I've read the discussions on this board about fishing, and I've done my fair share of fishing myself. I've noticed some questions cropping up for which there is no official answer for. is there actually a difference between the colors of lure or not? what exactly is the difference between a high and low grade fishing lure? how often do mobs crop up while fishing?
so, i'm collecting statistics, to try and figure some of this out. my goal is to collect 100 fish from each of the 9 grades and colors of lure, and see what exactly is going on behind the scenes as it were.
i'm level 47 currently, with a fishing expertise of 15. this means big and normal orange fish, and small purple fish. I'm leaving my experise there for a bit, while I test things out. i'm also doing all my fishing in one spot, just to make sure. I might do another smaller run through in another spot to see if different spots yield different fish.
for my first test run, i picked green high grade lures, and fished until I gathered 100 fish. this took 122 lures, and I caught 6 mobs, which means about 5% of the time you fish, you'll end up grabbing a mob. anyway, that leaves 16 failed attempts to catch a fish, 4 of which because I screwed up. one thing I noticed after an hour, right around the 50th or 60th fish in a row, that the number of failed attempts due to no bites starts to rise dramatically. however, if you stop for about 5 minutes, things go back to normal. 6 of my 12 failed attempts were almost back to back around that time.
anyway, to the numbers:
out of 100 fish caught with high grade green lures:
02 were ornage treasure chests
28 were ugly fish
29 were fat fish
41 were nimble fish
so, it appears that the color of the lure does indeed influence the type of fish caught. however, the difference isn't that great. unless I just got lucky and fished in a nimble fish spot, it also appears that where you fish does not seem to influence what you catch.
also:
02 were treasure chests
16 were small
35 were normal
47 were big
definite a trend here towards the larger more valuable fish and away from the smaller fish. however, it is worth noting that the small fish in my case were purple, and thus one grade above the orange normal and big fish I was catching.
once I had the 100 fish all done, I sat and converted them all in one go, more or less. 55 successes, 45 failures. hard to draw a hard conclusion here with a fairly small sample size. 50% conversion rate sounds right, however. it is worth noting that the conversion rate was constant, that neither the color nor size of the fish seemed to matter to whether or not the fish converted.
i had to stop there because I'm completely out of fish shots, and I'm tired. 2 hours of fishing in one day is enough. soon as I hunt up some more sweet fluid, i'll make another run, this time with low grade green lures, to see if the quality of the lure changes anything beyond how long it takes the fish to bite.
(as a side note: 2 hrs of fishing equalled 22 shiny fish gems, and about 2k -2.5 ish worth of proof of catch in other fish mats. oh, and about 5 hair pin pieces of various types.)
<ul type="square"> High grade lures are more likely to attract a fish (get a bite) Low grade lures will attract a fish less often (no idea how much less)
I thought that if you used high grade lures, you'd get the fish to bite faster? I don't know, you might be right Gortag.
No matter which one is true, I'll keep on using high grade, since the profit will always be greater than what I have spent on lures :)
see, that is one of the things I'm trying to answer, the whole high grade vs low grade lures. I'm still compiling, however I have noticed that fishing with lower grade lures is MUCH easier than the higher grade lures. what I am NOT sure about, yet, is how this effects what fish you catch, how it effects what you get from the fish, or if it effects the percentage that fish fails to convert or not. the only thing I have noticed, maybe, is a complete lack of treasure chests when fishing with low grade lures. however, treasure chests are such a low % to catch anyway (all my data points to less than 5% even with high grade lures), that this may not be a big deal anyway.
and yes, once I get this all compiled, I may well submit it to the fishing wiki.
hm, just had a thought. my WC on bartz has not trained her fishing yet. perfect oppurtunity to do a "fishing through the levels" test. or, at least, the levels up to level 14 fishing mastery. match up what fish to what level of mastery to what rewards, see if I can spot any sweet spots. of course, to do that properly could take a while. there are 5 colors of fish from lvl 1 to lvl 14, green, blue, yellow, orange, and purple (maybe 6, I might be missing one there). times that by 12 for fish type (9 types of fish, 3 types of treasure chest) and then by 4 for the 4 different types of loot a fish can drop.
oi, my head hurts. luckily, I like doing these kind of things.
(oh, final side note, speaking of fish loot. if I'm noticing a trend correctly, the 4 types of loot each fish convert into follow a pattern. first, there is the common drop, a fish oil of some type. then you have 2 uncommon drops, usually fish mats like gems or scales or, at lower levels, a higher grade of fish oil or a fish oil recipe. then you have 1 rare drop, usually an accessory mat or something. I'd love to figure out the rough percentage chance to get a specific drop from a specific fish is. however, I'd have to gather about 1000 fish of each type to get an accurate idea. i'm simply not that dedicated. maybe I'll round up some friends, and sit down and fish for like 8-12 hours one weekend, and take a stab at it. or maybe I'll set up a buy shop in giran with my dwarf. see if I can get people to sell my a thousand fish of a particular type just for the heck of it.
ok, yes, i'm a geek. I love statistics, and I love playing with numbers.
oh, as I further note: fish seem to follow patterns in their loot. for instance, nimble fish ALWAYS drop fish gems, no matter the color of the fish as far as I've noticed. lower colored fish drop single fish gems, while much higher valued fish drop multiple shiny fish gems.)
I noticed that about the nimble fish too (green bait ftw). I've noted down everything I got from blue and red fish, which respectively "drop" fish gems and shiny fish gems.
Also, L2 WH have added fish to their database, but you can't see the rates of the materials unless you either contribute by using their sniffer (don't do this) or pay for access. I haven't done either. I just want to know which fish open up into what.
While I appreciate what PleChan is doing (and I have also added my own info), I really prefer L2 Wh, since you can choose from a drop down list, what you need to get, and it will give a list over the fish you need + what level of expertise you need to get them.
ok, quick update before I run out for the day. just got through fishing 100 fish with low grade green lures. as I believe I stated earlier, it is indeed much easier to fish with low grade lures over high grade lures. the fish don't change their behavior as much, and they don't seem to regain health as quickly when reeling. so, what other effect does fishing with low grade lures have? um, well, none, maybe. i noticed a slight drop in conversion rate (from 55% with high grade to 44% with low grade), and a higher chance of getting a treasure chest (2% with high grade lures, 11% with low grade), but neither was a significant change to be able to draw any firm conclusions. I got almost exactly the same number of failed fishing attempts and only 1 more mob fished up than I did with high grade.
so, from what I can see, where you fish does not matter, the grade of lure you are using doesn't make much difference in the result (though lower grade lures are much easier to fish with), and the color of the lure only makes a slight difference in what you catch. what I have found is that there is a 50 fish at a time limit. once you fish up 50 (approximately) fish from any one spot, your chance of failing to catch anything goes way, way up. the only way to fix this is eaither to stop fishing for about 10 to 15 minutes, or to relog. i find out the relog trick by accident, as I crashed in the middle of fishing around my 60th fish this time.
(oh, on a completely unrelated note, there is a graphic glitch with summons in that little fishing window. poor Mew gets all corrupted looking when seen in it. I'll ahve to post a screenshot, looks real weird.)