Fishing experience from a non-fishing player!

DreamyLu · February 24

Hello All

Since we can't play, I will tell you about my experience at fishing, me a non-fishing player who dislikes the activity...

These last times, I was sick and feeling too bad to really play. Only fishing in ESO was OK, as it doesn't need much efforts, so I started to. I set CPs on Reel Technique and Angler's Instincts. I took a few addons, consumed Fish Eye Rye (mostly a help in Coldharbour) and took Sharp-as-Night (additional benefit).

I completed all zones of AD, EP and DC. After that, I got rid of Coldharbour, Summerset, Murkmire, Blackwood, Artaeum and Craglorn. My experience was interesting, thanks to a few things that were totally unexpected for me:
- It was fast. Fishing event was over so I thought I would suffer, but no! I needed an average of 30 minutes per zone (some longer, some very short). For example, I needed only one visit of 15 minutes in Craglorn. Fishing there was incredibly smooth and rapid. On the other hand, I needed to re-visit several times Arateum, where I spent the longest and most boring time.
- Easiest zones: Shadowfen and Murkmire! Same scenario in both zones: Lake and river completed on first hole (!), 2 holes for foul and 2 for ocean. Together with Craglorn, they were the best ones.
- Hardest zone: Grathwood! I have needed ages to catch the lake blue fish. I had to revisit many lake holes on different days again and again just for that single fish... It was tedious and even worst than Artaeum.
- Funniest one: Summerset, as I used a "hidden" hole to complete for foul, making me go into places I hadn't been before. It was like a treasure hunt.
- Most horrid one: Coldharbour due to landscape colors. It was extremely tiring for me and fish-eye rye has been an enormous help there.

All in all, I keep disliking fishing that I find very boring. I don't think that I will go for undone zones ever, unless I would be sick again of course...

Two little hints out of my experience:
- No matter the foes around the holes, there is always a position out of aggro from where we're safe and undisturbed. I never had to fight anything.
- Sharp-as-Night levels up incredibly fast with fishing! Holes discovery, catching green, catching blue, reward after a certain amount, duration of fishing, all that brings either +1 or +5 without cool down times for a rapid increase over time.

jle30303 · February 24

Outside of the event, the zones where there is only one type of water can be pretty frustrating.

Coldharbour, Deadlands, Clockwork City, Imperial City (Foul)
North Elsweyr (River)

Because with 12 different types of rare fish, the chance of getting the *right* one are heavily lowered, compared to the cases where there are only 3 types of rare fish per type of water. When they're curated (as per the event), this isn't the case, since you're guaranteed that any given rare fish will be one of the uncaught ones.

That's also what made Craglorn (2 types of water with 6 rare fish in each) go a lot faster in-event than out-of-event.

Imperial City, of course, also has the problem of other players trying to kill you.

Cyrodiil technically has that as well, but the fishing areas are far enough from the castles that most PVPers never go there, so the chances are that if you encounter another player in a fishing area (or indeed in a delve or dolmen), it's most likely another PVE player who will ignore you or join you. I have noted that most of the time there seems to be a fishing truce of sorts in Cyrodiil.

Which is good, because most of the water types don't really have that many available fishing holes at all in Cyrodiil, and sometimes they're all in one small area which your faction may be a long way from controlling, and sometimes none of the type you want are open at all. Fishing in the Ocean areas (all right down near the Dominion base) with a Covenant character (Pact are nearly as bad, but not quite) presents pretty major annoyance even getting there. Not to mention the fact that, in PVP areas, you can't bring along Sharp for his bonus (though if you have unlocked his passive by getting him max level and max rapport, it will activate.) So at the very least you want to fish in CP-enabled PVP areas rather than no-CP areas.

AllenaNightWood · February 24

fishing need to be made more engaging in my opinion im not sure how but it would be neat as its something that hasnt really changed at all since the beginning

Tandor · February 24

AllenaNightWood wrote: »

fishing need to be made more engaging in my opinion im not sure how but it would be neat as its something that hasnt really changed at all since the beginning

Agreed. although I enjoy it as it is but only as a casual activity I engage in from time to time. Having its own skill line would be a good starting point to its improvement.

DreamyLu · February 27

For me, just standing immobile doing nothing else than waiting to click is boring. I can't stand it. I also dislike that to filet a stack, we are forced to wait doing nothing in the mean time.

My problem is that I'm used to my main game, in which, when I do something taking time, I can at same time do something else in a different application than the game.
In ESO, the way the game is working, it's quite difficult and for certain things even impossible. For example, fileting a stack of fishes: if we leave the game screen, it stops. So we can just stay there, watching it... Or is there a way to go around this? I didn't find one.

Side note: That would be nice to have a button: "filet all fishes in inventory" and go have a drink or do something else while it's ongoing

katanagirl1 · February 27

DreamyLu wrote: »

For me, just standing immobile doing nothing else than waiting to click is boring. I can't stand it. I also dislike that to filet a stack, we are forced to wait doing nothing in the mean time.

My problem is that I'm used to my main game, in which, when I do something taking time, I can at same time do something else in a different application than the game.
In ESO, the way the game is working, it's quite difficult and for certain things even impossible. For example, fileting a stack of fishes: if we leave the game screen, it stops. So we can just stay there, watching it... Or is there a way to go around this? I didn't find one.

Side note: That would be nice to have a button: "filet all fishes in inventory" and go have a drink or do something else while it's ongoing

You can mass filet fish at a provisioning station now.

spartaxoxo · February 27

You can filet all fish at a Provisioning station at once.

DreamyLu · February 28

Thanks to both of you

Edited for an add:
I have the addon Cookery Wiz. It was preventing the menu for fishing filet to appear. I have needed to turn it off to reach the menu and filet all fishes. I will check if I can find a way to go around that.

DreamyLu · February 28

Sorry for double posting, but just to update about the issue.. When I interact with a cooking fire, the interface window of the addon cookery wiz spawns over the interface window of the "normal" Game cooking fire. So, I can see the button F Filet at the bottom of my screen, but the list of fishes is hidden by the cookery wiz window.

None of those windows seems to be movable, so the only way I have is to turn off the addon, reload UI and then interact normally (without addon) with the cooking fire. After that, I need to re-activate the addon.

Anyone having a better solution?

Grizzbeorn · February 28

DreamyLu wrote: »

Anyone having a better solution?

What does that add-on do?
It kinda sounds like it hasn't been updated since the mass-fillet function was added, which was a while ago (sometime last year or the year before, I think.)
If the author of that add-on is still active, you might make them aware of the issue and ask them to update the add-on.