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Comment by 692839

Not only has he stayed in the game throughout all the expansions, appeared in one of the Caverns of time instances, kept on fishing at the darkmoon faire (looking passed the creepy staring eyeball), chilled in the Duskwallow Marsh for years...

but he has reigned the most supreme fisherman of all Warcraft history for decades.

Now he gets his own faction! For petes sake this man has it all!

Comment by HelloKitty

6.0.3 WoD Update: There is now a faster and more-relevant way to get this. Read my comment just below for how you can obtain this achievement in WoD!

-------- MoP content below --------

I'll summarize what I know about obtaining this achievement(/rewards) as well as all useful tips I've come up with thusfar. These tips will include information that will help you obtain credit toward Glorious! and Is Another Man's Treasure, if you are interested in either of those!

To raise your rep with Nat Pagle, there are three rare fish you can catch.

Flying Tiger Gourami
You can fish this fish up in any inland water that doesn't have Spinefish. I'd recommend you do your Cloud Serpent dailies before fishing this, as I have (once) found the flying tiger gourami while fishing up my Sugar Minnows.

If you plan on making your raids' feasts (Pandaren Banquet/Great Pandaren Banquet), you will eventually need a lot of Jewel Danio. Jewel Danio schools are plentiful in the Vale, and owning a Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm would greatly help. I have one, and I'd highly recommend it! For that reason, I'd recommend fishing near where Ghostly Pandaren Fisherman spawns. That is where I fished for mine. I also posted some helpful tricks on that page about obtaining one, and can personally confirm he DOES spawn after an unscheduled server restart.

There are MANY rares and rare items that you can fish near while you go for this. So many that I won't bother to list them. Nearly all rares in Jade Forest, Valley of the Four Winds, and Krasarang spawn near an inland pool, for example.

Otherwise, my preferred farming spot: Arboretum (Jade Forest) or Dojani River (Krasarang)
Reason: Jade Lungfish/Redbelly Mandarin vs Krasarang Paddlefish/Emperor Salmon, which do you need more?

Mimic Octopus
You can fish these up anywhere that you can catch Reef Octopus, so basically any coastal water.

I guess there are some neat things you can farm/camp for when doing this. If you fish the waters in southern Krasarang you can camp for both Spriggin and Barrel of Banana Infused Rum while you fish. You could alternatively fish near Pandaren Fishing Spear in Krasarang. Over in Dread Wastes, fishing near Swarming Cleaver of Ka'roz or Dissector's Staff of Mutation could also work. Near Bloodsoaked Chitin Fragment would be fine if you don't mind fishing inside the grotto, or just fishing aboveground for it can lend itself to checking 1-2x (beginning/end) to see if it's respawned, and is also near Blade of the Poisoned Mind, so you can check that a few times as well. Another great thing about fishing here is its proximity to other rare mobs (Ai-Li Skymirror, Dak the Breaker, Gar'lok) and rare items (Amber Encased Necklace, Malik's Stalwart Spear) in the zone, as well as its nearness to one of the Spinefish Alpha locations I am about to mention.

My preferred farming spot: Angler's Wharf.
Reason: What's cooler than the Angler's Wharf? I like to fish on the dock NEAR Nat (NOT ON HIS BOAT) and think to myself "Some day, when we're BFFs, I'm gonna fish from your boat!" - it keeps the dream alive! When I hit revered with Anglers, I got my raft and now sit on my raft right next to his boat when I fish. One step closer!

Spinefish Alpha
You can catch these anywhere you can catch Spinefish.

My preferred farming spot is between that little lake slightly northeast of Ai-Li Skymirror (her drop is Ai-Li's Skymirror, like a shimmery potion of illusion, very cool minus the CD!) and Kun-Lai Summit's Inkgill Mere (northern part, nearest the spawn of Zai the Outcast -- the item he drops works like the old "Farsight" skill and is AWESOME). They're both worth owning, and farming while you fish? A++

Once you have both, it's really up to you. I find that Kun-Lai tends to have WAY less ganking, but the spot in Dread Wastes is a real gem due to its proximity to both Dak the Breaker and the northern spawns of Gar'lok -- the latter of which drops a very nice item (Eternal Warrior's Sigil) -- as well as Amber Encased Necklace and, to a lesser extent, Malik's Stalwart Spear.

To the best of my knowledge, these are each 1% chances to drop. I've heard that you can only catch them in open waters, but a few people (who were downvoted significantly for some reason?) claimed they caught the flying tiger gourami in pools. I've personally caught them all exclusively in open water. In addition, I've noticed that they do not REPLACE the fish you catch, but, rather, ADD to it. I find this information useful: I watch TV or whatever while I fish with the volume up. I only look at the game to do the cast and get my mouse over the fishing icon. I then watch TV until I hear a splash. I then right click. If I hear one 'thump' (ie, one fish entering my bag) I just keep fishing as normal. If I hear 2, I look back (because I got the rare!). Helps ease the tedium sometimes (I've typed this entire thing up while just fishing ONE of the fish, and had to refresh my lure THREE TIMES in the process - it can take a while!).

Each of these fish begins their own respective quests, which can only be completed once per day. However, the fish themselves can be caught multiple times per day (catch -> turn in -> catch). Due to their unique flag, you cannot catch multiple to stock up more than one day in advance.

Each turn-in rewards 500 rep (550 with guild perk, more for humans obviously) with Nat (and 350 (385) for Anglers, but who cares? You'll exalt them FAR before Nat!). To get from 0/8400 Stranger to 999/1k BFF with Nat, you'll need 42999 rep (same as normal factions, actually, though broken up differently!). Turning in all 3 of these a day would net you 1500-1650+ rep (depending on guild perk/human racial).

Turning in all three every day, it will take you 25-30 days (depending on what perks you have and such). For the majority of us (guild perk, no human perk), it comes out to 27 days + 1 fish on the 28th, I believe.

Getting exalted with him nets you both Nat's Hat (which is a great upgrade over Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat if you can handle the hit in spirit) and Nat's Fishing Chair (sent to you by mail). "Revered" (4200/8400 Buddy and higher) with him allows you to purchase Nat's Fishing Journal. The book can be mailed to alts and costs about 1k a piece (lowered by rep/guild perks to 700g) and is re-usable. Thus, for 12 tomes (8400g) you could level an alts fishing all the way from 1-600.

Another thing worth noting: Fishing for the Spine Alpha is harder because it is a higher level area and requires a higher level of fishing. Even with my (buffed) lv712 fishing, I still fail around 50% of the time. I'd suggest not bothering with it until you approach lv600 fishing, and get the best lure you can (don't be lazy like me and use your +75 from your hat!). Between its worthless drops and high chance of failure, this one requires the most patience by far. I've found that even with lv802 fishing, I STILL get failures (over 50% still, it's brutal). I have also noticed that you can catch the spinefish alpha even when getting a failed catch. MOST of my spinefish alpha loots involve getting a junk catch + the alpha

Comment by Pwuebear

It should actually say "Reach Best Friend status with Nat Pagle". There is also a slight descrepency in the way friendship works with him compared to The Tillers, as you do not become his acquintance, but rather his pal at the second level. Everything else works pretty similar.

During Hallow's End, you can also gain a small boost to the friendship gain (10%), by picking up the Wickermen's buff from the bonfire outside your capital city (2 hour duration, and also works for all your other dailies) Unburdened. With guild perks this will net you 600 friendship per fish you turn in.

Comment by Vizime

Got this achievement today (24/10/12) on my Human Paladin. I could have gotten it a few days early, without slacking three days and with getting halloween buff (think it would have saved me one day in total). Thing is with this reputation, its a big grind and you really need to put time in this achievement. Some days it will take you 1 hour, some days even 4 hours (yes, really..). After that I still had to do my dailys, raiding and my personal stuff. I must say this has been a nice journey, but I am glad it's over.

Some things that are good to know:

- I fished my fish every time at Pearlvin Village (Jade Forest) for the Flying Tiger Gourami, at Anglers Wharf (Krasarang Wilds) for Mimic Octopus and Binan Village (Kun-Lai Summit) for Spinefish Alpha.
- You can fish the green fish while being in a raid (nice when waiting for Galleon).
- If you handed in all three fish you can fish them up again, but you can only hand them in once a day.
- You will receive a letter from Nat Pagle when you hit exalted with him saying:

Hey There Angler!

I have really enjoyed building our friendship these past
few weeks out at Angler's Wharf. I still can't believe
how many rare catches you found and brought back for
me to check out!

I know you have been eyeing my fishing chair this whole
time, so I decided to make you one of your own for all
your hard work. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Your Pal,

Nat Pagle

- As the letter says you will get Nat's Fishing Chair, which is in the same mail as the letter, which is absolutely amazing!
- And as last you will get an awesome Nat's Hat!

Comment by Mahoraba

For those of you Exalted with Nat, does his rep count twords an Exalted reputation? (For the 50, 60 or 70 Exalted Reps gained.) One would think that since Tillers people do not that Nat probably does not but considering the difficulty difference between Nat exalted and tillers npc exalted, I'd think that It has a chance to count.

Comment by 1049997

Got the achievement yesterday 26-10-2012 on Earthen Ring-EU.

As far as I could tell it did not count towards my 70 exalted reputations achievement, just like the Farmers.

Happy fishing, it was an amazingly frustrating grind, but great for cooking mats! ;)

Comment by hellreiser

There are 6 levels of friendship for Nat Pagle. They are:

Stranger
Pal
Buddy
Friend
Good Friend
Best Friend

To progress through each level, you need to obtain 8,400 friendship (except for Best Friend, which will stop at 999/999, like exalted reputations). So in total, you will need to gather 42,000 friendship with Nat Pagle before reaching Best Friend.

Comment by Furydeath

This rep is almost worst then bloodsail with all the RNG. There is always one fish that just will NOT show up.

Comment by 964622

Thanks for explaining the process - for a new WoW player this is very helpful and less stressful & frustration. My appreciation.

Comment by MrAnime86

In my opinion, Blizzard wasted a perfectly good opportunity by not naming this achievement 'A Fisherman's Friend'

Comment by damekage

From start to finish it will take you exactly 22 days of doing all three dailies from Flying Tiger Gourami, Mimic Octopus, and of course Spinefish Alpha. Each of them gives 660 reputation with the guild bonus now as well as having the chance to fish them up increased. As of posting this it typically takes me half an hour to get all three fish including my travel time.

Comment by TrueShale

For those (like me) who considered this achievement a bit too hard before even starting, don't be disheartened by the amount of "rare" fish you have to catch.
With a catch rate of ~4% for each of the special fish, you can reasonably expect to do a full run (catch all 3 special fish and hand in the quests) on any day in about 20-25 mins.

4% catch rate means that after 17 successful fish catches you reach 50% chance of failing to catch the special fish you need. Each 17 successful fish catches after that halve the chance of failure. So on average it should take about 17 fish catches for each special fish (excluding cases of good luck or bad luck streaks).

Note that only casts where you catch fish have a chance of having the special fish. Casts where you catch junk do not count. For this reason Spinefish Alpha is the hardest one to catch since lakes where it is catchable have an unavoidable chance of getting junk. At 710 fishing skill junk rate for me was around 50%, I'll assume this is the case for any 600+ skill level. This means you will have to cast roughly twice as many times to get the same chance at Spinefish Alpha.

With ~17 casts for Flying Tiger Gourami and Mimic Octopus and ~34 casts for Spinefish Alpha, total comes in at 68 casts. At ~11s per cast, that's 748s or 12m28s (rough estimate). Add in time for looting casts, re-casting and flying between the 3 fishing spots + handing in quests.

Depending on your character you will get 1800-2160 reputation for each full run which means you can complete the achievement in in 20-24 days.

Comment by schnizol

I reached exalted with the Anglers, and I'm still far away from being best friends with Nat ('honored' with him right now according to my armory page). Anyway, I give up. It's not worth doing, really... The Anglers had the Water Strider which was a great reward, but sorry, Nat, we won't be best buddies!

Comment by hjp426

Will this still be available in WoD, with having Nat Pagle as a follower in your Garrison and all?

Comment by HelloKitty

Guess who's back for WoD!

Our buddy, Nat, is back as a follower in our garrisons! Better yet, our hard-earned MoP reputation will still matter!

Sure, there's a catch-up mechanic for others, but we still get there first. And they can finally bask in the glory of being buddies with Nat.

That said, I'm going to give you the down-low on getting BFFs with Nat in WoD! Let's begin!

Prereqs: you need to have a level 2 Fishing Shack and a level 3 Garrison, which requires you to be level 100 minimum.

You begin your WoD journey with Nat by working towards Draenor Angler, which requires you to catch 100x of every type of Enormous-fish in WoD except the Crescent Saberfish (as it's basically the Golden Carp of the expansion). There's a coastal one + an inland one in every zone. This takes approximately 7 hours to do in total, starting from level 600 Fishing with roughly +200 skill in buffs, fishing in open water.

Once you've unlocked that achievement, you can go ahead and buy Fishing Shack, Level 3 and upgrade your Fishing Shack to level 3. After its completion, it opens up a new quest: Luring Nat (H). You basically fish up the quest item, talk to Nat in the future (ie, in Pandaria, at the Angler's Wharf) and then he shows up at your Garrison!

There, he offers a new quest: A True Draenor Angler. In this quest, he has you use his special 'bait' to attempt to fish up special quest items called Lunkers. There is one for each zone -- similar to the achievement above, except without the coastal Scorpions. Completing this quest has Nat join you as a follower! He has the 'Fishing' trait, which means you can assign him to your Fishing Shack.

When assigned to your Fishing Shack, you have a low (~1%) chance on every fishing cast to find a Lunker for that zone. These lunkers are Unique (5), so that you cannot stockpile too many at a time, but you don't have to rush back to turn them in immediately. He also occasionally appears out in the world when you're fishing and greets you! Of course, you could choose to send him out on missions as a normal follower.

When you catch a Lunker, you can turn it into Nat via a repeatable quest, which gives you 350 Reputation with the Nat Pagle Friendship! Since these lunkers have similar droprates to the rare fish in Mists (and you still need to turn in roughly 120 to go from Stranger to Best Friend), I don't expect the reputation to be too much easier to grind (minus the now-lack of daily gating!).

However! These turn-ins give a small amount of gold and a Nat's Lucky Coin. This item can be redeemed for various collectables (pets/mounts) and useful fishing tools, sold by Nat Pagle, as you can see on its page, for those who didn't find Best Friendship with Nat to be enough of its own reward.

Comment by bripeace

The trading post 20% rep buff works with Nat Pagle. Thus one lunker awards 420 rep, which means only turning in 100 lunkers to get to best friend from 0.

Comment by Daemordrath

The highmountain tauren racial can proc on lunkers, i got my first proc on one today after about 130 lunker catches! i had a bonus 37 to fishng skill alongside capped WoD fishing.

SS as proof: https://gyazo.com/8a4dd1d59dd699e6a38ab2b9b11f995d

As a side note in an hours of fishing (pools only) i average 14-15 in that time, which gives them about a 5% catch rate post BFA profession changes. In open water with max fishing buffs i was averaging about 10 an hour. Pools is best for efficiency but you dont get to half afk like you do with open water.

Comment by Hollye

Here it is. The comment about this achievement that gets to the point.

Fishing for the rare fish that turn in to quests, which you turn in to Nat Pagle at the Krasarang Anglers camp for rep which you want to build to achieve Best Friend standing with Nat Pagle. Turning in the quest(s) also increases rep with the Anglers! Note: These are Daily Quests! You can certainly go fishing again for the rares, and even pick up the "quest" but you won't be able to accept it to turn it in until your server resets. All three fish can be obtained and turned in, in one day -- and all three quests can be obtained together (meaning, you don't have to turn them in separately as they are not the same quests).

WHAT FISH & WHICH ZONES/AREAS TO FIND THEM:

Flying Tiger Gourami. Found in the inland rivers in Krasarang Wilds. Fish in the nodes for Emporer Salmon.
Flying Tiger Gourami

Mimic Octopus. Found in the coastal/ocean waters in Krasarang Wilds. Fish in the nodes for Reef Octopus.
Mimic Octopus

Spinefish Summit. Found in the cove at Binan Village in Kun Lai Summit, and at the lake north of Shado-Pan Fallback. Fish in the nodes for Spinefish.
Spinefish Alpha

Links

Learning from the Best

Become best friends with Nat Pagle.

Criteria

	Criteria Type 46 Id 1358 (Exalted)

Guides

Blizzard and Community References in WoW Breke's Bait Shack: Your One Stop Shop for Fishing Achievements! UPDATED for Battle for Azeroth! Guide to the Garrison Fishing Shack

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