Cooking, Fishing and Archaeology

Unlike the primary Professions, which are limited to two per character, secondary professions have no limit: any character can learn them no matter which primary professions it chose. Because there is no limit, they also cannot be unlearned. They give useful resources and relaxing side activities.

Cooks turn meat, fish, spices and other ingredients into food. Most food restores health while you eat, and many dishes also give the Well Fed buff, a temporary bonus to a stat such as versatility, mastery or haste. Group meals called feasts can be shared by several players, and these high-level food buffs matter most in end-game content.

• You need a recipe, the ingredients and a heat source: a cooking fire, campfire, brazier or fireplace, but not a forge. Cooks can light their own fire with Cooking Fire.
• Recipes come from trainers, loot, vendors and quest rewards. Most cooking quests are daily quests that often reward new recipes.
• Cooking has no character level requirement for its skill levels, and each expansion has its own skill track (Midnight: 1-100). Pandaren get +5 Cooking skill from the racial trait Gourmand.
• Fishing is the best partner for Cooking because it supplies so many ingredients.

Fishers catch fish and other items from water (and even lava). Face a deep enough body of water, cast your line and a bobber appears; you channel for up to 21 seconds, and when the bobber splashes you must click it quickly to land the catch. A fishing pole is optional since patch 5.0.4, but better poles, lures, hats and other gear add fishing skill. You can fish standing, sitting or lying down, but not while swimming.

• Skill is tracked per region: learn each region's skill from a local fishing trainer, then raise it by fishing there. If your skill is too low for the area you mostly catch junk. Since patch 3.1.0 there is no minimum skill to fish anywhere and fish can no longer get away.
• Fishing pools come in two kinds: schools of fish (usually about five fish of one type) and floating debris with small chests. Find Fish tracks both, and they respawn like other nodes.
• Catches include raw fish for Cooking and hunter pets, fish used in Alchemy, containers, elemental materials, trophy fish, and rare prizes such as Mounts, Riding and Skyriding, toys and pets. Some fish only bite at certain times of day or seasons.
• Since Battle for Azeroth, the Fishing Journal records fish, what they are used for and where to catch them.

Archaeology arrived with Cataclysm; later expansions added new sites, and its last update came in Battle for Azeroth. It can only be learned from level 20, and it gives the Survey ability. Archaeologists search dig sites marked on the map, collect fragments of an ancient culture (dwarf, troll, night elf, fossil and more) and solve artifacts from them. Most artifacts are flavor items you can sell, but rare ones can be Mounts, Riding and Skyriding, pets, toys or gear.

• There are always four dig sites per continent. Sites are personal, so other players never compete with you. Each site gives a set number of finds (six, or nine in the Broken Isles, Kul Tiras and Zandalar), then moves elsewhere. There are no dig sites in the Shadowlands.
• Survey places a small telescope that points toward the find. Its light shows the distance: red is far, yellow is close, green is very close.
• Each find gives five to nine fragments of one culture (dwarves get one extra from the racial trait Explorer). You work on one artifact per culture at a time; leftover fragments carry over to the next project.
• Unlike other professions, Archaeology has one skill track from 1 to 950. Each collection gives 1 point, a common artifact 5 and a rare artifact 15. Rare gear can be solved only once per character.