Fishing
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Contents
Overview
Fishing is a significant source of livelihood and commonly practiced by all the cultures of the UnReal World. The fish to be caught is determined by the fishing equipment and the fishing site as the different kind of fish do live in a shallow or deep waters, lakes or rivers. Perches, breams and pikes are the most common fish living in lakes. Salmons are found only in rivers, and especially from rapids during their spawning season. There are also lavarets, trouts, pike-perches and so on. Fishing is practiced all around the year, but in the wintertime you'll need to a make hole in the ice using [q]uaff or fishing skill. You can actively fish using a suitable tool, such as a fishing rod. Some weapons, such as tridents, spears or clubs are also suitable for fishing. The idea of this is to spear or club the fish swimming near the shore. This fishing method is fruitful only with relatively big fish, and most often the catch is a pike. There are also passive fishing methods. Currently it is possible to use nets.
General Fishing advice
Fishing is one of the easier ways to get food for newer players. There are two kinds of fishing. Active and Passive. Fishing can net(pun intended) you a large amount of food, but in the winter months becomes a little harder as you'll need to cut holes in ice in order to fish. These holes also re-freeze, so generally it is advised to only use fishing as something to grant you extra food. That is not to say that one cannot survive on just fish, but it is harder to do so.
Local fish resources may become exhausted after some time (with truly massive amounts of fish caught?). You will notice that both active and passive fishing yield almost nothing. It seems that resources are replenished at the beginning of each month.
Active Fishing
Active fishing means that you actually stand by the lake/river shore, with a Club/Spears/Fishing Rod, waiting for a passing fish. The best tool to use for this is the fishing rod, followed by spears (javelins count) then the club. A complete session of fishing lasts about 3 hours if you don't catch anything. Less if you manage to catch something.
Notice that when using active fishing, you need to be standing on a tile that's part of the water-area e.g. it says "Rapids" above the local terrain map. If you try to fish in a tile that does not count as water-area, the game will tell you that "You should find a better spot! From this very location you can't expect to catch any fish."
Active Fishing Advice
One thing to remember is that active fishing with javelins is a slow way to starve to death. You just can't get ahead with this method even if you use rapid water tiles. Either buy/rob/steal a fishing rod and/or net, or get food another way. However, with a high enough fishing skill, javelin fishing can help your character along until a better source of food can be found.
Passive Fishing
Passive fishing uses nets, which you must trade for (or receive through the I want to be a fisherman starting scenario).
Passive Fishing advice
To set a net, use a punt or raft to get out into deeper water (occasionally, you may be able to walk out far enough into the water) and then deploy the net with the fishing skill. There is no need to spread multiple nets over different tiles, you can put all your nets in the same spot with no ill effects. Now leave it undisturbed for at least one day - there won't be any fish inside before, and checking will reset the timer - but shorter than two days; if you leave it too long you will only get a message about all the fish being dead. The game will make a note in your log of the time when you set or check your nets. A good way to use nets efficiently is to check them one time period later than when you set them the day before (i.e. if you set them in the afternoon of the 23rd, check them in the late afternoon of the 24th). When you've reached evening or the night, just take a net-fishing break for one day and start over in the morning or small hours. This will let fish four days out of five easily, and more if you're careful about not missing a beat. It's best to check and reset as soon as possible, since you don't seem to get more fish for being close to the time limit, and this way there is less risk of missing the deadline and loosing a catch.With high fishing skill (and the Fisher's Request ritual) you can expect to net 4-5 lb of fish per net per catch, sometimes much more, when you net half a dozen lavarets or burbots. If you store the raw fish in a cellar, you can wait for two catches to stack, and string up 3 lb lavarets or burbots by the 19 to smoke or dry every other day or so, very efficient 57 lb per string. Batches of bigger fish are more difficult to accumulate, but then you only need half a dozen to get a better deal per string than with meat.
