PlayerGuide: Training Fishing 101

Training fishing can be tedious, and the method of gaining is sometimes elusive. Understanding the mechanics behind it can be very helpful.

First, this guide is heavily influenced by OSI, and even on UOAlive, fishing gains can be unpredictable. Why? The exact reasons may remain a mystery!

For those seeking maximum MIN/MAX gains, this guide covers high-end content. Otherwise, you might skip to the next section.

Preparation

Before starting fishing training, it's recommended to gather the following items:

• 100 Daemon Bones (from Doom)
• 100 Dragon's Blood (from drakes or any type of dragon, including white wyrms, shadow wyrms, ancient wyrms, etc.)

Take these items to the Royal City and find the NPC named Ortlem.

Accept his quest, then toggle your daemon bones and dragon's blood as quest items and turn them in for your Crystal Ball of Knowledge.

The Crystal Ball of Knowledge will assist with fishing gains, so make sure to turn it on!

Fishing Mechanics

The basic mechanics of fishing are as follows:

• Every 5 points of fishing skill allows you to move one more spot away from shore, up until 80 skill, at which point you can gain from deep sea fishing.
• If you are not getting gains, the Crystal Ball of Knowledge will indicate if you are fishing in an area that is "Too Easy" or "Too Difficult," which will result in no gains. Docks are outcroppings from land, so fishing from the far end of some docks will place you in deep sea, where you will gain nothing!

Fishing Strategy

• Initially, stick to a coastline for gains. As your skill improves, you can venture further out, either from docks or a boat.
• Try to stay in "Optimal" difficulty, but even if it's "Easy" or "Challenging," you should still be able to gain. On UOAlive, "Very Easy" still allows fishing gains, so staying closer to the coast into your 60s and 70s may be advantageous.

It's recommended to stay on the New Haven Docks until you max your fishing skill before venturing into the sea.

Once you reach 80.1 skill, you will need to fish in deep sea to gain consistently. You can get a boat or fish at the Sea Market, which is all deep sea.

Fish come in resource chunks that are 8x8 tiles. If the fish stop biting, you can fish 8 tiles away in any direction to find a fresh resource spot.

Advanced Techniques

• **4x4 Fishing in Deep Sea**: This method involves finding a crossroad between 4 resource tiles. Cast to the left until depleted, then above, then to the right, and finally down. On UOAlive, the resource tiles may not renew fast enough, so this method has limited use. It's also not feasible on a galleon-class ship due to size constraints. However, you can make a loop around your galleon-class ship, depleting each resource tile set before moving to the next.

• **Sea Serpents**: While fishing, you might encounter sea serpents. Defeating them gives your fishing nodes more time to respawn, but it may also require moving your ship to loot the sea serpents.

At the time of this writing, with 100.0 fishing skill, I am working on Fish Monger quests to increase my skill further. Above 106 skill, I am unsure if you can continue gaining from deep sea fishing on UOAlive, as I haven't reached that level on this shard. On OSI, at 106 skill, you need to move to dungeon fishing to continue gaining.

Dungeon Fishing

Water pools in different dungeons have the same difficulty, with the main difference being the type of spawn and rare fish available. For collectors, it is essential to move around to gather all rare fish types. Some are very difficult to obtain, such as the Unicorn Fish found only in the Twisted Weald. Fishing while friends fight Dreadhorn is an option if you aim for absolute safety.

Hopefully, this primer will help anyone stuck in their fishing journey to continue gaining and growing.