool?
Nobody can answer that with figures yet, because the yield of a Fishing Rack or a Fishing Hut per hour has not been published. What can be said is the shape: a station produces while you do something else and competes with nobody, while a pool is immediate and contested by everyone else in your copy of the world.
Will Forever run a fishing tournament?
Nothing has been announced. Earlier versions of the game ran a recurring contest in one zone, but no event, schedule or reward of that kind has been described for Forever, so it is not something to build an evening or a stockpile around until it shows up in the game.
Sources
- The camp objects by name, including the Fishing Rack and Fishing Hut, and the cook's kit tiers — Wowhead, What Camping Buffs Can You Get.
- Camping objects from skill 20, the 600+ recipes and the Legacy point thresholds — Wowhead's professions breakdown.
- The Legacy trees and the 16 points a single character can hold active — Icy Veins on the Legacy system.
What changed on this page
- 7 Oct 2026First version: fishing skill, camp stations and the unconfirmed contest kept apart from the tackle guide.