Fishin' for Rares: Krakkanon

Fishing, it's not something I usually talk about on my blog. Mainly because it's never had anything specifically to do with rares (the silver dragon kind) until just recently. Well, patch 5.2 sure added a lot to the fishing profession, and one of those things is a rare - that you can fish up!

Meet Krakkanon. He's a really, really BIG kraken that you can fish up in any of the new fish of the day locations throughout Pandaria.

If you haven't been keeping up on fishing since the patch, let me give you a brief overview of some of the changes. Each day there is now a new "fish of the day" location somewhere in Pandaria. The fish of the day locations contain tons and tons of very fast re-spawning pools of one kind of fish. The type of fish that the pools contain depends on what location the pools are in; and although the pools are named slightly differently, the fish caught are identical to the ones already existing in Pandaria.

The fish of the day location seems to be determined randomly, and resets at 3am PST. To find out where the fish of the day are located on any particular day, you can talk to the fishing trainer Ben of the Booming Voice. Ben is located just outside of Halfhill at 58.9, 46.9, standing beside the Gilding Stream.

When you talk to Ben, he'll tell you where the fish are migrating on that day and what type of fish can be caught there. If your lazy like myself, you can even ask him to mark the exact location on your map. When he marks your map it will show up like the little red x that you see on the left in the screenshot below.

Fish of the day location marked on World Map and Mini-Map

There are nine possible locations where the fish of the day could be. (I have marked all of them on the map below, as well as where you can find Ben of the Booming Voice.) When you get to the designated area, if you are tracking fishing pools your mini map should look something like the one in the screenshot above. You will also know your in the right spot because there will be several friendly npc's fishing there, including Salty El herself from El's Extreme Anglin'!

Possible fish of the day locations. Click map to Enlarge.

There will literally be more pools there than you can fish, and they will keep re-spawning at an accelerated rate. Fishing these pools is a nice fast way to stock up on fish you may be needing, and it's been reported that even the coveted Sea Turtle mount can be fished out of them! If you don't have a water-walking ability, I highly recommend getting the Angler's Fishing Raft to easily move between pools. Also, don't forget to use your Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm if you have it, as it will allow you to stock up on those fish even faster! (More info on where to find the charm and other treasures in this post: Lost and Found Achievement: Where to Find Lost Treasures in Pandaria.)

Once in a while a larger than average size pool will spawn in, and this pool will have a different name than the smaller ones around it. In the screenshot below, we had been fishing from Sha-Touched Spinefish pools until this Large Pool of Sha-Touched Spinefish appeared. The large pools always contain the same type of fish as the other pools around it, however it will contain many more - we fished this pool for about 10 minutes before we finally got to the bottom of it.

Fishing a Large Pool for Krakkanon

When the large pool has finally been fished clean, a rare elite kraken named "Krakkanon" will appear. This rare has a massive health pool of about 20 Million hp. He will not automatically aggro when he spawns in, and he cannot be "tapped" by a single person. Any angler in the area who participates in killing him will be able to share in the reward.

Krakkanon has a very large hit-box, and he only uses two abilities - neither hit very hard. His two abilities are called Gurrggggle and Shpshhh. They are both dealt as frost damage. The most annoying this he does is a knock-back that will toss you into the air in a big spray of water, but it can be avoided. If you see a small pool of water forming under you, you will have a couple of seconds to move out of it before it errupts and tosses you into the air. He should be soloable by just about any class depending on your gear. (The only time I could really see this fight being difficult would be if it continued on for a very long time and he slowly whittled your health down.)

Once defeated, Krakkanon always seems to drop a 20-stack of the type of fish that spawn in that current location. He has a high chance to drop one of the "rare-catch" uncommon quality fish like the Flying Tiger Gourami, which starts a quest that can be handed in to Nat Pagle to increase your reputation with him. Krakkanon also has a pretty decent chance to drop Nat's Fishing Journal, a bind on account item that can be used to raise fishing on your alts. Until you reach revered with Nat pagle, this is the only way to acquire this item, and it will save you a lot of gold if you were planning on purchasing it. If he drops any of these items, anyone who attacked him will all get the same loot.

The rewards aren't super-spectacular for fishing up and killing this guy, but all in all I think it's a nice addition to the game and a great way to break up the monotonous task that fishing in wow can be.