General fishing quality of life improvements.

[Vulgarr]

I love fishing in games, absolutely adore it even if it's AFK waiting fishing, or minigame based- or active participation and a whole game unto itself. I am my little villages sole provider of all goods from rivers lakes and the sea and I've put in enough time with boats, rods and bait to get a feel for what could be a little better or different for the sake of myself and fellow anglers. So I have a list of general fishing improvements and QOL goodies and a few gripes as well.

1) The fisherman credo itself.

Sure- it's one of the first 3 credos you can get counting forager and hunter. But at a glance, especially when compared to the others- It is fairly anemic bonus wise for being such a niche and specific use credo to begin with, being one of a small handful of credos that give no skill or attribute bonus while lacking the beefier quality of life bonuses to make up for the difference IMO. Comparing it to forager alone is enough to highlight the discrepancy.

Let's do a play by play of each bonus the fisherman credo provides. Along with a 1 to 5 scale score for each.

Reduced risk for loss of fishing equipment.
This one is fine honestly, especially for lure fishing. I have no real complaints here. A good benefit overall fitting the vibe and purpose of the credo. 5/5

Better trash recovery when fishing.
This one is slightly vague- Is it a higher chance to catch random trash pool items? More of a chance of catching higher quality stuff in the global water table trash? Either way it's not entirely noticeable. I've had the majority of my nicest "River Lottery" finds be before I had the credo at all. if only for the sake of bushcraft pole gambling in your free time I would say it's 2/5 in it's current form.

Increased chance of a rare catch.
This is fine. Though a bit hard to test given the nature of fishing in general. Bushcraft pole fishing seems completely random and casting rod changes a lot of variables between lure options, hooks and lines and your survival and will scores. So I can't objectively judge this one as anything but "Seems alright." No score for this one as I don't feel comfortable not having any real data or comparison experience with it.

Increased speed when swimming.
A very "Meh" bonus considering most people would rather make paths to warp across rivers, make a dugout and wait or just avoid being caught without a boat if going across any water deeper than shallows. As swimming is a death wish in more cases than not. If anything, I would suggest turning this bonus into something more befitting the flavor and nature of a fisherman as if a fisherman has to swim for it- Something has gone terribly wrong already. Allowing faster movement rates in shallow water (IE: Either close to dry land speed or on par with it) in addition to this bonus or instead of this bonus would be more of a unique and befitting one. As being accustomed to trudging around the shallows and knowing your footing to best navigate the shorelines and ponds is more on brand and more arguably useful early on. 1/5 easily.

Increased baseline quality of fish caught. (+10%)
Acceptable but underwhelming in context, the 10% bonus is in line with other credos such as quarryman, strider, etc... But a bit underwhelming when you consider this is without any relevant skill or attribute bonus related to fishing. (IE: No + to survival nor will.) A bump to 20% or more might help this out given how low fish quality is across the board compared to a lot of other goods and foragable items. Or leave the 10% as is if there would be any attribute or skill bonus to will and or survival. If only for the fact it's an objective bonus outright I'd rate it 3/5

TL;DR All in all the fisherman credo could use a tune up I think.


Moving on!


2)Casting rod fishing and "Why can't I hold all this tackle?!"

Out of most any tool or kit related activity nothing gives me more inventory crunch than trying to go lure/casting rod fishing. With so many lures, lines and hooks to factor in and experiment with- Even if you don't have spares in case of a loss or line/hook breaking you are still carrying around quite a lot of kit on average just to go fishing, leaving you with very little space for the actual fish on average. Even with a traveler's sack, backpack and a squeaky clean inventory.

On the note of improving or quality of life smoothing this over- I realize stacking with varying quality of lures and lines and hooks is obviously out of the question. Along with the fact some "lines" are foraged goods in their own right.
HOWEVER, I think having a tacklebox item/tool that can store only lures and hooks alone would help immensely even if it were an item held in the hand or a deployable from inventory storage option. Doesn't even have to be a belt item. Alternatively- A dedicated back slot inventory expansion that is a large fish storage basket or "box" that prioritizes fish to fill it up first so having an inventory dominated by tackle is less of an issue.

As it stands in it's current incarnation, cast fishing is just not as enjoyable or productive as it could be. Whether you are field logging what fish respond to what combinations of tackle- or knowing which exact fish are best caught with an exact combination. Because either you are with a full inventory full of tackle with no room for fish- Or bare bones lure fishing with just one "set" of tackle and only fishing for one reliably caught type of fish that best responds to your preset combination. At that point the variety and experimentation part of the profession and the main draw of the casting rod just sort of goes out the window.

And now for a bit of a variety hour sort of point.

3)I'm not really feeling it now, Mr.Krabs.

Not quite related to fishing directly- but related to it's crafts and general "All things sea and beach". It's so odd fisherman as one of two in the entire game water goods related credos (The other being pearldiver)and neither gives you any perks in regards to other marine themed activities and items such as lobster pots, nets, gathering crabs, etc... Lobster pots are mostly a settlement crapshoot in regards to if they yield anything or not and it's mostly a matter of "Try this cell and wait a day" with no real ability to feel out where you might find them. If there were some method besides blind guessing it would be a bit more enjoyable and fruitful to set up coastal claims even if it involved a bit of travel.

Nets are fine as I suppose- But feel a bit boring and predictable, It's basically passive bushcraft fishing and waiting with nothing really going for it or motivating you to really set them up or check them besides a little bit of passive randomized fish gain. Having some sort of extra boon or perk or surprise or resource related to them might be nice.

Mussels and oysters are the pearl divers forte of course as they should be- But I feel like they might be more appealing in their existing forms to gather and actively use instead of horde to trade or pass off to pearl divers for the pearl lottery if they had just a few more food recipes or item crafts involving them (Something with shells maybe besides just rainbow shell?) Razor clams especially are underwhelming given their rarity and low baseline quality average and lack of use.
As it stands now, They really do sadly feel like a borderline junk item regardless of QL that is the most often dropped back into the water/thrown away if they are boiled/opened in the search for pearls, Opened oysters and boiled river mussels are some of the most common top trash items I catch- And I don't throw mine in the water trash table at all. This doesn't imply much of a worth or demand for the item so much as they become discarded lotto tickets once opened or boiled. A few improvements or additions or something to make them more appealing would be nice.

Crabs... Crabs are annoying and impractical, full stop. Most people just make expendable alts who's lives are short and miserable and filled with writhing in bed bleeding in between long walks across the beach to get them due to their nasty slow to heal wounds with no applicable first aid item to speed up the process, who's pinchy little claws nip past poor man's gloves and plate armor alike more often than not. And on top of that- They get two RNG rolls to carress your supple hearthling flesh, once when you pick them up and another when you crack them.
Okay besides the complaint everyone has- They are also a fairly frustrating to get animal sourced good, Given the largely limited amount of beach and skargard and coastal terrain on the map on average. And on top of that their odds of being there on any given day seem lower than they should.. They almost feel like they should be more like fireflies or dragonflies (IE: Almost always present in these biomes at the relevant time) but regularly go for days on end vanishing acts from their sandy sunlit domains.

I've gone days without finding them in the continent's generous amounts of skargards, coasts and beaches only to stumble across them while doing other things on my actual character days later and going "Oh well." and passing them by, as it's not worth seeing what QL they might be this time and crippling a set of my crafts and HPP for an extended period of time and getting a wound that can get infected in the swamps- All for the sake of crab cakes, clam bakes, a specific casting rod hook and chitin. The amount of penalties and time spent and distance traveled VS the payoff involved in crab gathering and quality of what you get and how much you get on average is a bit skewed IMO... It might be a bit less worrisome if you also had the option of dedicated crab fishing/crab potting, or made crab foraging on the relevant biomes a bit less punishing and more beneficial or reliable in terms of QLs and yield.


All in all thank you for reading and sorry it was a bit long winded- I just wanted to go in detail and pose possibilities and suggestions besides just "Thing is bad/broken make it not bad/broken."

[MagicManICT]

Just to clarify, you have x percentage chance to catch a fish. Of the remainder, you have a few possible events for the fail state--nothing, something breaks, lose bait, catch "trash". The severity of the "didn't catch a fish" varies based on fishing method, tackle, chance to catch the fish, etc. By increasing the odds of getting trash, you are actually improving the durability of fishing equipment, although more as a side benefit rather than directly.

Good read and some good thought into it. Fishing, especially the credo, could use some work.

[Vulgarr]

That's actually an interesting detail I didn't think about being a factor- I was assuming it just filled more of the "Nothing happens/got away" events or bumped the priority up over "nothing happens" like dead zone catches when your percentage ticks up.. I didn't think of the possibility of it superseding the bait/lure/line/hook loss events somewhat.

And thanks!

[Popo13]

Some good suggestions. For the rest of us that don't simply love fishing, I think a few underlying issues need to be fixed before most of this matters. The sad truth is that fish falls off in terms of relevance, even to the point where it's hardly worth finding the decent nodes in the first place. In addition, fishing is one of the more dangerous foraging activities, when a knarrfull of pain can rain on your relaxing pass-time.

Personally, the risk makes H&H fun. The reward needs to balance it out, however. There are several ways to address this, but I'll add my suggestion:

I doubt it's easy to implement, but the ability to "seed" fish nodes by releasing HQ fish back into the water for the sake of raising quality would give avid anglers another angle, while also giving fish a fighting chance to shine in mid/late-game food options.

[Vulgarr]

I mentioned it in passing but that is an issue overall I agree.

Fish QL as a node based foragable with no quality influence from skill/stats or rod quality used is a bit of a bummer. The only real way to get a goodly QL set of fish based foods is to have it be softcap math'd up with other ingredients or to spitroast it on an HQ spit outright- Which is more of a bandaid really.
Fish drying is a pretty neat mechanic in itself, but it is lackluster long term because drying rack quality has no QL influence at all to up it, And once dried you can't use that specific filet in any recipe and it's just kind of -there- as a very so so as in boost.

That and most foragables including fish just simply seem to hit a ceiling of quality around 50-ish QL, And this seems to be a shared problem with any foragable you can't just grow and quality spiral/ladder up. They don't seem to scale as hard as things like wildlife/monster based goods in terms of non-farmed items as well.

[MagicManICT]

Only fish I dry anymore is cave angler. The rest are still good (of those that are good) if you have alts to raise up (till around 100-200 stats) as a satiation alternative and the FEP variety bonus, but it's just too slow, both for the drying time, and time to catch enough. Other than doing the credo, the only fish I've wanted to catch the last three months was eel (seafood ROB still best PSY food imo).

[Vulgarr]

After playing around more with fishing I think I've also hit upon a more specific complaint in regards to quality of fish and their limiter as a food.

Wild animals can get really high QLs and big realm bonuses on average.
Cave animals go up as you delve deeper typically.
Crop quality increases as you farm fairly reliably.
Gardening pot goods scale with available pots/soil.
Domesticated meats go up fairly linearly with animal generations.

Fish are well- What you get is what you get basically with a somewhat low average QL across the board. Same weakness as any pure foragable. So fish dishes are QL hampered.

[Vulgarr]

A -kind of but not really- workaround for fish filet quality at least is a grid iron- But you can't herb it or use it in other recipes.
Hell- even having a filet knife or something for fish that influences a softcap effect would be a nice bandaid fix.