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Costello

Fishing for Food as a Newbie?

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Hi, I'm a returning player, experiencing many of the new updates for the first time, including the new fishing and most of the cooking updates. (Yeh, it's been a while)

In an attempt to feed myself, I tried out the new fishing system - Spearfishing and Net fishing.

 

Currently I have a 1ql birchwood/iron long spear and a 4.38ql cotton fishing net, along with 1.0 fishing skill.

I've been through the in-game tutorial and the wiki pages relating to fishing and the tools, but I still haven't actually caught anything.

 

With the spear, I can't tell if I'm clicking the wrong fish - there are lots swimming around - or if I'm clicking the right fish but too far away or too close. I also can't tell if my misses are because of my mouse input, my skill level or my tool quality level.

I've attempted to catch fish with the spear for 20-30 minutes, never catching anything. Only misses.

I haven't kept track of how long I've had to spend repairing the spear...

 

With the net, I've spent about 20 minutes - 1 minute per action - and caught nothing. Nada. This has been during day and now night time, fishing into the ocean in a not shallow but also not deep tile, same as with the spear.

At least I'm not spending more time repair the net than I do using it, like the spear.

 

I could lure animals to guard towers and harvest meat that way, but that doesn't feel like it should be the right solution.

The 'new' forage/botany ingredients are great though, I guess being vegetarian is always an option.

 

I would much appreciate if someone has or knows of a video, showing someone successfully net and spear fish, as it doesn't translate well through text showing the proper method for doing so.

 

*edit: After 1 hour of fishing, I managed to catch 1 clam, containing 0.3kg of seafood meat*

 

Edited by Costello

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What I have learned & the problems I've encounted:

 

1: As you can see from my compass, I spotted the correct fish to my East. I initially began my fishing action looking directly West - This is a corner tile and the fish came at me from behind. To find it, I had to rotate my screen 170 degrees.

 

2: The fish followed the green arrow. It swam directly towards me, through the ground and out the other side, making it difficult to track and make an attempt at.

 

3: There are 7 fish in this picture, with many more further South and West, where I was looking when I began the action. Identifying the 'real' fish, outlined in red is both difficult, due to the tiny size and color almost matching that of the water, as well as no clear indication that the other fish aren't actually the ones which are catch-able.

 

4: I clicked directly on the fish, while it was very close to me, resulting in "[21:37:58] You missed the brook trout!". I cannot tell why I missed, it looked to me like I clicked directly on it. Netcode, lag, wrong distance, tool quality failed a roll, skill level failed a roll, etc etc.

 

Fishing-edited.png

 

After spending over an hour without catching anything, I have finally caught a 0.03kg roach - useless for just about anything really.

Honestly, the only reason I stuck with it so long is because I have played Wurm off and on for many years... I don't expect many truly new players would stick around for so long.

 

I am still interested to learn more about these new mechanics and hopefully at the end of it, be able to catch some fish in a reasonable time-frame, as I remember doing in the past. If anyone can provide more insight, I would appreciate it.

Edited by Costello

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In the 30 minutes since my last post, I have since managed to catch 5 fish. All 0.03-0.07kg in weight.

I've had around 15-20 failures to catch in that time period.

 

Unfortunately I've had to re-evaluate my hopes for fishing, at least with nets and spears, as even assuming a 100% catch rate at my average 0.05kg per fish, it would result in only 2.5kg weight per hour, in assorted tiny fish.

Also, to even catch those 5 fish, I had to pay 100% attention to my fishing, no chat, no afk, only scanning my screen for tiny fish, as the fish are so difficult to see and aim at.

Making matters worse, even with my FOV set to 100, over 75% of the fish I saw, swam at me from a direction I could not see when I began my fishing action. This resulted in most fish approaching me from either an extreme left/right or from behind. Even with 100% attention, I still physically couldn't see 2 fish approach and pass me by. (Great eyesight, sitting very close to a large monitor)

 

To make matters worse, I've even injured both my feet - without ever spearing directly at my feet - so I'm now limping back to my tent.

 

Maybe rod and reel fishing results in more fish, but from this test and even ignoring skill level and item quality (assuming 100% successful catch rates), neither method is viable for eating or skillgain.

I doubt Votip is right - I'll have to look at other options for food.

Edited by Costello

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Costello, with a fishing net it really is key to try to fish in *shallow water*, not just water that appears to be not so deep because it's near the shore (but has a steep drop-off).

Also, with the fishing net, try fishing in the water of a cave canal.  You'll be able to catch fish there that aren't able to be caught anywhere else.

 

I've not had good luck with the fishing spear, and terrible luck with the rod & reel, but after being told about the deepish water issue with the fishing net I have no problem catching numbers of tiny fish with that.

The fishing net isn't useless in deeper water, just alot less effective with many more attempts required. When it does catch something there it'll have a good chance of being a clam for hidden treats inside the shell.

 

I hope this helps!

 

 

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Well, I am not sure how much (if at all) net quality contributes to success - don't think it does. My net (later nets) was of bit higher ql due to my higher tailoring skill, but my starting level with net fishing was below skill 4. The place where I fished was the mooring place of my ships at the lake, a sandy beach where the first "wet" tiles slope down from ca. 2-4 over water table 18-23 down into the lake, the next ones in the water with similar or bit steeper slope. It needed to step onto those first "wet" tile and fish in the next one.

 

I got a yield of 2 to 3 fish nearly every net fishing from begin. I repaired the net after each or at least each second or third fishing. After a while I switched to 4 to 5 nets used in sequence, this action is stacking up so that one can fish semi afk. I never had any shortage of roaches, perch, and sardine. Inside cave canals I fished minnows, bit less in quantity, but also steady. At that time I had to meet the "fish 1000 fish" achievement which I passed using the nets in a couple of hours. Before, with the old system, I had caught below 60 fish in total.

 

Granted my non fishing skills and characteristics at that time were far above beginner level. I do not know whether that influences net fishing success.

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Thank you both - With net fishing in a full submerged, shallow water tile I was able to catch tiny fish every try. Didn't give me any skillgain, but at least I could combine them with pumpkins to make decent weighted food.

 

Still seems infinitely worse than the old system, which sadly I enjoyed quite a lot, but at least now I'm self sufficient.

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As for spear fishing, I didn't do much but my success rate was around 80% so my method with it seems to work.

 

Rather than looking out a ways I would aim the camera down at the tile I stood on with the bottom Edge of the screen barely showing my toes, it would take a little waiting but the fish always swam right up in front of me, like within a quarter-tile, so no need to try and figure which was the real one and accuracy was pretty good.

Edited by Cadh20000

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On 5/26/2019 at 6:36 AM, Costello said:

but at least I could combine them with pumpkins to make decent weighted food.

 

You can actually make Breakfasts with pumpkins alone, which might be a more efficient use timewise, since pumpkins weigh 1.00 and most net fish weigh about .02-.05kg each.

 

I find I do better supplementing pumpkins with cheese and/or minced meat, which generally has decent weight/bulk plus good fat/protein ratings (tiny fish on the other hand give very little protein simply due to small size and inability to process).  Breakfasts over 10Q with these three ingredients usually keep me above 75 nutrition and fill calories/fats/proteins (still weak on carbs).  If you are not really interested in being a hunter, you can still often find near steppes corpses of sheep bison horses which have simply died of old age, and butcher these for leathers and meats. And even if you do not keep a dairy herd, you can still milk wild sheep cows and bison and bring home bowls / barrels of milk to convert to cheese. 

 

Herbs although very lightweight can also provide in some cases better nutritional gains than tiny fish. According to one chart I use that BDew developed, a .30kg fillet of fish had 50 fat 150 protein (while you cannot fillet tiny fish, it takes about 6-8 tiny fish to equal a fillet in size), while cheese had 380:250 fat:protein and and .05 weight sage had 130:110 fat:protein, ie better than fish.  

 

Once you get close to 25 HFC, pizza becomes a great recipe (IF you have access to grains crops herbs & marble)  because (at leasy in WU) it's difficulty is frozen at 40 no matter how many toppings you add, and adding a lot of toppings is the best way to get a good balance of calories-carbs-fats-proteins.

 

But I do very well on Breakfasts alone at lower levels. Be sure to warm them to HOT before eating. 

Edited by Brash_Endeavors
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new fishing sucks, point.
fishing net is easier but you only get 3 and low weight fish. pole/rod you ll need lines, floaters, bait and so, many things get LOT of damage even on inventory. spear es even worse, get lot of damage aiming to fish. Even if the poll says more than half players (who answered it) dont like new fishing devs dont want put old system back.

how people say, better try another weight of get food, pumpkins work well for food and improvised lanterns...

 

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48 minutes ago, tamat said:

new fishing sucks, point.
fishing net is easier but you only get 3 and low weight fish. pole/rod you ll need lines, floaters, bait and so, many things get LOT of damage even on inventory. spear es even worse, get lot of damage aiming to fish. Even if the poll says more than half players (who answered it) dont like new fishing devs dont want put old system back.

how people say, better try another weight of get food, pumpkins work well for food and improvised lanterns...
 

 

I don't think the new methods themselves, or the new tools are necessarily worse, in fact the spear fishing was quite fun.

My only issue was that the quantity and weight of the fish I could gather was extremely low.

I'd be perfectly happy with the new system if they just upped the speed, weight and quantity as it's now one of the least afk skills in Wurm.

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