The Plaguereaver is a Stage 8 rod in Fisch with a mastery track attached to it, added alongside the Plaguecleaver skin. Its three quests are short on paper but long in practice, since two of them are pure volume grinds tied to the rod’s own passives.
Quick answer: Reach level 850, then finish all three mastery quests with the Plaguereaver equipped — one perfect catch on a Toxic Guardian, 400 Plagued fish, and 25,000 contributed Disturbance.
Requirements before Plaguereaver mastery unlocks
Two gates sit in front of the mastery track. You need the rod itself, and you need the character level.
- Own the Plaguereaver, obtained from the Plagued Reaper questline in Toxic Grove.
- Be level 650 to progress the obtainment questline past the first stage, and pay 13,750,000 C$ at the end.
- Reach level 850, the starting level requirement for the mastery quests.
- Have the Plaguereaver equipped for every catch that counts toward a quest.
The mastery quests live in the Fishing Rods section of the bestiary menu. Open the Plaguereaver entry there to see all three objectives and their live progress counters.
Progress only tracks with the Plaguereaver in hand. Swapping to a faster rod for a boss or a mutation hunt does nothing for these counters.
All three Plaguereaver mastery quests and rewards
| Quest | Requirement | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Master of the Garden | Perfect Catch 1 Toxic Guardian | +25% Lure Speed, +2 Disturbance, +50 Durability |
| The Plague | Catch 400 Plagued fish | Plague Doctor title |
| A Great Disturbance | Contribute 25,000 Disturbance | Wings of Wrath glider |
| Grand Reward | Complete all three quests | Plaguecleaver skin |
Every requirement above assumes the Plaguereaver is the rod doing the work. The Grand Reward has no separate objective — it pops the moment the last of the three clears.
Master of the Garden: Perfect Catch a Toxic Guardian
This is the one quest that can be done in a single successful attempt, and it is the one worth doing first because its reward directly fixes the rod’s weakest stat. The Plaguereaver sits at 15% Lure Speed out of the box, so the +25% bump makes the two grind quests behind it noticeably less painful.
The Plaguereaver helps more than most rods here. It grants +40% Progress at the start of the minigame and carries +75% Progress Speed, plus a 2% chance per fish movement to slash for an extra 20% progress and stun the fish for five seconds.
The Plague: Catch 400 Plagued fish
You do not need special bait, a totem, or a specific location for this one. The Plaguereaver applies the Plagued mutation itself, at a 15% chance per catch, at a 10× value multiplier. That works out to roughly one Plagued fish every seven catches on average, so plan for somewhere in the region of 2,500 to 3,000 total catches.
Because the mutation comes from the rod and not the fish, the fastest approach is simply the fastest fishing spot you have access to. Raw catch throughput is the only variable that matters. The rod’s infinite weight capacity and 150 Durability mean you can sit in Lava or Noxious Fluid pools without swapping out, if those spots turn catches around quicker for you.
Enchanting for Lure Speed pays off more than anything else during this grind. Hasty gives a large Lure Speed increase, which shortens the wait between bites.
Clearing 400 Plagued catches awards the Plague Doctor title, which you can equip from your title list once the quest ticks over.
A Great Disturbance: Contribute 25,000 Disturbance
Disturbance accumulates while you fish with the Plaguereaver equipped. The base rod carries a Disturbance value of +5, and Master of the Garden raises that by another +2 once it is complete — another reason to finish the Toxic Guardian quest before starting this one.
Enchantments stack on top. Ferocious and Vicious are the pairing that pushes Disturbance highest, with Hunter as the fallback when Exalted Relic is not on hand. Since this quest and The Plague both reward time spent fishing with the same rod, they run down together — set up for Disturbance, fish normally, and both counters climb.
Hitting 25,000 contributed Disturbance hands over the Wings of Wrath, a glider that shows up in your accessory inventory.
How to confirm mastery is complete and equip Plaguecleaver
Open the Fishing Rods menu and look at the Plaguereaver’s mastery panel. All three quests should read as complete, and the Grand Reward entry should no longer be locked.
Plaguecleaver then appears in the rod’s skin list alongside the purchasable and code-based options. Select it there to apply it. The skin also swaps the rod’s equipped music, so an audio change is a reliable second confirmation that it took effect.
Worth keeping in mind for afterwards: the +2 Disturbance and +50 Durability from Master of the Garden are permanent stat gains on the rod, and the Control stat caps out at 0.6 no matter what you stack on top. Once the mastery is done, the Plaguereaver is a meaningfully better grinding tool than the one you started with.
