What Fishing Earns in Forever
Fishing costs no primary slot, which is the first thing to understand about what it is worth. It feeds cooking, it competes with nobody for a profession slot, and the one piece of tackle everybody asks about is reached on different terms depending on which faction you rolled.
What a fishing trip actually produces
Fishing is a secondary profession. It sits alongside 2 gathering trades rather than replacing one, so a character funding the climb with Herbalism and Mining loses nothing by carrying it. That is also the reason the raw catch does not command much: a trade everybody can have is a trade with a thin margin on the item itself. What fishing sells is volume into somebody else's recipe, not a scarce good.
The buyer behind it is cooking, and cooking changed in Forever. Crafted food gives stats and a small experience bonus, which means it is eaten by every character still levelling and bought again by raiders once the first raid week arrives. That is the rarest shape in a new economy, a sale that repeats on the same buyer, and it is set out in full with the rest of the weekly consumable bill. Fish are one of the 2 inputs feeding it, and the other one, beast meat, is reported to drop unevenly on the low-level routes. Fish are the input you can decide to go and get.
What you get is gated by skill, and the low end of the list is junk and the cheap fish that everybody else is also listing in the opening weeks. Nothing has been published about Forever's catch tables, which fish sit behind which skill value, or which recipes consume them, so the sensible version of a stockpile is one built after you have read the recipe list on a live character rather than before. Buying up stacks on the assumption that an old recipe still wants them is speculation, not supply.
The tackle is paid in slots and hours, not in gold
The entry cost of fishing is small enough that most guides skip it, and then the hours arrive anyway. A pole and the skill itself are the obvious part. The part that actually sets your output is the one nobody writes down: lures, if you use them, and the bag space the catch comes back in. A character with a full pack stops fishing exactly the way a gatherer with a full pack stops gathering, and fish stack like any other material. We have not seen vendor prices published for Forever, so we are not going to quote a figure for what any of it costs at a counter.
Camping changes the shape of this more than the tackle does. 2 of the camp objects are fishing objects: a Fishing Rack that gives uncommon fish for an hour and a Fishing Hut that gives rare ones. Both produce in the field, next to the repairs and the reagent vendor, which removes the trips that normally cap an evening. How much either yields in an hour has not been published anywhere, and the bill for keeping a camp standing belongs with what a campsite costs rather than with the profession.
The other cost is company. Fishing pools sit in the world the way herb and ore nodes do, so the number you get to work is decided by how many players share your copy rather than by how fast you cast. Open water is not contested in the same way, which is why a quiet stretch of coast with no pool on it often pays better per hour than a famous pool with 3 people circling it.
The +25 pole is not the same purchase on both factions
A fishing pole with a skill bonus on it is a shortcut bought as an item. The bonus applies while the pole is equipped, so +25 is 25 points of skill you did not grind, and it moves the catch list forward by that much from the moment you equip it. That is the whole argument for chasing one: it converts an item into hours you do not have to spend, in a profession where hours are the only input.
The asymmetry is about the route to it, not about the item. One faction reaches the pole on ground it already quests through, with its own flight points and its own guards along the way. The other reaches the same pole across territory held by the opposite side, which before riding is affordable is paid for in travel time and in the walk back after a bad pull. It is the same shape as cooking reagents split by faction: the skill cost is identical on both sides and the material cost is not.
Here is what we do not know, and it is most of the detail:
- Where the +25 pole sits in Forever, and whether it is a drop, a quest reward or a vendor item.
- Whether it binds, which decides whether the faction with the easier route can sell it to the one without.
- Whether Forever kept the Classic sources at all. 4 of the launch zones and all 9 dungeons are new content, so an old location list is describing a different game.
Until those are answered on a live character, treat the pole the way you would treat any other purchase that saves time: price it against the hours of skill-ups it removes, and against what those hours would have earned on a gathering loop. If it turns out to be tradeable, the faction gap becomes a listing rather than a journey, and the cheaper side of it is whichever auction house the easy route feeds.
Where fishing sits in a gold plan
Fishing earns no Legacy points. The tradeskill points land in non-gathering primary professions at 150, 225 and 300, and the secondary professions sit outside that list entirely, so a character who takes Fishing to the top of the skill has banked nothing the account can spend later. That makes it pure output with no compounding behind it, which is a real difference from levelling a craft you would otherwise have skipped.
One beta account puts the early bracket in scale: 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 there sounds like a mistake. At those levels the catch sells in small stacks into a market with no price history, and the money arrives later, which is the same shape every income line has in what each level bracket pays.
Our reading: fishing is a supply line rather than an income line. It is worth carrying because it costs no primary slot and because the cooking demand behind it is the one that repeats, and it is not worth substituting for a gathering route while you are still saving toward the cost of riding training. If you are choosing what to put in the slots that do cost you something, that question is answered separately in which trade actually pays.
Questions
Is fishing worth levelling for gold in Forever?
As a supply line, yes, because it costs no primary slot and cooked food in Forever carries stats and an experience bonus, so the fish have a buyer behind them for as long as people are levelling. As a standalone income line it is weak, since every character can carry the profession and the raw catch competes with everyone else's. Treat it as something you work alongside a gathering route rather than instead of one.
Does fishing earn Legacy points?
No. The tradeskill points come from non-gathering primary professions at 150, 225 and 300, and the secondary professions sit outside that list, so Fishing and First Aid move the account total by nothing. Points for a character carrying 2 gathering trades plus the secondaries come from class levels, PvP, dungeons and exploring instead.
Where is the +25 fishing pole in Forever?
Nothing has been published about where it sits in Forever, whether it is a drop, a quest reward or a vendor item, or whether it binds when picked up. The faction difference is about the route to it rather than the item itself, and since 4 of the launch zones and all 9 dungeons are new content, an old location list is not a source for this build. Check it on your own character before planning an evening around the trip.
Do fishing pools run out when other players are working them?
Pools sit in the world the way herb and ore nodes do, so how many you get to work depends on how many players share your copy of the world rather than on how fast you cast. Open water behaves differently and is not contested the same way, which is why a quiet stretch of coast often pays better than a known pool with several people already on it.
Sources
- Camping objects by name, including the Fishing Rack and the Fishing Hut — Wowhead on camping buffs.
- Cooked food, the 600+ recipes and where Legacy points come from — Wowhead's professions breakdown.
What changed on this page
- 2026-10-04First version: fishing as a supply line, what the tackle costs, and the faction split on the +25 pole.