Contents 1 Introduction 2 1.1 About this guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 Fishing resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 Some useful lingo and abbreviations 3 3 Skill overview 4 3.1 Basics - choosing the bait, hooking, reeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2 Minor stu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.3 Mooching and bus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4 Core shing mechanics 8 5 I'm too cool for reading silly tooltips, I just need a TL;DR on shing eciently 12 5.1 How to use shing resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 5.1.1 Cat Became Hungry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 5.1.2 Carby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 5.2 Timings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5.2.1 Fish Eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5.2.2 Some important bite times (work in progress) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5.3 Advanced concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5.4 Picking your target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 5.5 Notes on GP management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 6 FAQ 22 7 Document updates 24 1 Introduction About this guide Big shing (which is most likely the reason you're reading this) can be daunting. If there are questions left unanswered, feel free to ask them in the Fishcord : https://discord.gg/AnFaDpN (can also hit me up directly at Lodinn#5665). If you just want a super fast head start on big shing, go straight to the Carby part of this guide. I will be using following colours throughout the text, '90s style (sorry if your eyes are bleeding!): - external links - skill names (e.g. Cast) - sh names (e.g. Cupsh) - bait names (e.g. Lugworm) - location names (e.g. Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks) - various conditions for catching (e.g. Fish Eyes, weather. Fish Eyes and Fish Eyes are going to be used almost interchangeably here - just like in any normal conversation with no fancy formatting. I know it already created more confusion than it should have but I promise it won't be as bad further on. Honest). I will also use it for statuses (e.g. Inecient Hooking). As of now, spearshing is not covered in this guide at all (only note to make about it currently - AAA records seem to be unattainable in SB spearshing but are there for ShB spearshing). Another quick disclaimer - I'm not nearly as active as I used to be in HW/SB but I'm more or less keeping up with shing at least and I believe this guide is still mostly relevant as of the patch 5.3. Fishing resources Fishing world in FFXIV is vast and may seem overwhelming at rst. Here are a few things to help with that. First of all, there is the Cat Became Hungry (CBH) website: http://ff14angler.com, the most comprehensive shing resource to date. It is also sometimes referred as simply angler. I will be showing examples of its usage rather frequently throughout this guide. Secondly, your bread and butter on the journey of catching all them shies - sh trackers. Tired of checking up with weather guys in city-states to nd out when these rare sh conditions are to occur next? You need to go through these hoops no more! Look no further than the amazing https://ff14fish. carbuncleplushy.com! This is probably the best tracker out there, bookmark it and start ticking these sh right now. (Actually, it probably makes sense to export your checklist every now and then in case your browser crashes and loses all your cookies or whatever. At least the feature is there as well, copy the export text anywhere as shown below to be able to import it later. And yes, it even got a night mode). (a) Click this button rst... (b) ...and now copy this pop-up window text somewhere Figure 1: Exporting the checklist from carby 2 Should you prefer more oldschool trackers, http://garlandtools.org/ffxivfisher is also an op- tion. Finally, https://super-aardvark.github.io/weather lets you nd the desired weather/weather transition for a given zone well in advance - mind the (possibly) counter-intuitive order of "Desired weather" and "Transition from"! Oh, and one more thing - leveling resources are plenty, I've found https://www.ffxivguild.com/ ff14-fishing-fisher-leveling-guide-a-realm-reborn to be decent enough; have seen https:// ffxivcrafting.com/levequests being linked around as well. Some useful lingo and abbreviations GP - Gathering Points (your `mana') Int, intu, intuition - Fisher's Intuition (bu) FE - Fish Eyes P2 - Patience II DH - Double Hook SS - Surface Slap IC - Identical Cast Blind hook/DH - a catch without Identical Cast active Only reel in ... - let all the sh bites not satisfying the listed conditions get away by letting them expire in order to keep bus/save time Powerful/precision - Powerful Hookset/Precision Hookset Carby - Carbuncle Plushy website (https://ff14fish.carbuncleplushy.com) CBH, angler - Cat Became Hungry website (https://ff14fish.carbuncleplushy.com) Fishcord - The shing discord, Fisherman's Horizon (be wary - there's another one bearing the same name! Between two, only one is the true Fishcord!) Slang for sh names: Nepto - Nepto Dragon Seabutt - Sea Buttery Opa - Opabinia Chari - Charibenet Raim - Raimdellopterus Warden, Skittles - Warden of the Seven Hues (Dr.) Dre - Drepanaspis Steth - Stethacanthus 3 Skill overview I have decided to go through the skills more or less in the order you get them, obviously there wouldn't be things like You need to use Cast and Hook to get sh, rather more in-depth explanation of game mechanics (or our current understanding of them, at any rate). Skills are either grouped together or have the same order as their respective levels. Basics - choosing the bait, hooking, reeling Bait : Selecting a bait results in subsetting the sh you can catch at a given hole as well as determine respective chances to catch those sh. More precisely, you will nd that, for example, Silversh absolutely loves Honey worms, while Agelyss Carp won't even look at those. Perhaps it's the best to demonstrate it with an example of CBH usage. Suppose we are to sh at Northeast Bronze Lake. Here is how a section of the bait table on CBH looks like: Figure 1: Catch percentages This tells us that any bait under lvl20 won't work at all in this hole, that if you want Four-eyed sh for whatever reason, Crow Fly is the best and will grant you one with approximately 75% chance (more in-depth considerations on how to read this table later). Cast : The skill that starts it all; nu said. The only important consideration here is snap- shotting. Namely, EVERYTHING is snapshotted the moment you cast your line - including the sh you will catch. This is the reason oftentimes some tricky sh is actually caught after its weather or time window is over - provided the cast happened before that. This also applies to your own bus. Hook : Possibly the most interesting one in this block. It can be used to cancel casts before the sh even bites - and this is probably the rst `advanced tactic' to master. The reasons why you might (quite often!) want to do so are outlined in the Picking your target section. 4 Minor stu Cast light : Just use it. Doesn't change anything except making shing more conve- nient. Quit : Quit shing. I know of no circumstances where it makes sense to have this on your hotbar AND there are reasons (mostly fatngering) not to. Stealth: Again, not much to be said here. You won't be aected by FATE mob AoEs and such while shing, Stealth covers the rest of your needs to be safe. Release : Only two considerations here: this does NOT aect Fisher's Intuition counter but it also takes up precious time spent on the animation. Unless running out of inventory space it's actually better not to use it - although not by much. Mooching and bus Mooch : The rst real mechanic you encounter. It is of note that you can hold the HQ sh indenitely and it won't trigger the Fish amiss status (see Advanced concepts section). All of the GP-using actions (Patience, Patience II, Chum, Fish Eyes) cancel the current mooching opportunity, meaning you have to start shing with these bus already on (with the exception of Chum, obviously) when you start mooch chains. Snagging : This skill only allows you to get maps in ARR; however, from HW on it now includes certain sh (e.g. The Impaler), which can not be caught without this bu. However, it can pollute your catch pool (again, see Picking your target). Collect : Allows you to do shing for collectables. Collectable rating for sh is simply sh size (in ilms)x10. Like mining and botany, you get a prompt asking you whether to keep the sh you just caught as a collectable or not. Unlike mining and botany, this can actually be of use. Perhaps this saw peak usage when people started shing for Stethacanthus - more on that later on. Patience : A complex bu. It does two things - increases HQ chance by 50% (believed to be additive) and gives you the Inecient Hooking debu (in this case, 40% chance of the sh to get away regardless of other conditions unless mitigated by a proper Hookset. Not enough testing have been done yet to condently say whether this is additive or multiplicative). Sometimes, it makes sense to eat the Inecient Hooking penalty and try your chances catching the sh without the hookset (also shorthanded as regular hook). Overall, it increases your chances to land an HQ sh (see section about hooking for natural HQ estimates) compared to not using any bus and is thus helpful even if you lack GP to use hooksets. If you have enough GP, Patience II is simply better. After it got patched in SB, if the bu and debu from Patience expire while you're still casting your line, they persist until after you hook the sh, allowing you to use hooksets. ShB update: reduced GP cost, reduced duration. Still extremely niche - for it to be better than Patience II, one must be both GP-starved and not being able to utilize the entire duration of Patience II. 5 Patience II : An upgraded version of Patience. Accordingly, it costs more (560 GP vs 470 GP), gives better HQ boost (80%) and the getaway rate without hooksets (75%) is also much higher. It means that, unlike Patience, it doesn't really make sense to use it without the intention to use hooksets. The most controversial part of this skill is the phrase in the description, Increases the likelihood of catching larger sh. It does NOT aect which sh you will catch in any sense whatsoever - just how big will it be. Thus, this quoted phrase ONLY is important in the context of collectables and shing records (at least, so far). Powerful Hookset : Allows you to ignore the Inecient Hooking eects for the current cast. This is the default hookset used for most (but far from all!) big sh - or most sh behind rst in mooch chains, for that reason. Precision Hookset : Same as the Powerful Hookset, but works on small shes instead (Silversh family being the most common example). There is no solid one-ts-all rule to nd out which one to use - essentially, your common sense, intuition and other shers' expertise (comments on the Cat Became Hungry for starters) are to be relied upon. Fish is believed to be tiny (just a few ilms)? Try precision. Huge (over 50 ilms or so)? Try powerful. Something in between? Try hookset for the similar sh, if it exists and is known. Nothing of that works? Ask around. Chum : Does exactly what it says. It's currently believed that it roughly halves the time for the sh to bite (maybe closer to 35-40% reduction) with some rounding taking place. Can't be used while mooching. Has a major drawback - Chum animation itself often accounts for about as much time as it provides you with, making it a nearly useless skill (it seems to be better used in the shing holes where 20s+ bite times are common - prime example being Danien Pass). Another annoying thing about it is that it aects bite times on the Cat Became Hungry, so that your real bite times may be o, commonly by 5-6s (for the typical 12-15s bite time sh used for mooching). Fish Eyes (FE) : Perhaps the most hated shing mechanic to date. At an immodest cost of 350GP, this skill introduces the level of RNG before you even started shing. Fish Eyes works like this: if there is a sh which can be currently caught with it (other conditions like weather/time are met), it will activate. Dierent sh at one location can have dierent Fish Eyes bus, distinguished by their duration (You may nd these in the Timings section). Now the aforementioned bad part works like this - you come to the Halo or the Flagship, use Fish Eyes... And a wrong one activates. Now you can catch Lava Lords, but cannot catch Fossiltongues to attempt Problematicus. Despaired, you use it again, and the same thing happens. You drink the cordial, use it for the third time... You get the idea. It's entirely possible to not even have an opportunity to sh while the desired sh is up (as in, all the other conditions are met) simply thanks to this mechanic. Many new shers were enraged when they rst learnt of it and this is okay. But there's an upside - it can help gure out weather or time for the corresponding sh, so it's not all doom and gloom! Mooch II : Discounted Patience+Hookset, 2 in 1, one cast only. Importantly, allows you to bypass the perception threshold mechanic. More on GP management - in the Advanced concepts section. Double Hook : Can't be used on big (green) sh at all, but can be used to trigger Fisher's Intuition to great eect. Because of that, it's important to be able to gure out (if at all possible), which sh is on the line - 400GP is nothing to sni at. Surface Slap : The main addition of the Shadowbringers skillset. The eect of the Surface Slap persists until you successfully anything, which means it's possible to use it once reel in and then keep the bu until you get the desired bite, or past that even if the sh gets away. For straight catch sh, perhaps the most notably The Unconditional that means you can increase the bite chance by a lot at a relatively low GP cost. It also makes discerning the sh on the hook more valuable otherwise. 6 Identical Cast : Another skill added in Shadowbringers. It ensures that you get the same sh you just caught on the next cast (doesn't work on green sh). One thing to note here is that you must be eligible for that sh on the next cast - weather, time and FE conditions are still to be observed. A similar thing goes for the Surface Slap - if you slap the only viable option in the pool, you will get an error message saying There is no potential catch nearby. This skill is perfect for setting up intuition sh because unlike before, it's now possible to ensure the Fisher's Intuition proc on the very start of the window making multiple intuitions per window more reliable. 7 Core shing mechanics Mooching. Mooching only works with select HQ catches, and can be chained together in so-called mooch chains. The latter is actually a trait you get at lvl40. Patience helps with those immensely, but sometimes can be substituted with Mooch II to a degree. Tug types. Currently, there's a tug type and reel in type associated with each sh. ShB update: with battle eects on, tugs are now displayed above the head as (!), (!!) and (!!!). Tugs can be `light', `medium' or `legendary' (`heavy') - (!), (!!) and (!!!), correspondingly - the terminology is interchangeable but the exclamation mark notation is more widely adopted now as less ambiguous.. In the JP/CN community, `legendary' tugs are literally `big sh' tugs because this is the tug type most of the big sh have. It is easily distinguished by sound and the rod heavily bending, nearly snapping in half. When reeling in `legendary' tugs, a sher would stand up from the chair, if using a /sit emote. Video examples (pre-ShB/battle eects o ) of all three types of tugs can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHgWIA-Zhug. Typically, tug type and reel in type are closely related with a very few exceptions (e.g. Little Perykos has a `medium' tug, but `legendary' reel in animation). Because of this, it is usually only the tug type being referenced. Colored pie charts for both can be found on Cat Became Hungry. It is crucial to be able to distinguish those in order to optimize time spent on reeling in specic sh (typically used for Mooching). Weather and Time windows - some sh can only be caught when certain conditions, governed by weather and time of the day in Eorzea, are met. Currently, there is no sh using the Eorzean moon phase (but there are hunts so it's not entirely o the list of the possible options in the future). Weather restrictions exist in two forms - simple singular weather requirement, and weather transitions, mean- ing you need a specic current and previous weather to match the requirements in order to catch the sh. Simple time/weather conditions occure in your FSH quests, transitions, however, do not. Weather in Eorzea changes every 8 hours Eorzean time, at 00:00, 08:00 and 16:00 (it can be a tiny bit laggy, however, but XX:01 is a safe bet). In-game weather display is only updated at XX:03 (but for other practical purposes, weather changes earlier than that). FATE weathers act as a `mask' over the actual weather and don't aect shing (at least, so far). Weather predictions can be obtained from in-game NPCs (Skywatchers), but it's way more convenient to use trackers for that purpose (see Fishing resources). Eorzean clock ticks 175 times faster than Earth one, meaning there are 2 minutes 55 seconds Earth time in every Eorzean hour, and roughly 24 Earth minutes between Eorzean weather changes (72 Earth minutes per full Eorzean day). Patience bus are about one and a half minutes long so half an Eorzean hour... You get the idea. Use it for your estimations as needed. Fish sense something amiss... This message occurs when you sh at the same location for 50 minutes without moving and is resolved by moving a few steps away. There's also a condition known as `super-amiss' and supposedly triggered by shing in the same location for a few hours straight (only resolved by switching areas). Allegedly an anti-bot measure, it is the bane of shers while bots seem to not care about shing whatsoever. Fisher's Intuition. Triggered by catching a specic number of specic sh or their combinations. This is a very complex mechanic. It is currently known that: • It can trigger at any time, unlike Fish Eyes. You should be careful not to do so when target sh is not available due to time/weather restrictions. • Double Hook may speed up building it immensely. • Its progress IS broken by: Casting at another shing hole, leaving the area in some cases (but in 8 general, better not to take chances), disconnecting, going to do instanced content like dungeons/ raids. • Its progress is NOT broken by: dying and getting a raise without leaving the area (?), changing areas in some cases, doing other stu in the same area (idling, playing Triple Triad, changing class - including MIN and BTN gathering). • After the bu is obtained, you can stop gathering, move around and so on without risking losing it (except for the bu expiring, moving areas or, likely, logging out). Reel in chances, HQ chances and your stats. Many people spoiled by mining and botany feel there is a very direct and strong connection between your stats and gathering chances. This is NOT HOW IT WORKS for shing. Your reel in chances are almost purely determined by the sh you're trying to land and, possibly, Inecient Hooking not mitigated by the correct hookset (more on this later). That is, while it seems to be possible to get so much gathering that low-level sh would not get away (at least almost) ever, this is signicantly untrue for the Big Fish. My current understanding of that mechanic is as follows - when you press Hook (let's assume no other bus used for simplicity for now), one of the following happens (depending on your gathering rating): • Your gathering rating is insucient for landing this catch... - means you cannot land the sh that just bit the hook at all unless you raise your gathering. If you're more familiar with mining or botany, think of it as `Gathering rating below threshold => Gathering chance=0%' kind of mechanic. • Your gathering is above the threshold described above but not by much. We do not currently know how gathering aects catching rates in this case but speculate that there is some relatively steep increase to the gathering cap (see below). • You are way above the threshold (e.g. trying to catch ARR sh wearing SB gear). In this case, it is seemingly a at get away chance taking place. In this last scenario, it is simply another layer of RNG and the one people seemingly get upset the most with. Don't be - if you think of it as the sh not biting in the rst place, it kind of adjusts the overall catch rate for said sh and evens it out with the rest of the pack in many cases! Most notable example of this mechanic at work so far is The Matriarch. Similarly, HQ catches are also random, have a minimum perception threshold for all sh (otherwise you won't be able to land said sh in HQ no matter what) and are capped (at least until you start using Patience/Patience II). This cap (also referred to as natural HQ chance) is currently estimated to be around 15-20% for most sh with few notable exceptions, when it's much higher than that - examples being Silver Sovereign and, perhaps, Wahoo. To wrap it up, diculty in shing can have the following factors in it: • Gear checks - gear, cordials, baits and lures all cost time and gil. • Hard to meet conditions as in time/weather combinations - sometimes certain sh windows can be a few weeks apart, happen when you're at work, sleeping or (the greatest of them all) when servers undergo a maintenance. • Hard to get precursors, be it direct bite (Sculptor, to less extent - almost anything Skyshing, Duneshing, Hellshing, Aethershing or Saltshing) or multiple shes for intuition. • High GP drain to meet conditions or facilitate meeting them - Fish Eyes paired with Double Hook and Patience II in various combinations. • Low bite rate when all the conditions are met. • High get away rate. 9 It is not hard to see that in the end it's just `attempts needed' vs `attempts available' in the end, taking all the various forms. Here are some representations of this; units are arbitrary. I think that thinking in these terms could help overcoming the despair stemming from sh getting away or frustration from sh not biting at all. There are few `tiers' of combined sh `diculty' - and many forms in which it may come. 10 Low Low bite rate bite rate Low Window Low Window hook rate rarity hook rate rarity Hard Few Hard Few to meet attempts to meet attempts conditions per window conditions per window Hard to tell Hard to tell precursors precursors apart apart (a) The Matriarch (b) Shonisaurus Low Low bite rate bite rate Low Window Low Window hook rate rarity hook rate rarity Hard Few Hard Few to meet attempts to meet attempts conditions per window conditions per window Hard to tell Hard to tell precursors precursors apart apart (c) Floating Boulder (d) Sea Buttery Low Low bite rate bite rate Low Window Low Window hook rate rarity hook rate rarity Hard Few Hard Few to meet attempts to meet attempts conditions per window conditions per window Hard to tell Hard to tell precursors precursors apart apart (e) Stethacanthus (f) Ruby Dragon Figure 1: Fish `diculty structure' 11 I'm too cool for reading silly tooltips, I just need a TL;DR on shing eciently Okay, okay, just cool down a bit and read below. How to use shing resources Cat Became Hungry Cat Became Hungry oers two main parts of the interface - one for shes, another for locations. Let's start with the locations one. Figure 1: Location interface on the angler website Fishes section contains the list of all shes which can be caught at a given location. Curious part about this section is color pies. Roughly speaking, these correspond to the tug type: 12 • Upper-right, blue - light tug • Bottom, green - medium tug • Left, red - legendary (or heavy) tug Moving on, Fishing section displays the tables for chances of getting each specic sh with various baits (this also includes mooching when relevant). Unfortunately, this part sometimes requires some deciphering - namely, it displays the overall rates without considering any possibly present conditions aecting those chances. Hooking section displays minimum bite times recorded for respective baits. Both these things are also described in earlier sections of this guide. Now, on to the sh interface. Figure 2: Fish interface on the angler website Again, there's the color pie to be noted in the upper right; highest recorded size next to the medal symbol, list of locations where said sh can be caught and the breakdown of recorded catches by time of the day, weather, and bait (many sh also contain the Desynthesis section). Most of these things are more or less self-descriptive, but sometimes data artifacts occur. Below is the catches breakdown for the Redtail. 13 Figure 3: Data artifacts for Redtail on CBH The entire bump on the histogram and huge prevalence of Clouds over Fog is purely due to this sh bigger version, Bloodtail Zombie has those conditions, so the majority of Redtails are actually caught by people shing for Bloodtail Zombie and meeting both of these conditions. Do keep it in mind when trying to interpret these percentages. Carby I have promised you it will be your bread and butter while going for the big sh - and that it will be! Let's take a quick look at the interface (it gets updates rather often - don't be surprized if this guide is outdated and ask in the Fishcord if you need more info!). Figure 4: Carby interface On the top of the page, there's a short FAQ (not included in the screenshot) and a bunch of lters. If you're just starting and have lots of sh to catch, go with sorting by `Overall Rarity' (=Uptime in the Availability column, more on this bit later). 14 Main table consists of the following parts, from left to right: • Catch and pin toggles. Checking the tick puts the sh in the Caught list (and allows ltering by Caught/Uncaught under `Completion'). Checking the pin puts the sh to the top of the list, and it will be always displayed regardless of whether you ticked the caught mark or not. • `Name' - sh icon, name, patch and additional info. Additional info currently comprises the need for the folklore tome (indicated by the book symbol), possibility to put sh into aquarium (aquarium symbol, not on the screenshot) and the list of shes needed to trigger Fisher's Intuition with their respective counts, icons and names (see Warden of the Seven Hues aka Skittles/Lord of Skittles and Stethacanthus). • `Availability' - displays current status ( in XX seconds/minutes/hours means window is not open yet, closes in XX seconds/munutes/hours - that it is and you better hurry :p). `Next' displays the time until next window (depending on the `Upcoming window format' setting, local time for that window on mouseover). Finally, `Uptime' is simply the percentage of time this sh can be caught, all conditions factored in. It does not show the window rarity directly (naturally, shorter window = less uptime). • Location - self-descriptive (as you can see, this eld is used for intuition sh availability). • Conditions - list of conditions required to catch the sh. It's the easiest to explain that on ex- amples - on the picture above, Glarramundi can only be caught when it's Clear Skies weather with Fair Skies being the preceding weather (weather chain). Castaway Chocobo Chick can be caught between 9-16 ET. Sculptor can be caught between 12-18 ET and only during Thunder- storms weather. Warden of the Seven Hues can be caught all day(-ish) - Fisher's Intuition can only be triggered 0-16ET (by any of the prerequisite shes). • `Bait' - information about catch chains. Again, examples: - Glarramundi is a direct catch with Suspending Minnow and Powerful Hookset is to be used if under Patience/Patience II bus. Castaway Chocobo Chick and Little Perykos are the end of a long mooch chain starting from Lugworm. Warden of the Seven Hues is a direct catch again, but requires Fisher's Intuition. Sculptor requires 4 minutes long Fish Eyes bu (the in-game bu display will actually immediately tick down to 3 minutes! Please refer to the Timings section for distinguishing these bus in more complex cases). And that's it! Make sure not to forget folklore books, sh eyes and such; whenever info about hookset is missing - do your own research with the help of comments on Cat Became Hungry and... best of luck! 15 Timings Fish Eyes Courtesy of Fishcord as assembled by Lyra. Have fun on multiple FE locations. Heavensward bloodchaser: 80s (1.3m) mountain kraken: 180s (3m) aetherochemical compound #666: 140s (2.3m) warballoon: 120s (2m) thousand n: 240s (4m) crystal pigeon: 180s (3m) ceti: 180s (3m) merciless: 140s (2.3m) dimorphodon: 140s (2.3m) goblin bass: 150s (2.5m) inksh: 360s (6m) (West Mourn) black magesh: 120s (2m) hraesvelgr's tear: 140s (2.3m) (Anyx Old) riddle: 300s (5m) magma louse: 300s (5m) (Clearpool) capelin: 150s (2.5m) bishopsh: 180s (3m) priestsh: 240s (4m) (The Flagship) functional proto-hropken: 120s (2m) barreleye: 150s (2.5m) (Halo) a fossiltongue: 180s (3m) lavalord: 240s (4m) the lord of lords: 300s (5m) Stormblood hak bitterling: 240s (4m) tawny wench shark: 240s (4m) wraithsh: 240s (4m) pomegranate trout: 240s (4m) (Plum Spring) silken koi: 240s (4m) hagoromo koi: 240s (4m) (Loch Seld) b sculptor: 240s (4m) diamond-eye: 240s (4m) (Onokoro) swordsh: 240s (4m) blackn snake eel: 180s (3m) a note - it is possible to avoid both lords FE triggering by starting shing before 8am ET to prepare intuition. Be careful not to trigger it too early though b note - timers are not overlapping here 16 Some important bite times (work in progress) Silversh family - typically starts at 10s, ends at about 15s with honeyworm/butterworm. Ice Faerie (at Clearpool) - typically starts at 10-12s, ends at 18s; Abalathian Smelt starts at about 15s - to take or not to take that 3s overlap is your choice. Sculptor - currently believed to start at 23s; Pearl-eye at the same location starts at about 18s and believed to end at about 30-32s, making a huge overlap between two. Advanced concepts Picking your target Like described earlier, when and what sh bites is snapshotted when you Cast. More importantly, `when' and `what' are connected! Each sh has a certain bite time range, primarily dependent on the bait used. Bite time is measured from the moment you use Cast to the moment you hear sound/see the animation/feel the controller rumble. Good news is, these times are relatively known and recorded on CBH (as a crowd eort in data collection). Here is how it looks like: Figure 5: Bite time display on angler website Shown above are shortest recorded bite times for Giant Crane Fly in Tharl Oom Khash in seconds (LT = local time) and Eorzean minutes (ET = Eorzean time). Unfortunately, in many cases shortest recorded is not good enough. Instead, you should be aiming to develop a feel for said bite time ranges - for many shes, e.g. Coppersh and Silversh, their bite times are the shortest for the given location so you can cancel all the casts after a certain amount of time - whatever bites past that mark, won't be them and you'll just waste a lot of time waiting for the wrong sh to bite and let go or reeling it in! Experiment with it for a while, I personally deem it one of the coolest things about shing - how it's possible to "develop a feel" for a location and sh there more eciently. Here's a little something to help you with that: a timer macro. It is the one I'm using, your preferred timestamps may dier. It is often paired with Cast (to do that, add /ac Cast at the start of the macro), but using it separetely when you Cast or Mooch is just ne as well. /micon Pray emote /echo Countdown started <wait.5> /echo 5 <wait.2> /echo 7 <wait.3> /echo 10 <wait.2> /echo 12 <wait.3> /echo 15 <wait.3> /echo 18 <wait.2> /echo 20 <wait.3> /echo 23 <wait.2> /echo 25 <wait.3> /echo 28 <wait.4> /echo 32 Using a new macro stops execution of the old one, so possibly it makes sense to use dummy macros 17 for other actions to stop echo text spam in your chatlog, like this: /micon Hook /ac Hook Let me provide you with two practical examples of choosing the bait for the job. Suppose we are going to sh in the Middle Thaliak River for Bobgoblin Bass. This is a sh with very rare windows, and you better max out your chances while going for it! Let's take a look at carby: Figure 6: Bobgoblin on carby So, Goblin jig into Sweetsh, simple enough. But what does CBH tell us? (a) Bite rates (b) Bite times Figure 7: Figuring out which bait/lure to use Goblin Jig and Brute leech sport about the same bite rates - but, as common for all lures, Goblin Jig bite times are signicantly higher! So, if you're okay with spending some red scrips (if you're not trying to reel in sh you don't need to save time lures also become more expensive!), Brute Leech is actually superior in this case. This is not to undermine the credibility of carby - rather to underline the importance of doing your own research. In many cases, there's more than one way to catch some sh. In most cases, carby gives an accurate and concise description of how to approach it. Now on to the second example. I call it the diculty arising from non-selective bait. This time, we're shing for Helicoprion at Sagolii Desert. Again, carby rst: Figure 8: Helicoprion on carby What does angler have to tell us this time?.. 18 Figure 9: Helicoprion on angler Ah, good ol' ARR sh. Nothing to do here, only use Sand Leech and pray. Except... Cancel casts early maybe? Figure 10: Sand leech bite times Nah, tough luck here as well. It is actually possible to weed out Antlion Slug and tone down Dustsh and Sand Bream a bit, but now it would require experimenting with timers yourself. This is one of the thing making aetherpools and such harder. Notes on GP management This is a rather intimate topic. Ultimately, GP management is what constitutes a large chunk of the fun in shing - and thus it's down to you! I will still give you an example of my thoughts on GP management in a couple of locations to hopefully aid you with this process. Suppose we're shing for Skittles (Warden of the Seven Hues). Our prerequisite knowledge is such that: 19 • Two out of three (Firelight and Indigo) prerequisite (intuition) shes are mooched and only up 4 out of 24 Eorzean Hours (regardless of weather). • All intuition shes are light tugs. All other sh in this location are medium tugs (save for the Warden itself). • At the time of writing, Double Hooking intuition shes gives two of them at a time. Based on this knowledge, let's outline possible strategies (for Firelight and Indigo only, for the sake of simplicity). 1. Rely on Mooch II and Double Hook light tug mooches. Use Patience II when Mooch II is on cooldown. 2. Use Patience II and Precision Hookset int shes. 3. Use Patience II, if it's close to wearing o as you are holding Violet Prismsh or Red Prismsh HQ in your hands, let it expire; then Mooch and Double Hook light tugs. 4. Use Patience, Double Hook light tugs on mooches and pray. First strategy is the most obvious and popular one. Personally, I don't like it because it makes you spam Chum for extended periods of time or be capped on GP, so I'm using the third approach instead. I believe all of them to be quite viable, and you may want to consider them all - again, the ultimate decision of what to do is yours and yours only. Sometimes, there are odd things like Chum of Desperation under Patience II or no hookset under Patience (especially during leveling). Sometimes, things get very convoluted. Let me show you one more example of what is, perhaps, the trickiest shing skill managing to date. Namely, Stethacanthus hunting. With how low Sculptor bite rates are, sitting there trying to get them one by one seems insane, which is why fellow shers almost immediately started considering Double Hooking them. Then another unexpected complication occurred - it started to seem that Stethacanthus itself is only available during 16-18 ET, which immensely narrows down the possibilities for already hard Sculptor landing. And when chances were looking grim, a neat trick came to the rescue. Collect allows you to freeze the catch, delaying the Fisher's intuition trigger and regen GP. If you say No on the prompt below, the catch will be landed as if Collect wasn't used (in this case, bringing 2 Sculptors thanks to the Double Hook), but to do so whenever you want. Figure 11: Collectable prompt Right, this means that with holding Sculptor with Collect and using Double Hook people were able to sh Stethacanthus without spending a whole eternity at the salt lake. A great victory for the shing community! The TL;DR of the resulting strategy can be found at the end of the FAQ. I'll nish this section by an example of Gogo's elaborate strategy at catching Stethacanthus which I'm personally proud of contributing to. 20 Step 1. Use Patience II at XX-1:16 (with the Sculptor window starting at XX:00) Step 2. Immediately pop a Watered Cordial HQ. Use Chum Step 3. At XX:01, use Fish Eyes and pop a Hi-Cordial Step 4. Use Cast Step 5. ??? Step 6. PROFIT!!11!!! I sincerely wish you to have lots of fun piecing together crazy approaches like this and taking pride in such optimization, and may your sh be plenty! 21 FAQ 1. Q: How do I catch sh X? A: Try starting to nd this info with angler and carby. If it fails, ask away in the Fishcord. 2. Q: How do I catch sh X? SE forgot to put it in the game! A: Double, nay, triple-check you meet all the conditions for it. Folklore books and Fish Eyes are getting forgotten the most often. Do make sure you have the correct bu from Fish Eyes also! 3. Q: ARR sh got away from me 3 times already! Why is this allowed?! A: Such is the way of the sh and you're not entitled to it no matter what gear you're parading. Refer to the section about Hook in Skill overview 4. Q: I keep getting NQ Ku'ers under Patience II. What gives? A: Most likely, your perception is too low (see the same section as referenced above). 5. Q: Okay, what stats do I need then and how to get them? A: As of the end of SB, you need 1300 gathering and need (unless you want to Mooch II and pray all day) 1150 perception at our best estimate to date to catch all the sh in the game without any extra trouble. After you meet minumum requirements, GP is your best friend and you should start investing into it. As for `how to get them' part, consider using food (and maybe even fc, if desperate) bus; it is also expected that you'd need crafted and overmelded gear to catch sh while it's `relevant'. 6. Q: I've heard there was a secret technique about catching Stethacanthus. What is it? A: Okay I will make a few exceptions to the answer to the question #1. Stethacanthus - don't forget Fish Eyes for the Sculptor. Put Collect on. Mooch o `natural HQ' Rock Saltshes or Mooch II whenever it's up. Double Hook all mooches over 23s on the timer. Pray hard. When you nally get a collectable prompt, wait for GP to regen and Steth window to nally start(16 ET). If need be, wait until 16 ET the next Eorzean day, respond to the prompt, move around to get rid of the `sh amiss...' message. Regardless, let GP regen, get rid of the Fish Eyes bu to not accidentally pollute the pool catch (with Sculptors of all shes, lol), Patience II into Powerful Hookset x2. Rock Saltsh is a 12-18s medium tug catch, you can ignore the rest. Steth bites relatively often during its int window. MAKE SURE NOT TO SAY `YES' TO THE COLLECTABLE PROMPT!!! (and no, I haven't made this mistake - but some people have, and they have regretted it deeply). Opabinia - use Fish Eyes. Check if it's the correct Fish Eyes bu. Curse it. Get rid of the wrong bu. Go to step one. When you nally have the right bu (ticks to 1 min immediately in the UI), Proto-hropkens can be a direct catch which is what you want. Medium tug 15s, Double Hook it. Be prepared to pop a Hi-Cordial immediately, Patience (II with enough GP) (or Mooch II with hobo GP pool) up and start shing for Opa itself immediately. Problematicus - show up before 8 AM ET to ensure getting the Fossiltongue Fish Eyes. If getting too many crabs and risking to get int before the window even starts, reset your int progress by casting your line at another hole (West Mourn is just a few steps away). Repeat as needed. Slippery it might be, but with Double Hook for Fossiltongue (use a timer to gure out whether you have those on the line!) catching one is relatively easy. If deciding to continue shing when Lord of Lords is up, you might as well keep its int and keep shing if you still need one. Warden of the Seven Hues - I've already outlined a bit about it in Notes on GP management. You should be prepared, however, to wait between windows for a full Eorzean day (72 minutes or so IRL). What you may and may not do to not reset int progress is outlined in the Core shing mechanics. 7. Q: Should I use Patience II to increase my chances to land a big sh? A: No. But it sure helps if you're trying to get HQ sh or collectables. 22 8. Q: Should I lower stats to increase reel in chances because comments on CBH say so? A: No. That's yet another superstition. 9. Q: (Some question about weather conditions) A: Please refer to the Core shing mechanics. Good hunting! 23 Document updates 2020-08-26: Added a few bits of info on SS and IC, ShB tug display, P1 cost changes; description of deliberately missing hooks in abbreviations. 24
Enter the password to open this PDF file:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-