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