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Crossposting from FFXIVcore, people seem to find these thoughts of mine on the intertwined nature of fishing, cooking, alchemy and goldsmithing interesting...

 

So anyways, I was saying in another thread how the Black Ghosts you pull up in Grade 3 freshwaters all the time turn out to be a revelation for levelling Culinary disciples.

Yep and if you are levelling cooking its a godsend. I should put up a fish to fish guide for levelling off of fish. Bare in mind that when YG says a fish recipe is level 5, it means it is between ranks 5 and 10. So thinking you are going to effectively use Fighting Fish to level at 11 is not going to play out.  

I realised yesterday on my road to Rank 20 fishing that I had not sold a single one of my fish to an and found a use for them all, in levelling Alchemy and Cooking. Even Malm Kelp becomes ultra handy mid teens Alchemy. And you are using all that sea sand you have made.  Also with that Sea and River Sand its a piece of cake to rank up goldsmithing making fine sand... which you can then use to break down crystals into shards about as a low teens alchemist. I have been 100% self sufficient in all this, I just adjust my elemental affinities to get the crystals I am going to be using next. Of course I was broke until I got to Rank 13 Alchemy which was coincident with me consistently fishing up Dark Bass around Rank 16 fishing. Now I have a very steady stream of gil and I have no costs but repairs. The way you make fish glue also moves along with your rank, next up Herring and Razor Clams, Grade 4 bounty. Looking ahead you can see how planned out the relationship between the 3 disciplines was. The fish you are fishing at x fishing rank are generally what you are finding useful at that same rank in Cooking or Alchemy. I get to work with linkshell members who are working on clothcraft, smithing, armoury, goldsmith, carpentry and can largely trade my goods with them, like fish glue for... everything and Shrimp for the Armourer looking to skill up on lures. I love this game and I love fishing.

Once we have some kind of, any kind of workable market system you wont have to craft to make gil, the fish are so useful to crafters that they will sell and sell.

My top tip for levelling was the one taught by Alec Baldwin in David Mamet's film Glengarry Glen Bass:



Don't over extend yourself, just because it feels good getting 140 rank points a fish, its worthless if you are only pulling in 2 out of 10 fish. Fish in a grade where its become easy, getting 100-110 rank points for 8 fish out of 10 is better than 4 out of 10. Plus those first 10 will be fast and the second 10 will be slower. Maximise your Rph*, maximise your inventory of fish, maximise your shard harvest.

*Rank per hour :)

Don't be proud. That's a  lesson I learned from Marcellus Wallace in Tarantino's Perch Fiction.






Use Kida's excellent Log tool here http://www.disciplesoftheland.com/Recorder.aspx for an hour while you are fishing and see for yourself what works and what doesn't (You can export your own data to check this. Brilliant.) Yes there are other factors involved, moon phase, how much youve pumped into DEX but even then you can get an idea of how those things affect you. I'm really hoping Kida shares the data as a whole, I'm dying to get all 'spergin on that data in Excel. Maybe with top contributors on a confidential basis?  That's going to be a great resource as data grows and we ditch the open beta data, which is now just a red herring and holding it back. But I'm sure that will get sorted and this will live up to the greatness that Kida's FFXI fishing database was.

Don't NPC what you fish up. You can use it all, you can give it to linkshell members to use if you don't want to and people will buy all of them once their value is common knowledge and shopping for them isnt a pain in the ash tuna.

To hammer home this point I turn to the Wu Tang Clan's Raekwon The Chef's seminal lyrical bombs he dropped way back in 1993:

Your Weathered Fishing Rod will get you to 20 just fine, stop whining. I do recommend putting points into DEX, it will make the point where you can jump up a grade earlier and still Always Be Catching. I'm starting to think PIE does the same thing as DEX, so if you are a Disciple of War in your spare time, switching up stats in DEX wont mess you up to much and the same with PIE for Disciples of Magic. Of course you shouldn't care because you were born to fish anyway. Try it out!

Good luck! Share the wealth and share the love so all the anime catgirls can munch on fish and be happy. Big shout out to the people that made this all possible, FFGOONS that something awful wearing better clothes than you on Figaro and getting Dwarves all up in your Elves on Besaid verily forsooth.


Copyright Laotzu and FFGoons don't front! Run tell dat!

All I can confirm is DEX. At Rank 14-15 I was dying to catch Dark Bass and start producing Fish Glue. Also Grade 2 waters (e.g. Skull Valley and Camp Drybone) were starting to get sadly lower and lower rank points on each pull but the Rph wasn't really increasing in kind. Its a rough stretch. I know I preach Always Be Catching but here it was a little different, I would be willing to pass up some efficiency to be able to catch Dark Bass more reliably.

It was a no go. There are a couple of places the Camp Horizon side of Thanalan you can fish for Dark Bass but just couldn't regularly catch anything. Then I loaded DEX with the points gained from a level up (physical) and a couple of Reassigns and went back. Bingo. I'd jumped that gap.

At Rank 23 last night I hit Cassiopiea, could pull some stuff in but not a practical levelling spot. So went away for a couple of hours after another Level up (physical) and two reassigns to throw as much as possible into DEX. Went back and did very well, as my log I entered here last night would show. Unfortunately I did not log that first experience for comparison.

Also, eating your fish gives you a temporary DEX buff. Eating raw HQ fish can give up to a 6 point buff!! (Miquote at least) Again had increased success while on fish drugs. Its very noticable when you are crossing the Grade boundary, either you are catching or you aren't it seems.

I originally was going to ask Kida add stat records to the LOG tool but really the current amount of variables makes drawing conclusions very difficult. Unless someone went in and did a controlled experiment of adjusting PIE while keeping DEX static and vice versa, only fishing on a certain moon and weather combo, with the same bait and keeping your rank points flat (aka impossible). Well good luck to anyone willing to try to do that but I'm only interested in ranking up. My experience with DEX is solid enough for me to rely on, plus the ubiquity of +DEX on fishing gear, the Ability available for purchase at the guild etc.

DEX affects Accuracy. Brass Rings are a possible reward from Rank 10 fishing leves which have +ACC. In my experience, they don't give you items that aren't handy for fishing. On the flip side PIE affects Magical Accuracy. If youre stats are weighted towards being able to switch to a Disciple of War you'd favor DEX, if you wanted to play a Disciple of Magic more often, you wouldn't care about ACC but you would care about Magical Accuracy. I am wondering if that means they are equivalent for fishing maybe? The two Talents are geared towards each type of player, so each can have an effective accuracy boost. Are they equivalent and so loading up both is a waste of point allocation? Or is PIE something different, like LUCK? What role does STR play? I don't know!

All I know is that DEX works and reducing my earlier side bet in PIE to fund DEX has not hurt me.