Fishing Guide
This guide is intended to be a route to level 99 Fishing as well as an explanation of the mechanics involved and advice on how to progress. A brief summary is included directly underneath this introduction for those who don't want to read through all the mechanics involved.
Any questions, feedback, or parts that are not clear? Feel free to post in the wiki channel in discord and I'll try to answer and update the guide.
Contents
TL:DR give me the summary for maxing fast
- Prioritize getting 100% node search and node gather chance through gear, buffs, affixes, or enchantments.
- Use 1 piece of Jewelry with haste enchantments and Cloak of Many Pockets / the Void (Camo Cloak in Stormy Seas).
- Always use the bait that provides the most reel power, if it doesn't reduce your success chance below 100%. (don't use tentacle bait until late game when equipping it does not reduce your overall sub-stats).
- Keep using the highest tier Tacklebox you can and augment it to at least +5. Enchant with Reinforced Line unless you need Pungent Bait to reach 100% search chance.
- Fish in the highest zone you can where failed attempts (or combat encounters in Stormy Seas) do not outweigh the XP gained per hour. Don't fish in Stormy Seas without a Camo Cloak
- Get the full fishing set as soon as possible (and augment it where possible to +5) by accepting its related quest at level 50 for the set bonus stat increase and the enchantments on the pieces.
- You will not be able to make the Ocean’s Embrace before maxing the skill but if you want to keep fishing beyond max you will want to aim for it after getting to +5 on your gear
If you already know / don’t care about how fishing works you can skip to the full guide using the contents menu on the top left of the page. If you’re new to fishing or just want to understand the mechanics more here’s…
A not so brief overview of fishing
Fishing is the most complex of the three gathering skills in the game, and is intended to require more investment than mining or foraging. It was the first to receive the node system that has been adapted for mining and foraging, and has five sub-stats that influence the skill compared to mining and foraging which only account for effective skill level. On top of this, fishing is the only gathering skill in which you can fail to gather anything after completing an action, resulting in no items and 0 XP gained.
While mining and foraging are pretty easy to level up and gather resources without using any gear, fishing is the gathering skill where aiming for gear, buffs, and bait has a large impact.
But why fish? Apart from just wanting to max out all your skills, fishing provides:
- Fish - (obviously) for use in cooking
- Fibers - The raw materials used in cloth weaving for crafting and augmenting magic gear. As well as augmenting fishing equipment
- Driftwood and Aquamarines - Components used in crafting and augmenting magic gear, Tackleboxes, and fishing equipment.
- Fish Oil - Provided you have the oil spill enchantment, this makes fishing actions have a chance to also give you Fish Oil which is used when crafting Pyre Logs for heat. Preparing caught fish will also give you Fish Oil.
What makes fishing different? In short, the node system and sub-stats. In long:
The node system
The node system has been confusing for players ever since it was released. An easy way to think of it is that when you start fishing, your player gets on a boat and sails for a certain amount of time to find a school of fish (a node) and then takes a different amount of time to catch one of those fish (a resource). After your player has caught everything in the area, they have to sail onward to find another school of fish to catch (another node).
Bait Power
Bait power is used to calculate the time it takes you to find nodes, the chance of succeeding in doing so, and the size of the node you find. Bait power can be acquired through bait, fishing equipment / Tackleboxes, and augmenting. This can also be supplemented with buffs and enchantments. As finding a node happens less often than gathering from a node. Due to the time needed to search for a node being much longer than gathering a resource failing a search results in the biggest time losses in fishing and it is important to increase bait power to reduce this. Luckily your chance to search will increase alongside your level and gear as well as with affixes and enchantments.
Reel Power
Reel power is used to calculate the time it takes you to gather a resource from a node as well as the chance of succeeding in doing so. Reel power can also be acquired through bait, fishing equipment / Tackleboxes, and augmenting. This can also be supplemented with buffs and enchantments. Reel power comes into play multiple times per node, as you have to gather everything before moving on to the next. Having high reel power means gathering resources faster.
Bonus Rarity
Bonus rarity affects the quality of the nodes you find while fishing and the quality of the resource you gather from that node. This improves your chance to find rarer fish and other resources by unlocking better quality nodes. If you are aiming for specific drops in the loot table from fishing, try to increase your rarity as much as possible. Meeting the minimum requirement for a node doesn't make it a common find. You should aim for around 50 rarity over the minimum rarity if possible to gather these drops in any meaningful amounts. Just like for bait / reel power, rarity can also be acquired from bait, fishing equipment / Tackleboxes, and augmenting. This can also be supplemented with buffs and enchantments.
The UI
Opening the fishing tab will show you three key sections:
An info panel on the left:
This shows you all of your current fishing related stats, such as your:
Effective fishing level:
This is what the game treats as your fishing level. Tackleboxes and fishing gear can increase this, slightly reducing the time needed to search and gather and increasing your success chance and bait preservation.
Bait Preservation Chance:
The chance that bait will not be removed from your tacklebox on a gathering action. Can be increased with the Bait Preservation enchantment, by using metal baits, and by leveling Fishing.
Bait Power:
The strength of your bait, used to calculate the speed and chance of searching for a fishing node.
Reel Power:
Your fishing strength, the time taken and the chance to succeed in pulling a resource out of the water.
Bonus rarity:
This is used to calculate your chance of finding rarer fishing nodes as well as the resource you gather from that node.
A tacklebox section in the top middle:
Confusingly different from an equippable tacklebox. This is where you store your bait for use in fishing. There is no limit to the amount of bait you can store here and it is consumed from the top left slot. You can click on bait to remove it from here as well as moving bait to the front of the tacklebox to be consumed first. There is also a setting you can select to automatically move bait you acquire to the tacklebox if there is already a matching piece inside here. You should always be using bait to fish, as it's the main way to boost all fishing stats before you have late-game fishing gear.
Fishing locations:
This is where you can select a zone to fish in. Clicking the i icons in the top right will show roughly what you can receive from nodes and what rarities they unlock at. Again, this is the minimum rarity, and you should aim for at least 50 rarity over if you want to gather these in any meaningful amounts.
The icons at the bottom of each fishing location on the fishing screen will tell you the following information from left to right:
Level Required:
The fishing level required to unlock the fishing location. This does not include effective levels given to the player by fishing gear.
Searching Time and Gathering Time:
Searching time is how long it takes your player to find a fishing node.
Gathering time is the time it takes for your player to gather one resource from that node.
Base Find Chance and Base Gather Chance:
Base Find Chance is your chance to find a fishing node after completing a search.
Base Gather Chance is your chance to fish up a resource from a node.
Experience per action:
This is the amount of fishing experience you receive per catch.
As you level up your fishing and fishing stats, search and gather times will decrease and their success chances will increase, making it easier and faster to gather fishing resources. Because of this, a lot of early game fishing time is actually wasted failing to find nodes and failing to harvest them.
Bait
You will always want to use bait while fishing, especially so in the early game. This is because bait is relatively cheap/easy to acquire and gives significant stat bumps. Use bait while fishing by clicking on it in your inventory and selecting the box that says "move to tacklebox". You can have multiple types of bait in your tacklebox, however you will only use the first type. You can reorder bait in your tacklebox by clicking on it and selecting "Move to Front".
Bait is not consumed while searching for a node but does affect the node you find. Bait is consumed with gather actions after finding a node, this includes failed attempts. Failing also reduces the node size by one, the fish got away...
The "best bait" to use is a hard question to answer, as it will depend on what you are aiming for at your current stage in fishing. The short answer is "it depends".
The slightly longer answer: If your node search chance is less than 100%, go for bait power. otherwise you should go for reel. If you want to try and get the rarer drops from a zone, go for higher bonus rarity.
Do not use Tentacle Bait until you are in late-game fishing, as before then the 1.3 multiplier does not outscale the -30 bait and reel. If when you equip it to the first slot in your tacklebox your stats go down its too early for you to use.
Nightcrawler, Glowbug, and Shrimp Tail are the early options, and are fairly easy to acquire thanks to the addition of worm bins. I think it's not worth spending the money on Earthworm unless you're unable to get any other bait at all. My recommendation would be nightcrawler early on due to the higher bait power having the largest impact on fishing speed/success chance. If you can afford it (in terms of money and success chance), Smelly Meat as a nice all rounder with a slight boost to effective fishing level. If you have the crafting level and resources for it the 2 Fish Guts baits are also nice to use due to it being easy to craft more of with the fish you catch.
There are 13 types of bait available for fishing, these are:
Earthworm Bait
Fat Nightcrawler Bait
Glowbug Bait
Improved Hook Bait
Smelly Fish Guts Bait
Crustacean Meat Bait
Hardened Hook Bait
Alluring Lure Bait
Writhing Tentacle Bait
Mysterious BaitAreas
Nodes without a minimum rarity can be found at any time. Some resources inside a node will require a higher rarity than the minimum shown below to be able to be gathered. This is roughly around 10~50 bonus rarity.
Bonus Rarity must be above the minimum rarity shown below for nodes to start appearing, the higher above the minimum rarity you are the higher your chances are of finding the nodes.
If a specific item isn't dropping from a node you are probably fishing with too low bonus rarity. Personally I'd aim to try and get at least 50 rarity above if you are trying to farm a specific resource.
It is possible to get both type of fishing chests 
Sunken Treasure
Ancient Treasure from all zones.
| Level | Zone | Exp | Recommended Gear | Min. Rarity | Node | Possible Loot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shallow Pond | 20 | Novice Tacklebox | N/A | The Shallow Pond |      
|
| Oop, All Shrimp! |
| |||||
| Small Schools of Fish |
| |||||
| Drifting Around |
| |||||
| Shallow Flora | 
| |||||
| 20 | Lazy River | 30 | Basic Tacklebox | N/A | The Lazy River |    
|
| Migrating Schools |
| |||||
| Riverbed Flora | 
| |||||
| 25 | ANGY Bois | 
| ||||
| 50 | Still Lake | 60 | Advanced Tacklebox Fishing equipment |
N/A | The Still Lake |   
|
| Cage Match | 
| |||||
| Lake Flora | 
| |||||
| 30 | Big Catch! |
| ||||
| 75 | Yedyod’s Cove |
| ||||
| 65 | Open Ocean | 90 | Pro Tacklebox / Supreme Tacklebox, Fishing equipment |
N/A | The Open Ocean |      
|
| Carefree Day | 
| |||||
| Sharks Ate All The Tuna |
| |||||
| Ocean Flora | 
| |||||
| 25 | Shipwreck Bay |
| ||||
| 50 | Almost Jurassic | 
| ||||
| Playtester’s Paradise |
| |||||
| 75 | Ghost Ship |
| ||||
| 100 | Is that a tentacle? |
| ||||
| 85 | Stormy Seas | 100 | Supreme Tacklebox / Ocean's Embrace, Fishing equipment |
N/A | The Stormy Seas |
|
| Eye of the Storm |
| |||||
| Deep Sea Flora | 
| |||||
| 50 | World’s End |
| ||||
| 75 | Endless Vortex |
| ||||
| 100 | INFO’s Stand |
| ||||
| Common Encounter |  Swordfish
|
     [?]
| ||||
| Rare Encounter |  Ascended
|
 [?]
|
The Stormy Seas is a dangerous location. While fishing there, a fight with a Swordfish or Ascended will occasionally be simulated and appear as a "Danger Simulation" node, this delays you from gathering in the zone anywhere between 15 to 30 seconds. This "fight" cannot be escaped from, but the Camo Cloak can be used to reduce this delay by 20% and the chance of one occurring by 50%.
Chests
While fishing there is a low chance for one of two treasure chests to be gathered at the same time as any item. These are the sunken treasure and ancient treasure. By wearing gear with the naturalist enchant you can increase the rate in which you get these slightly and greatly increase the chance that it is the ancient variant. Chests can give fibers, gems, and talismans. Early on these are especially worth opening. The ancient treasure is always worth opening. This is because there is a 3% chance for each legendary tool piece to drop per ancient treasure. The quest to unlock the Ocean's Embrace requires 9000 fishing shards, but augmenting past +5 requires base versions of the item. If you are lucky and get a gear piece out of an ancient treasure you have saved yourself around 75 hours of fishing due to the cost of these pieces being 900 shards.
Specializing
This doesn't change the core skill loop at all but does change the distribution of what resources you receive from fishing.
Fish: The default option, focusing on enchants that only buff stats to increase your speed along with using gathering while fishing results in the same drop distribution as normal.
Oil: Equipping Oil Spill enchant gives a base 8% chance per enchant level to try and extract fish oil from a fish based on the fish's size. On an Ocean's Embrace this equals a 60% chance. This chance is not guaranteed and is less likely the smaller the fish is. More information can be found on the Oil Spill page.
Fiber: Equipping Fiber Finder enchant increases chance to find fibers by 25% per enchant level, On an Ocean's Embrace this equals an increased 200% chance. Doing this does not replace all fish.
XP: Starting after level 99 you can equip jewelry with a scholar enchantment, this gives +20% XP per enchant level at the cost of the gathered item being destroyed. This does not scale with multiple items gathered. The only items received from fishing when using scholar are chests and mob drops in Stormy Seas.
Fishing Gear
There are two types of fishing gear. The Fisherman's skilling set and Tackleboxes.
Fisherman's set
The Fisherman's Set recipe is locked behind the quest "Fishing Set Quest". You will need to be level 50 before you can unlock this quest and upon completion you will receive enough shards to craft 2 of the 3 fishing set items. By level 50 you should have plenty of shards to craft the 3rd piece. However, it is only the recipe that is level locked. If you have the cash, and someone is selling one, you can purchase a set from the market and wear it at level 1.
| Fishing Gear | Enchantment |
|---|---|
 Fisherman's Bucket Hat
|
Bait Preservation 3 |
 Fisherman's Smock
|
Reinforced Line 3 |
 Fisherman's Waders
|
Pungent Bait 3 |
The fisherman's set is a must have item for fishing. The set bonus from wearing all 3 pieces increases all of your base fishing stats (before bait bonuses) by 15%, as well as reducing damage taken and increasing damage done in dangerous gathering locations (Stormy Seas and the Abandoned Academy Base). Each piece can be augmented to give +1 to all fishing stats for the cost of some fibers and fishing shards. There is a fourth piece to the Fisherman's Set. The legendary tacklebox Ocean's Embrace. We will cover this below in...
Tackleboxes
Tackleboxes are a skill specific tool for fishing. Like pickaxes and hatchets, tackleboxes can be equipped and will give the player stat boosts towards fishing. By doing the gathering tutorial quest, you can get the first tier of tacklebox for free. Due to how integral the substats of fishing are to the time taken and XP gained, you should be upgrading your tacklebox as soon as possible every time you reach the level requirements to equip the next tier, as well as affixing them. If you want to save money at the lower levels, you can avoid enchantments. However, they are powerful bonuses to have on a tacklebox, and aren't too hard to make.
The highest tier of tacklebox you can craft is the legendary Ocean's Embrace. This is locked behind the Master difficulty quest "Legendary Tacklebox", and requires you to either clear or turn in a key for the Abandoned Academy Base Dungeon as well as turning in 9,000 Shards to receive your first one. Like all legendary tools this is intended for end game skilling, as a result you will likely be beyond the maximum fishing level by the time you can receive this.
Ocean's Embrace gives the highest increase to base fishing stats as well as unlocking a stronger version of the Fisherman's Set bonus buff. This gives the player a 30% buff to all fishing stats (before bait bonuses) and reduces damage taken and increases damage done in Stormy Seas (and the Abandoned Academy Base) by 50%.
| Tacklebox | Fishing Level | Bait Power | Reel Power | Bonus Rarity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Novice Tacklebox
|
3 | 15 | 5 | N/A |
 Basic Tacklebox
|
6 | 20 | 10 | 3 |
 Advanced Tacklebox
|
9 | 25 | 15 | 6 |
 Pro Tacklebox
|
12 | 30 | 20 | 10 |
 Supreme Tacklebox
|
15 | 35 | 25 | 15 |
 Ocean's Embrace
|
60 | 60 | 60 | 60 |
Other Gear
In addition to the above here are other pieces of gear that are useful when fishing:
- Bag of Holding: depending on the version you have, this gives up to a 100% chance to force the max quantity of a resource when gathering. This only affects fiber as fish do not roll a range without any yield affixes.
- Newbie / Dwarven Adventurer's Backpack: (for Adventurers boon) Extra shards are very useful, using this in place of the bag of holding will allows you to gain more shards (at the cost of slower fishing and less resources) for augmenting fishing gear stats or getting an Ocean's Embrace sooner for the improved set bonus.
- Cloak of Many Pockets / the Void: 1-2 extra levels of haste depending on the cloak. Faster fishing = faster XP, no downsides to using these outside of stormy seas if you can afford them.
- Camo Cloak: Only applicable to Stormy Seas, decreases the chance of a encounter by 50% and reduces delay by 20%. Works out as a better time save than haste at base levels. Plus augmenting it gives you an extra +1 to fishing sub-stats.
- Flamboyant Cape: The opposite of the Camo Cloak, increases encounter chance by 50% and reduces delay by 10%. Not recommended for fishing, will result in more bait from more fights in Stormy Seas but not worth the time cost.
- Prismatic Ring: (offers +1 fishing level, bait, reel, and rarity per aug) This can have Haste or gathering (or even scholar past 99 If you want additional exp for gathered materials).
Enchants
Listed below are all the relevant enchantments for fishing that can go on your fishing set, tacklebox, or jewelry. Enchants, of course, do not stack, but you can replace the default enchants on fishing gear with ones you deem more relevant. (for example having reinforced line on a tacklebox makes the chest piece enchant worthless so you can put on oil spill or fiber finder instead) My recommendations are:
- Ring / Necklace: Haste and Gathering.
- Gloves / Boots: Naturalist, if you don't have 100% success chance then you can also use Fishing.
- Tacklebox: XP and gather time - Reinforced Line. Fish Oil - Oil Spill. Fibers - Fiber Finder
- Fishing Set: The default options are solid all rounders, if you choose to add one of the default enchantments to your tacklebox make sure to replace the fishing set piece equivalent.
- Non Fishing Tool: Putting Archaeology on any tool that isn't the tacklebox still gives access to the drop table, doing this for a skill you don't care about allows you to make some extra gold on the side whilst fishing.
List of useful Enchantments.
 Scroll |
Slot | Level | Silver Amount | Rune Amount | Runes | Effect per scroll |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Scroll of Naturalist |
Gloves, Boots | 49 | 600 | 60 | Air, Water, Nature, Cosmic | Increase your chance to gain chests as well as convert standard chests to their greater variants while gathering by 20%. |
 Scroll of Fishing |
Gloves, Boots | 55 | 700 | 60 | Earth, Water, Mind | Increases fish catch chance by 2.5%. |
 Scroll of Prolonging |
Gloves, Boots | 58 | 700 | 60 | Nature, Mind | Gain a 20% chance to not consume a buff stack (resulting in 25% more uses from a buff on average). |
 Scroll of Enlightenment |
Gloves, Boots | 73 | 900 | 70 | Air, Water, Chaos, Mind | Gain 1 more essence per action where essence is acquired. |
 Scroll of Gathering |
Ring, Necklace | 64 | 800 | 70 | Earth, Fire, Water, Mind, Cosmic | Gain a 10% chance to find an extra resource while gathering. There is a 15% chance that a nature rune is consumed when it procs. Attempts to pull the rune from your stockpile then ammo pouch if none found. |
 Scroll of Wealth |
Ring, Necklace | 37 | 500 | 50 | Nature, Mind, Cosmic | Automatically sells gathering and production items for 20% of their vendor price. Does not affect Crafting or stack with Scholar. |
 Scroll of the Scholar |
Ring, Necklace | 88 | 1300 | 110 | Chaos, Mind, Cosmic | Increases experience gained from gathering and production by 20% but destroys the item in process. Does not affect Crafting or stack with Wealth. Only active for mastery experience, when a skill is at level 99. |
 Scroll of Haste |
Ring, Necklace | 94 | 2000 | 200 | Air, Chaos, Mind, Cosmic | Increases non-combat action speed by 4%. Caps at halving action time. Stacks with Empowered Haste. |
 Scroll of Archaeology |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set, Pickaxe, Hatchet, Mining Set, Foraging Set | 41 | 500 | 50 | Earth, Water, Nature | Gives access to a secondary drop table while gathering with rewards and chances heavily scaling on enchantment strength. The best finds are only found in the hardest to reach zones! |
 Scroll of Pungent Bait |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set | 14 | 200 | 30 | Water, Nature | Increases bait power by 3. |
 Scroll of Reinforced Line |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set | 23 | 300 | 40 | Earth, Water | Increases reel power by 3. |
 Scroll of Fishing Magnetism |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set | 33 | 400 | 40 | Earth, Water, Cosmic | Increases bonus rarity by 2 and decreases both bait and reel power by the same amount. Increases chance to find known rare nodes. |
 Scroll of Bait Preservation |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set | 47 | 600 | 60 | Earth, Water, Chaos | Increases chance to preserve bait by 4%. |
| Scroll of the Fiber Finder |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set | 50 | 600 | 60 | Earth, Water, Mind | Increases chance to find aquatic fibers by 25%. |
 Scroll of Oil Spill |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set | 69 | 800 | 70 | Earth, Water, Death | Gives a 8% chance to try and extract fish oil from a fish based on the fish's size. There is a chance that fish oil may not be created if the fish is too small. |
 Scroll of Deadliest Catch |
Tacklebox, Fishing Set | 71 | 900 | 70 | Earth, Water, Blood | Increases bonuses from using bait by 5% but decreases bait preservation chance by 5%. Increases chance to find known rare resources. |
Buffs
The following are buffs you can receive from potions. While not required to max fishing they will speed up the process, especially in the early game where stats are at their weakest. Recommended buffs are: Fishing, Reinforced Line.
| Name | Skill Affected | Description | Buff Gained From |
|---|---|---|---|
 Fishing (Enchantment)
|
Fishing | Increases fishing catch rate by 10%. | Honey |
 Fishing Magnetism
|
Fishing | Increases bonus rarity by 4 and decreases bait and reel power by the same amount. Increases chance to find known rare nodes. | Raw Magnetic Minnow |
 Reinforced Line
|
Fishing | Increases reel power by 6. | Raw Tigerfish |
 Pungent Bait
|
Fishing | Increases bait power by 6. | Seaweed |
 Oil Spill
|
Fishing | Adds 7.5% chance to try and extract fish oil from a fish based on the fish's size. There is a chance that fish oil may not be created if the fish is too small. | Raw Slippery Eel |
 Deadliest Catch
|
Fishing | Increases bonuses from bait by 10%, but decreases chance of bait preservation by 5%. Increases chance to find known rare resources. | Raw Great White Shark |
 Gathering
|
Mining, Foraging, and Fishing | Gain a 20% chance to find an extra resource while gathering. | Banana |
 Intuition
|
Most activities | Increases experience gained by 10% while doing most things. | Sageberry |
Affixes
Be aware that affixes are very costly to change once applied to an item. Look through the menus yourself or even hold off applying them to hard to acquire items until you understand what you want from them.
Fishing Gear: As of v0.21.5a the only affixes available for the fishing skilling gear are combat related, not worth wasting the dust on especially when this may change in a future update.
- Cape: "Sneaky Gatherer" and "Gathering Shards". More shards = more augs = more stats.
- Necklace: "Quick Gatherer" - 1-5% additive speed.
- Ring: All apart from Eagle are good options, up to the players priorities. I'd recommend "Ultimate Gatherer" and "Skillful" for the bonus levels and XP gain.
- Pendant: "Gathering Doubling" - 1-3% chance to double gathered item.
- Boots and Gloves: only combat affixes available currently, not relevant for fishing.
- Tacklebox: I'd recommend "Speedster Fishing" and "Fishing Node Size" as must have picks. For the third slot (on OE) "Fishing Yield" can be good if you care more for resources or maybe "Prepared" for even more fishing stats.
Speedster fishing gives you up to a 2% chance (depending on your tier of tacklebox) after a search action to set your gather speed to 0.1 seconds for that node, combined with the larger nodes affix this results in more XP and items per hour overall. This set up is only my opinion and is based around late game fishing, for earlier tackleboxes the "Successful Fisher" affix may be more beneficial as the fastest time save you can get in the early game is lowering your chance to fail.
Talents
There are currently 6 talents available for fishing, these are only usable after maxing fishing and some don't unlock until mastery 15. Not a lot to say about these other than if you want fishing to be your main skill then you should get at least everything other than Fantastic Fiber Finder to boost your stats.
Gathering Master - Your mastery of gathering gives you a chance to gather more resources!
Gathering Grandmaster - Your mastery of gathering gives you a chance to gather more resources!
Fishing Prodigy - You're a natural at fishing! Increases your fishing effective level by 10.
Shrimp Student - Deep study of the true rulers of the sea has given you an insight to the fickle nature of the waters. Increases your effective fishing level by 30 but decreases your mining and foraging levels by 10.
Fishing Grandmaster - You're the uncontested master of fishing. Increases your fishing effective level by 5%.
Fantastic Fiber Finder - Increases your Fiber Finder by 3.
Okay, I want to read the detailed guide
Intro
This isn’t intended to be the best or the fastest route to maxing fishing. This is just a general guide that I wrote as I was fishing on a fresh account in the seasonal mode that was testing the new XP curve for 1.0. I will be making updates to this if I come across anything else or anything is changed for the launch of 1.0.
Doing nothing but fishing to 99 is entirely possible but not recommended. There are a lot of roadblocks in terms of gear progression you would have to grind skills or spend money for. This will of course be different if you are not playing on iron man or if the market is well stocked with items and gear. The optional sections in each section will typically be things you can achieve by spending money on the market to level faster.
The common theme you will see throughout this guide is increasing all 4 fishing stats where possible and boosting your success chance to 100%, which in turn reduces your action times and improves your chances to succeed. All this will improve the rate at which you get XP.
I have money to burn
I made this guide without using the market and there are a few steps you can take to progress even faster covered here. It all depends on how much money you want to sink into the skill to do so. If the following suggestions are within your budget then you will want to:
- Buy the highest slot boots or gloves you can afford and wear and add the Fishing enchant to them. If you do this and you can reach 100% success chance without the tacklebox affix refer to the affix section and affix your tacklebox accordingly.
- Buy the highest slot necklace or ring you can afford and add the haste enchantment to one, jewelry also has beneficial affixes. (see affixes)).
- Buy the Cloak of Many Pockets / the Void (Camo Cloak in Stormy Seas).
- Keep buying smelly meat / hardened hook bait to use unless you need more bait power to reach 100% success chance.
- Buy the highest tier of tacklebox you have the fishing level to be able to equip and augment it to at least +5 and affix.
- You can buy the fishing equipment to wear from the start and it will greatly help you if you can convince someone with the shards to sell you one.
I didn't really use buffs in my play-through because I didn't want to bother managing them but you can buy / cook potions for Reinforced Line and Pungent Bait. The Fishing buff from Honey can also be useful for boosting your success chance but you will need so much of it that its an expensive way to improve your chances compared to just getting the affix/enchant.
Level 0
There are a few "side-quests" we can do to reduce the pain of early game fishing before we start. The biggest time sink involved in fishing is failing an action (especially a node search), which is fairly common early on. Increasing our success chance is the biggest time save we can make to improve our XP per hour.
Recommended:
The first thing you’re going to want to do is all the tutorial quests. These will give you the Tier 1 tools for skills as well as some XP to start off with.
You’re also going to want to make 25 Basic Runic Dust so that you can get the "Successful Fisher" affix on your Apprentice Tacklebox from the quest rewards. If you get a particularly bad roll you can make more dust and scrap to re-roll this once or twice but don’t obsess over getting a perfect roll.
Buy / Farm / Gather 100 or so bait of any type.
If possible you also want to try and get your crafting to at least level 5 first so that you are able to produce your own bait through either the Shrimp Tail Bait recipe or by Preparing fish into Filleted Fish and crafting worm bins. I cannot understate the importance of having bait, especially in the first 40 levels or so. It is the easiest source of fishing stats and by extension the easiest way to boost your success chance to save time.
Optional:
Augmenting your tacklebox to +4/+5 isn’t hard to do and gives a nice buff to your stats/chances/times.
You likely won’t have the enchanting level or materials to do so but putting Pungent Bait on the tacklebox will bump up the success chance too. Personally I’d save doing this for the second tacklebox.
Getting gloves / boots with Naturalist on them is a nice way to build up fibers early on by opening chests on the way to level 85 but can be a bit pricey for little pay off in the skill before 85.
Level 1 - 10
If you have no bait at this point the first thing you’ll want to do is get an initial buffer going (see bait section). If nothing else the bare minimum you want is the earthworm bait from the General Shop to reduce the chance of wasting time failing a search / gather.
The core loop you do at this stage is pretty simple since there's only one fishing zone. Fish in the Shallow Pond > turn shrimp into Shrimp Tail Bait > use shrimp bait to fish in the shallow pond. Shrimp bait also gives bonus rarity which improves your chances of finding better nodes such as the "oops! All shrimp!" node which helps feed into this loop.
You can also prepare caught Anchovies into Filleted Fish and make worm bins to farm for more bait. Anchovies can also be crafted into Fish Guts Bait but it's very expensive to turn 9 of them into 3 bait compared to a worm bin and requires a much higher crafting level.
If possible you want to try and always have at least 3/4 worm bins on your farm at this stage while you are fishing to make bait.
Recommended: Fish in Shallow pond Turn shrimp into shrimp tail bait Prepare anchovies and craft into worm bins
Optional: Save anchovies for quests that can accept them
Level 11 - 20
See level 1-10. The only thing you need to think about after reaching level 10 is whether you want to invest time / money into the next tier of tacklebox. If you do, try to augment it to at least the point where it has more stats than your previous one (typically +2/3). Augmenting to +5 would be best. Don’t forget to get the success chance affix.
Optional: Craft a Basic Tacklebox, affix with success chance, enchant with Pungent Bait at some point, augment to +5
Level 21 - 30
I found that even with a lower success chance moving up to the next zone immediately is more XP per hour. The only problem you run into at this stage is you no longer get shrimp or anchovies. If you level your cooking this isn't a huge problem and you can continue to make worm bins however the only other option that isn't the market is leveling crafting to make fish guts and doing so only gives 3 bait per craft which isn't great. If you don’t have a good surplus of bait / worm bins before switching zones you will run out. Staying in Shallow Pond for a few levels is still a decent option and is what I did at this stage
Recommended: Craft a Basic tacklebox, affix with success chance, enchant with pungent bait, augment to +5 Fish in Shallow Pond to build bait before moving to Lazy River
Optional: Equip a bag of holding to start stocking up on fibers for gear augments Augmenting this to +4 will give you a +1 to all fishing stats
Level 31 - 40
At this point you do want to move on to Lazy River if you haven’t already. The next tier of tacklebox is available and is of course an upgrade for faster fishing however I used the second tacklebox until level 50 with no issues. The Advanced Tacklebox comes with an additional enchant and affix slot. If you want to save dust you can randomly roll the second slot after getting the success chance affix again but I would recommend getting a + yield affix if you can so you can make more bait from more fish.
Even having a yield affix doesn’t guarantee extra resources though so a bag of holding at this point will help you out more.
There's only really one "bad" option for random rolling, the bonus rarity is the least impactful affix you can get at this stage but even that will still help you with getting better drops.
Optional: Equip a Advanced Tacklebox, affix with success chance if needed, augment to +5 and enchant with Pungent Bait if you still aren’t at 100% success chance otherwise take Reinforced Line for faster gather times. If you have a yield affix equip a Bag of Holding
Level 40 - 49
Same core loop as in 31 - 40, still stuck in Lazy River.
Optional: Equip a Pro Tacklebox, around this tier you probably no longer need the success chance affix after you augment it. If this is the case refer to the affix section Enchant with Reinforced Line if you only care for XP otherwise refer to the enchantments section.
Level 50
This is such a huge break-point for fishing that I made it an entire section. At level 50 you can start the fishing set quest. You should accept this as soon as you can and get started on the quest requirements (10,000 fishing actions) upon completion you receive 1000 fishing shards and if you have level 50 crafting you are now able to craft the fishing set. With the reward shards and time taken to reach this step you will easily have enough shards to make all 3 pieces and you should prioritize doing so. Just wearing it gives you +12% bait preservation and 3 levels of Pungent Bait and reinforced line. Also you receive a flat 15% stat bonus (before bait bonuses) which is nice but not as impactful as it is later in the skill. The main thing at this stage is the inherent enchants.
These enchants do not stack with the tacklebox so if you haven't made one with more than 3 slots yet bear in mind that enchanting it will achieve nothing unless you replace the same enchant on the fishing gear. You could at this stage replace the Reinforced Line piece enchant with oil spill or fiber finder if you keep putting Reinforced Line on your tacklebox but until level 90 or so it's honestly not worth the loss of fish per hour.
Farming 2 worm bins is enough to be roughly self sustaining with the fishing sets bait preservation
Recommended: Level crafting to 50 and equip this set as soon as possible
Level 51 - 65
At level 50 you unlock the lake, this zone is double the XP per action with a minimal time increase and you should move into it as soon as you can. At this point you should be working towards making an Advanced Tacklebox at minimum if you haven’t already.
The issue with this zone is that the only catchable fish are not currently usable in crafting bait without preparing them into worm bins. Without relying on the market the only option you have is to level your cooking high enough to prepare them (lv38 min) bait sustainability really starts to struggle the most in this zone but the increase in XP is so large that you want to fish here regardless for faster leveling to the level 65 zone.
Depending on your gear you may even be able to reach 100% chance at this stage without using bait at all, while obviously slower than fishing with bait if you are reaching 100% the lost time is not as significant as the XP hit from fishing in a lower zone with bait and you can power through to 65 to get tuna and sharks that you can craft into fish guts.
Recommended: Equip an Advanced Tacklebox, affix with success chance if needed, enchant with Pungent Bait / Reinforced Line if you don't have the fishing set yet, augment to +5
Optional: Equip a Supreme Tacklebox, affixing this is expensive even if you randomly roll. You shouldn't need the success chance affix at this tier. I would randomly roll it and hope for the best, maybe even try a few randoms before augmenting if you feel like it.
Level 65 - 85
Open Ocean is available. You're able to craft Fish Guts Bait again in this zone but it's a bad amount compared to worm bins. Luckily at this stage you start to have enough Bait Preservation that crafting it doesn’t result in a net loss.
If you somehow have high bonus rarity at this point or use Mysterious Bait you can get tentacle meat from this zone but it's not really a resource worth aiming for at this stage. It’s not a great source of crafting XP with the rate you get it at and you are still at a stats disadvantage fishing with tent bait at this stage.
I did this stage with a t3 Tacklebox with no real issues because I didn't want to spend time grinding elsewhere but I would recommend making the Pro Tacklebox.
Recommended: Equip a Pro Tacklebox, enchant with [Reinforced Line]], augment to +5.
Level 85 - 99
The Stormy Seas zone is now unlocked. Basically the same as open ocean with a 10XP per action gain, ancient kelp if you have enough rarity, and dangerous encounters as a time sink / bait source.
The times per action are the same as in Open Ocean but the node success chance is lower. A +3 Pro Tacklebox with +2 fishing equipment and Glowbug Bait was enough for me to reach 100% chance in this zone at lv89.
The issue with this zone you will run into is likely to be having a low bonus rarity, the delay penalties from encounters are not worthwhile without having the rarity needed to gather Ancient Kelp. This is due to kelp being needed to augment the fishing gear you should be wearing and giving +1 to all stats.
To solve this you will either need to improve your gear or use higher tiers of bait. Saving mysterious bait for this stage is a good way to gather the initial kelp you need to start improving your fishing set.
Because it's a dangerous location you have a chance of running into simulated combat encounters. This results in delays of up to 30s at random times while skilling here (for me it ranged between 2 to 21 minutes). You don’t currently need to have high combat stats to be able to fish here but it is helpful to have the fishing set before fishing in Stormy Seas as well as having a Camo Cloak to reduce the likelihood of them occurring and the delay time itself. As the encounters drop bait you may even want to consider a Flamboyant Cape to increase the amount you run into however I wouldn’t recommend this.
This zone is one of the most important to have a Bag of Holding for especially if you have low rarity so you can maximize the amount of kelp you receive.
Recommended: Get a Camo Cloak. Use myst bait where possible to gather the ancient kelp needed for +5 set (1650 total). Augment your fishing gear every time you have enough to do so up to +5. Aim for a Supreme Tacklebox.
Level 99+
Congrats! You have now maxed fishing!
At this point a lot of people vow never to touch the skill again but if for some reason you want to continue then spend this time saving up fishing shards to make the Ocean's Embrace.
After this, it's basically up to you. Check out other sections on this page such as the specializing or talents sections.
It wasn’t really relevant for most of the guide, but if you are going to main fishing you will want to get some Naturalist boots or gloves to start getting the ancient chests. These when opened have around a 10% chance to give you a component for the OE which are needed to craft base versions you will need if you augment it past +5.
Around here, with the full set bonus, you may start benefiting from tentacle bait. Equip it and see what happens to your stats.
Happy Fishing!
Miscellaneous Tips
- Fishing in Stormy Seas and constantly crafting tentacle bait is a great source of crafting XP.
- Doing runecrafting with the fibers you fish has a chance to give ancient cloth fragments, key pieces for the fishing dungeon. Completing the dungeon is the only other source of shards.
- Fishing yield affixes can allow you to get 2 fish per gather action but this is not guaranteed
- Worm bins are an excellent source of crafting XP and preparing your fish to make them is also a good source of cooking XP
