Training fishing can be tedious, and the method of gaining is sometimes elusive, so it helps to understand the mechanics behind it.
First, I will start by saying this guide is heavily influenced by OSI, because even on UOAlive, fishing gains can sometimes be very strange! Why? We just don't know, and may never!
High end content if you want the maximum MIN MAX gains, otherwise skip to the next section! (otherwise click the blurry bits for details!)
I recommend before starting fishing training that you get 100 daemon bones (from Doom) and 100 dragon's blood (from "skinning" drakes or any type of dragon [including white wyrms, shadow wyrms, ancient wyrms, etc.]), and taking them to the Royal City, to an NPC named Ortlem.
Accept his quest, then toggle your daemon bones and dragon's blood as quest items, then turn it in for your Crystal Ball of Knowledge.
The Crystal Ball of Knowledge will help you with fishing gains, so turn it on!
The mechanic of fishing seems simple at first. Every 5 points of fishing allows you to move one more spot away from shore, up until 80 skill, at which point you can gain from fishing in deep sea.
If you're fishing and not getting gains, the Crystal Ball of Knowledge will tell you if you are fishing in an area that is "Too Easy" or "Too Difficult," which will result in no gains. Keep in mind, docks are outcroppings from land, so standing at the far end of some docks, you'll actually be fishing in deep sea and gaining nothing!
So regardless of the above your FISHING ADVENTURE STARTS NOW!!
Initially you will want to stick to a coastline for gains. As your skill improves, you can move out a little at a time, either on docks or a boat.
You really want to try to stay in "Optimal" difficulty, but if it's "easy" or "challenging"(if you got the crystal above) you should still be able to gain. On UOAlive, even "very easy" still allows you to get fishing gains, so it may be better to stick closer to the coast well into your 60s and 70s.
It is very much recommended to stay on the New Haven Docks until you max your fishing from there and need to venture in the the seas!
Once you reach 80.1 skill, you will need deep sea to gain consistently. For this, you can get a boat, or you can park yourself at the Sea Market, which is all deep sea.
Fish, as a resource, come in resource chunks that are 8 tiles by 8 tiles, and they deplete and renew the same as any other resource (such as lumber and ore). If the fish stop biting, you can fish 8 tiles away in any direction, and you will have a fresh resource spot to continue casting.
There is a method called 4x4 fishing in Deep Sea wherein you find a crossroad between 4 resource tiles. Cast to the left until it is depleted, then above until it's depleted, then to the right, then down. In my experience on UOAlive, the starting resource tile set will not renew fast enough by the time you deplete the other three, so this method has limited use. It's also not possible on a galleon-class ship, because the boat is too big for you to reach the water in all directions while standing in one spot (note that this information is no longer accurate after maintenance today changes the maximum cast distance).
What you can do, however, is slowly make a loop around your galleon-class ship, depleting each resource tile set completely before continuing. By the time you make it all the way around (8+ tile sets), it will be refreshed. But more likely, you'll end up fishing up sea serpents that you have to fight, which gives your fishing nodes more time to respawn and might necessitate a ship move in order to loot.
At the time of this writing, I am at 100.0 fishing, and will be working on Fish Monger quests to allow my skill to go higher. Above 106 skill, I am not sure if you can continue gaining fishing from Deep Sea on UOAlive or not, since I am not experienced at that level on this shard. I do know that on OSI, at 106 skill, you need to move to dungeon fishing to continue gaining.
Water pools in different dungeons all have the same difficulty. The only real difference in choosing which dungeon to fish in is what spawn you are willing to deal with, and what rare (big) fish you want to obtain. There are many types of rare fish (in addition to "a fish" and all of the regular types of coastal, deep sea, and dungeon fish), and if you are a collector, you will want to move around a lot to get them all.
Some are very difficult to get. An example is the Unicorn fish, found only in the Twisted Weald, in the pool that separates the "back" of the area from Dreadhorn himself. So you can either contend with all the monsters that drop keys for Dreadhorn, or you can fish while your friends are fighting Dreadhorn. Absolute safety as a fisherman is not an option if you are a collector.
Hopefully this primer will help someone who is stuck in their fishing journey to continue to gain and grow. I'll see you all in the next guide!
--Minerva
First, I will start by saying this guide is heavily influenced by OSI, because even on UOAlive, fishing gains can sometimes be very strange! Why? We just don't know, and may never!
High end content if you want the maximum MIN MAX gains, otherwise skip to the next section! (otherwise click the blurry bits for details!)
I recommend before starting fishing training that you get 100 daemon bones (from Doom) and 100 dragon's blood (from "skinning" drakes or any type of dragon [including white wyrms, shadow wyrms, ancient wyrms, etc.]), and taking them to the Royal City, to an NPC named Ortlem.
The Crystal Ball of Knowledge will help you with fishing gains, so turn it on!
The mechanic of fishing seems simple at first. Every 5 points of fishing allows you to move one more spot away from shore, up until 80 skill, at which point you can gain from fishing in deep sea.
If you're fishing and not getting gains, the Crystal Ball of Knowledge will tell you if you are fishing in an area that is "Too Easy" or "Too Difficult," which will result in no gains. Keep in mind, docks are outcroppings from land, so standing at the far end of some docks, you'll actually be fishing in deep sea and gaining nothing!
So regardless of the above your FISHING ADVENTURE STARTS NOW!!
Initially you will want to stick to a coastline for gains. As your skill improves, you can move out a little at a time, either on docks or a boat.
You really want to try to stay in "Optimal" difficulty, but if it's "easy" or "challenging"(if you got the crystal above) you should still be able to gain. On UOAlive, even "very easy" still allows you to get fishing gains, so it may be better to stick closer to the coast well into your 60s and 70s.
It is very much recommended to stay on the New Haven Docks until you max your fishing from there and need to venture in the the seas!
Once you reach 80.1 skill, you will need deep sea to gain consistently. For this, you can get a boat, or you can park yourself at the Sea Market, which is all deep sea.
Fish, as a resource, come in resource chunks that are 8 tiles by 8 tiles, and they deplete and renew the same as any other resource (such as lumber and ore). If the fish stop biting, you can fish 8 tiles away in any direction, and you will have a fresh resource spot to continue casting.
There is a method called 4x4 fishing in Deep Sea wherein you find a crossroad between 4 resource tiles. Cast to the left until it is depleted, then above until it's depleted, then to the right, then down. In my experience on UOAlive, the starting resource tile set will not renew fast enough by the time you deplete the other three, so this method has limited use. It's also not possible on a galleon-class ship, because the boat is too big for you to reach the water in all directions while standing in one spot (note that this information is no longer accurate after maintenance today changes the maximum cast distance).
What you can do, however, is slowly make a loop around your galleon-class ship, depleting each resource tile set completely before continuing. By the time you make it all the way around (8+ tile sets), it will be refreshed. But more likely, you'll end up fishing up sea serpents that you have to fight, which gives your fishing nodes more time to respawn and might necessitate a ship move in order to loot.
At the time of this writing, I am at 100.0 fishing, and will be working on Fish Monger quests to allow my skill to go higher. Above 106 skill, I am not sure if you can continue gaining fishing from Deep Sea on UOAlive or not, since I am not experienced at that level on this shard. I do know that on OSI, at 106 skill, you need to move to dungeon fishing to continue gaining.
Water pools in different dungeons all have the same difficulty. The only real difference in choosing which dungeon to fish in is what spawn you are willing to deal with, and what rare (big) fish you want to obtain. There are many types of rare fish (in addition to "a fish" and all of the regular types of coastal, deep sea, and dungeon fish), and if you are a collector, you will want to move around a lot to get them all.
Some are very difficult to get. An example is the Unicorn fish, found only in the Twisted Weald, in the pool that separates the "back" of the area from Dreadhorn himself. So you can either contend with all the monsters that drop keys for Dreadhorn, or you can fish while your friends are fighting Dreadhorn. Absolute safety as a fisherman is not an option if you are a collector.
Hopefully this primer will help someone who is stuck in their fishing journey to continue to gain and grow. I'll see you all in the next guide!
--Minerva
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