Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Fishing: Artisan and Apron

I've been fishing haphazardly over the weeks, striving to get to level 68, so I could pass the Guild Test to become an Artisan, and finally be able to use the 100K guild points I foolishly stockpiled for my Fisherman's Apron over a year ago. I had no idea it would take me so very long to get from level 48 (when I got my Waders from the guild) to level 68.

One thing that helped a lot was the discovery that I can target a level 75 fish in Al Zahbi - Kayabaligi. It seems to be identical to the Tavnazian Gobies that I'd been using for skillups, and is the only thing that bites on a minnow in Al Zahbi. The only difference is that I don't get any items in Lufaise Meadows, and I don't get any monsters in Al Zahbi, so the catch rate ends up being about the same. With fishing skillups being so random, I became convinced that the Kayabaligi capped at level 67, since I fished up 6 stacks without a skillup at all, but it's at least over 68, since I'm now at 68.3. The last bit was .5 skillups on 10 fish. Go figure.

I have typically been fishing either in Al Zahbi while waiting for Besieged, or before Dynamis and Limbus runs, though I've also made a few trips out to Lufaise Meadows, since it's so easy to get there with my Tavnazian Ring, and warp back to Al Zahbi if I need to get back quickly.

Saturday night after Dynamis, I was waiting for a group of people to do Mission 22 in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan storyline, and got the final .2 skillup that I need to hit 68. Hurray! I still had to wait a bit, so I kept fishing, and got another .3. On Sunday morning, I grabbed the Bladefish I'd caught earlier in the week, and headed to the fishing guild in Port Windurst. I passed my test, and am now an Artisan in the fishing guild. I talked to the guild representative and used 100,000 GP to get my Fisherman's Apron. Supposedly this reduces the number of items you catch, but it doesn't get rid of them completely.

There was a recent update where they had to change fishing a bit again because of the horrible infestation of fishbots, mostly in Battalia Downs, that seemed to be focusing on getting rusty picks which they would then have repaired into War Picks and NPC for a decent profit when you consider they had dozens of characters doing this. I'm convinced these changes also affected some of the fish. One night last week I took two stacks of meatballs to the cliffs in Sauromugue Champaign, hoping for skillups off of Silver Sharks (since I had such a skillup-less streak on my usual fishies). I had the hardest time catching them, and I never had that much trouble with them on the Ferry, and my skill is higher than it was the last time I did that. I talked with Zune about it (he's in the mid-60s himself), and he agreed that some fish became a lot harder last week.

New title: Coastline Caster

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2 Comments:

Blogger Paul Bauman said...

They've definitely killed the bite rate on Shall Shells in Bubu, and yet, the bots still flood the market and regularly undercut shall shells to ridiculous levels on this server (4.5 k per stack? Might as well NPC them).

SE just seems to be going about this all wrong. I think they should do a favor to people who actually strive to level Fishing for legitimate reasons and limit the catches people can actually reel in based on their skill level.

Low-level fishbots reeling in Black Sole is just an insult to the people who actually got fishing to a level where you're 'supposed' to be pulling these fish.

Somehow I don't think SE really wants to put much analysis into this aspect of the game anymore.

February 14, 2007 3:14 pm  
Blogger tsakiki said...

I agree Paul. Other crafts don't let you synth items more than so many levels above your skill, why should fishing be so different? I have theorized that skillups are better when you're catching fish closer to your level, but that's not enough. We shouldn't even have them bite our hooks if they're too high. Of course, that would mean people might actually have to target for skillups in ranges that have little in the way of money-fish, but that never stopped me. It would be nice if they created some value for some of these fish that aren't used for a single thing in the game - not even Guild Points.

February 17, 2007 8:44 am  

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