Fishing Guide: An Impossible Bream

[Faymar]

Calabar, thanks for this. I was just wondering whether it was worth continuing when I read your post today. It's hard to know whether it's actually useful or the references are so obscure that they don't help at all.


*shivers at the thought of ToFS*

I do hope there is water other than a pool of blood, I'll look to go there and report back.

[Niami DenMother]

This may get some extra attention now that it's been moved over to the new tradeskill guide forum. Sadly, I've not had the time to read through it as much as I'd like, given all the database insanity and the like, but I've had fun reading it when able!

Hmmm, maybe I should try to read an entry or two every time I am lemming fishing ... I have a couple younguns over on Stromm (the newbie server), and I wanted to verify some LoY baking trivials. The first time through, I used my level 10 druid (I was hoping to forage for goodies at the same time), and lost camo literally 3 steps from my "safe" fighing spot in the depths of luggald territory in Dulak's Harbor (The harbor itself is a no-fishing zone). It was a creative CR at that level, with no porters available, etc. I got smart the second time, stocked 3 poles and a ton of bait on my level 9 necro, and ran for it. (The theory being that if she died, she'd not leave a messy corpse, and could always run back.) She successfully fished through 6 stacks of bait, with only one broken pole.

~Mum

[Calabar]

Congratulations on your successful fishing expedition. Feign death fishing has always provided me with such an amusing mental image. “Yep, I’m dead. Nothing to see here. Ignore the fishing pole I’m attaching a wiggling worm to. And it’s the wind, honest, that’s casting my line into the water and pulling it back in. And the flip floppy fish that’s being stuffed into my backpack is purely a figment of your imagination. After all, I’m dead you know.”

[Faymar]

Bah! At 200 I am still regularly going through two rods (although with the companion I don't mind so much). How do you do it?

With a view to finishing it I've been working on restructuring it a bit to make information easier to find and putting recipes on a separate page (as my recipe references are even vaguer than the in-game books!) for quick reference, so in the end there will be a page of "everything you can make with fish" which will make a nice cross-reference.

-Tay
(living in fear of Luclin waters being populated with fish)

[Calabar]

I understand how you feel about the fishing poles. And I have a fisherman’s companion too. *grins*

When I first started playing EQ my druid bought a fishing pole upon his first visit to Freeport. Can you believe there’s not a fishing pond or stream to be found anywhere around his home city of Kelethin? Anyway, Calabar loved to fish and did so whenever he had the opportunity. It wasn’t until his fishing skill had reached the mid nineties that his first fishing pole broke. He just sat there for the longest time staring at the broken rod in his hands. He had no idea that a fishing pole could break. It was a very heart wrenching experience for him. And every since then he was never able to cast a line more than ten time before his pole would break again. The day he received his fisherman’s companion was one of the happiest days of his life.

[Orolmy]

Can you believe there’s not a fishing pond or stream to be found anywhere around his home city of Kelethin?

Well, there's always the area at the back of Felwithe, good fishin' there.

[Kentarre]

Can you believe there?s not a fishing pond or stream to be found anywhere around his home city of Kelethin?

Well, there's always the area at the back of Felwithe, good fishin' there.

Yeah, but Felwithe is still a city! There's just something about the atmosphere in Greater Faydark that would be perfect for fishing (especially now that most of the chatter has left for the Bazaar)... Not having a fishing spot there has always really irked me. The Kithicor Forest is almost a substitute, but it is a little too sinister (not to mention dangerous!).

[Faymar]

Well, the bad news is I still haven't finished the reorg, and the way that I'm doing it means it will not be possible to move it to a commercial server when it's done. If the House Ogre would like to get in touch with me with proposed design schemes though, I'm happy to look at fitting in with the EQtraders style.

The good news is that I've added http://www.intrigue.co.uk/fishing/fishing.php?zone=14The Hole</A>


Edit: by the way, for Denmom, bandwidth isn't an issue, should fishing ever turn out to be that popular

[Calabar]

As usual Faymar, your latest update was a joy to read. I never fail to see Norrath in a different light when I read you work. It’s just a shame the light tends to fade as I reenter the world myself. At least I can look forward to your next update.

A couple of friends wanted to return to the Tower of Frozen Shadow a few nights back and asked if I would like to accompany them. I happily did so, making sure I had several stacks of bait with me this time. I found out there are at least two pools to fish from. Unfortunately they are both filled with blood. One pool is on the third floor, just a room or two down from the kitchen. There are two or three undead creatures that call this room home, so they would have to be destroyed in order to fish safely. The other pool is on the fifth floor, in the back of the room with the undead wedding party. The entire wedding part has to be destroyed before you’ll be able to cast your line in piece. I fished in both of these pools that night and after using up more than three stacks of bait I didn’t pull in a single grotto bluegill. And I must say that fresh fish have extremely hearty constitutions, for they seemed to thrive in these bloody pools.

I’ve fished up zone specific fish in several other zones with little problem. But these fish seem to be especially elusive. If you should ever happen to journey to this frozen tomb I hope you have better luck hooking these fish then I did.

I wonder if I was using the wrong kind of bait. Hmm…

[Chibbodee Crocket]

Wonderfull guide, quite an enjoyable read
I would love to see you visit my favorite little fishing spot on Kerra Ridge, quite tasty Kerra Catfish can be found there amongst the vicious Spikefish that attack the poor Kerrans when they go for a swim. Right off the rocks near where the Kerra Pumas like to hang out is a nice place to sit back, relax, fish and enjoy a "cold one". Trogdor even enjoyed playing with the kitties while i was fishing.

[Faymar]

I'm kind of stuck with this, due to the format I started it in.

I go to Cabalis, find no sewer catfish, write an entry about it. Now, there are three options:

1) the fish is added to the zone (as happened in this case) and my "journal entry" is now clearly wrong, which is mainly a problem because I themed the entry about that. So I need to rewrite it with the catfish existing, which sort of screws up the "timing" aspect of following Tay's adventures.

2) the fish is not added to the zone and EQ traders corrects the zone-specific fishing guide, at which point the journal entry is confusing to people using it as a reference, why on earth did I mention the fish in the first place if it's not there?

3) The fish is not added to the zone and the EQtraders reference is not updated. This is the only real way the journal in it's current form makes sense, although I concede it's not really a realistic way forward.

So, in addition to time issues, I'm sort of looking at the journal trying to work out whether I just completely fictionalise it to preserve it's usefulness as a reference, or if I give up on it acting as a reference at all and simply write how the world is now, without worrying about changes.

So, that's why the journal has kind of "died" for the moment. Will post here as I get enthusiasm for one of the two paths.

[Calabar]

If you wish to work from a time line perspective I would think this is still doable, though a pain to have to deal with. You are writing this guide from the perspective of someone living in Norrath. I see no reason why that Norrath can’t change right along with our game world. After all, just like we have designers for our game your character’s Norrath is filled with all powerful, wacky gods. Anything is possible. I’d suggest leaving your story just the way it is, just add updates. Your character hears that new fish now populate a zone you once visited and she makes a return trip to check it out. EQ has never been a static game, so there’s no reason to expect your character to live in a static world.

[Itzena]

If you want an IC explaination as to why you can now catch fish that you couldn't before...well, you're trying out that new lure you just made/bought/found, rumoured to attract the elusive (whatever fish you're looking for here that just got added to a zone's fishing table).

Oh, and your guide save me from further auto-stupidity in trying to catch hatch dace in Paineel btw. So thanks.

[Faymar]

I don't think I was clear in my grumblings...it's not that I can't make up a reason, it's that I end up with conflicting information or double entries per zone...

At the moment, some one looking at the "summary" page or clicking on Cabilis, for example, would be told there is no sewer catfish. If I clarify this in a later entry they would only see much later (assuming they kept reading) that the fish is now in game... (which reminds me in fact, I must add an ooc at least to Cabilis now to make sure noone takes what is in there as correct).

The zone/fish listing on the front page (which is being moved into a better database) goes out of date with every change and the current system doesn't allow for two entries per zone.

Anyway, I'm not trying to make it everyone elses problem, just thought I'd post as to why this has halted while I think of a way of dealing with Cab and TOFS (and no doubt it'll come up again

[Slippyblade]

Seems to me you just need to update your XML schema and recode a bit to add eddendums to the zones...