Fishing Theory

Introduction

This page is dedicated to theories about fishing. This includes Fishing Skill, Fish, Lures, Player Skills, and Catching.

This page was created out of reason for better understand of fishing. The wiki pages on fishing were full of scattered information and lacking in mechanics of fishing. This page is to help clear up things and help people understand fishing better. Although this is not full proof information, it is a beginning for a greater understanding.

To avoid misconceptions and false information, please add the facts only. Discussion of observations and potential theories belongs on the Fishing Theory:Discussion page. Data on which fish were caught in which month goes in Fishing Tables.

Fishing Skill

Fishing skill is learned from the school of body and is level 1 at the time. Over time a player's fishing skill increases. This increase may take weeks/months of fishing before it will increase, but when this occurs it's usually in multiple increases at a time. The exact amounts needed are unknown.

Maximum Fly Fishing Skill is unknown but is greater than 15.

Fish

Grouping and Rarity

Teppy announced there is 49 different species of fish. Seven of these are the common fish. Which leaves 42 fish that are not.

The common group includes: Abdju, Carp, Catfish, Chromis, Perch, Phagrus, and Tilapia. For all lures, you will catch some of these types of fish throughout the day.

Uncommon fish may require Speed, Fishing Skill, fishing in the right location, and/or better fishing rods for successful catches.

Speed fish are the second most common fish you will catch. If you do not have sufficient speed, you will see the message "You almost caught a unusual fish, but were not quick enough." The requirement is not sharp: if you have almost enough speed, you will have more of a chance of catching this type of fish. The thershold of speed varies with the max speed required at 28, and most speed fish less than this. (The speed fish types are different for T6 than T5 but the pricinple applies: Observations against two speed fish showed at 25 speed: 16 deben pancake loach and 22 deben tigerfish both were unsuccessful. 1/3 Rate on tigerfish and 0% on pancake. Observation against the same two with 28 speed showed 100% success.)

Skill fish are the next in rarity. If you have insufficient fishing skill, you see "You almost caught an odd fish, but you were too late recognizing the bite." You may also need speed to catch some of these fish. This type of fish is impossible to catch with fly fishing 1.

The third fish requirement yields the message "You almost caught a strange fish, but this rod was just too clumsy." The controlling factor for this message is the quality of the rod that you have. A basic rod will catch none of the strange fish very well. The T6 rods known in game are at Fishing Rods

Fish Information for T6 at Fishing_Infographic

Daily cycles

All fish have a daily cycle. The cycle for a given fish species peaks at the same time of game day for all lures, with the fish size reduced on either side of this time. Fish and lures that give very large peak sizes are therefore available for much longer periods of time than those peaking at small sizes. In particular, the size is reduced by

Note: this formula may have changed in T6

Reduction = 21 (1 - cos(2 π (current time - peak) / 24 hrs))

For example, in Tale 5 Year 3 Akhet II, River Crab peaked at 40+ deben sizes in a certain location, and so were available for 16 game hours per day. Sea Urchin peaking at 9 debens was only available for 2 game hours on a single lure in Akhet II, but much longer and on more lures in Akhet I with higher peak.

Common fish vary only slightly in size throughout the day, by at most 1 deben.

Monthly variation

Uncommon fish have peak sizes that change each game month, with the cycle repeating every game year. Similar to the daily peak, there is a best month with fish sizes reducing further out from that month. The peak size for the more distant months may be less than 1, indicating that the species cannot be caught that month. In Tale 5 these peaks could be up to about 40 debens in that fish's best month.

Common fish peak at about 9 debens on their best lure, all year round.

Lures

Each fish has a "best lure" that gives the largest size of that type of fish when used. Lures other than the best give reduced fish sizes.

Player Skills

Speed is a confirmed variable in catching some types of fish — certain uncommon fish have a high speed that is required. Common fish require at least zero or greater: if negative, you will always receive quickness messages. Tests against Tigerfish in T5 resulted in 25% chance with 4 speed, and 100% at 27 speed.

Fly Fishing skill enables you to catch "odd fish", with many types of fish impossible to catch with skill 1.

Catching The Fish

Fishing has different variables that are used throughout a cast of a lure. These include Fishing Skill and Speed, but may include others.

1) There is a chance of making a successful cast based on your Fly Fishing skill. This is roughly 40% at skill 1, 90% at skill 6, and 100% at skill 7. Failure of this check leads to the message "You didn't catch anything."

2) A species of fish is determined from those available to be caught with that lure at that time of day. This is usually (but not always) the species that has the largest sizes available. If there are no fish available you will see the message "No fish bit."

3) The species may have requirements such as skill or speed. These are checked against your current stats and skill and an appropriate message given if the check fails.

4) If all of the above checks pass, you will see "Caught X Deben Fish."

Size of Fish

Each time an uncommon fish is selected in step 2, the size of future catches of that species drops for that avatar. For common fish, the size drops by more but is recovered faster. If the size drops below 1 deben then that species is removed from the pool of available fish until its size recovers to 1 or more.

Experimental results appear to show that the rate of recovery is 1/10th of the drop per successful cast (i.e. any result but "You didn't catch anything"). Uncommon fish appear to drop by 0.92 for each catch, while common fish drop by about 7.

Data

This section is dedicated to both mapping the fish groups and cycles, and data that proves or disproves information about fishing.

Location

Position on the map matters, quite a lot. Doing some experiments near camp along the nile yielded big size differences at specific boundaries. In Tale 5, one such boundary was at 1024 north: Nile Mackerel in the 1000-1023 range were consistently 7 db larger than standard "at home" sizes, while being 3 db smaller than "at home" size in the 1025-1050 range. More work will be needed, but it is very suspicious that 1024 is a power of two (1024 = 2¹⁰). Perhaps similar changes are present at other boundaries divisible by large binary powers.

Further work shows that multiples of 128 coordinates (2⁷) are sharp boundaries for large changes in fish size: up to ±10 debens has been observed so far. There may also be smaller changes at multiples of 32 or 64 coordinates.

Fish Cycles

Data can be found at: Fishing_Tables

Common Fish

Peak sizes of common fish that are caught by various lures. These can change by about 1 deben through the day. This means that some 8 deben peaks may disappear at some times of day

Data can be found at: Fishing_Tables

Strange New Message?

I got a new message while fishing (in T5). "caught a 13 pound tilapia. The fish seems a bit listless" I'm not sure what this means. I suspect it might be from fishing near pollution sources, but that's just a guess.

Got w/ three lures and four fish (Chromis and Tilapia with Orchid Hopper; Malapterurus with Desert millipede; Kingfish with Salt mite lure). At Alcyone 2343, 2691, on the Red Sea Coast. Year 3-Peret III-32, 12:21 pm Egypt time. My fly fishing skill is still at 1. Soot level for area 0, acidity 201, no heavy metals or phosphorus present.

--Avanya