Northern Elsweyr is one of those problem zones where there's only one type of fishing hole instead of 3 or 4. So all 12 rare fish have have a chance to drop. Unfortunately that also means that the more rare fish you catch, the lower the chance of getting one you haven't caught yet. And while despite that it shouldn't be that difficult to get the rest, ESO's incredibly faulty RNG design is prone to some extremely bad streaks and often results in a not insignificant amount of rage quits.

Only solution is to keep at it. Northern Elsweyr gave me a headache for a couple days. But then one day it just BoomBoomBoom got lucky and I caught the rest in rapid succession.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

Northern Elsweyr is one of those problem zones where there's only one type of fishing hole instead of 3 or 4. So all 12 rare fish have have a chance to drop. Unfortunately that also means that the more rare fish you catch, the lower the chance of getting one you haven't caught yet. And while despite that it shouldn't be that difficult to get the rest, ESO's incredibly faulty RNG design is prone to some extremely bad streaks and often results in a not insignificant amount of rage quits.

Only solution is to keep at it. Northern Elsweyr gave me a headache for a couple days. But then one day it just BoomBoomBoom got lucky and I caught the rest in rapid succession.

Agreed about the poor choice of only have one water type in N. Elsweyr. I understand them not having salt, but there are several spots that could have been lake or foul water instead. According to the UESP wike there are 4 rare and 8 uncommon fish in the zone. As I mentioned in another thread that brought this up, I've been keeping score. Here's my latest results:

658 total casts N. Elsweyr with Sharp passive
ODR(%) Item
78.1% White (common) fish
10.0% Gren (uncommon) fish
0.9% Blue (rare) fish
6.5% Bait
4.0% Gunny Sack
0.5% Furniture

I'm pegging the programmed drop chance for blue (rare) fish at 1%, which means the probability of getting the specific one you want is only 0.25%. (That's one in four hundred!)

I'm not sure I'd want to comment on ESO's pRNG without seeing the actual code. Something as simple as the recursive algorithm from "Numerical Recipes in C" would be more than adequate for a video game - especially with 64bit memory. The only ways to really screw that up are either (1) start each game session with the exact same seed value or (2) throw in extra code/manipulation to try and make the output "more random" (usually means it actually becomes less random in the process). That said, we're talking the binomial distribution with a 1% success probability here, so there are absolutely going to be long runs of failures. (Oddly tonight, I also got a run of 5 uncommon fish in a row - that's bucking the trend a bit!)

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Sometimes things like this drop if it is the first thing I do after login. I rarely see monster trophies anymore, but it’s always the first enemy or two I defeat that drop them. It’s like the longer I am online timewise the worse it gets, so I do things like this in shorter sessions.

I think that's pretty good advice actually. If I'm doing a fishing run and I'm seeing far less than 1 rare to 10 uncommon items, I know I'm better off logging out/back in and going to do something else for a bit. If nothing else, it gives my brain something else to think about!