Spion Kopp's Fishing Essay - July 2002

Fishing:
OK I've done a little log of my fishing gains post pub16. To all of you interested in how working skills is going to be different post pub16 please allow me to alleviate your concerns. Though I've never worked fishing before and cannot give you an exact comparison, from what I saw it appears to be no different than working skills outside of power hour. One thing should be noted before I list the gains, I stopped my macro to kill serpents and loot them. So if you were going for straight skill gain it would probably be faster.

Day 1: Started at 73.0 where I left off pre-patch. Ran my macro for four hours and ended up at 82. This was probably the quickest part of my skill gain as I didn't pull up my first serpent until 81.

Day 2: Started at 82 and ran my macro for 6 hours and was left at 88.1. So it was approximately one full point of gain per hour worked. Shortly thereafter a nasty storm came through and knocked out the power and cable. 2 hours later I start my macro up for another 2 hours to end the day at 91.1.

Day 3: Started at 91.1 and pulled a 9 hour macro run after work and ended up with 96.3. I figured out something interesting that may be common knowledge to those who have fished before, but if you catch a serpent and stop on that exact spot you can 8x8 serpents. Just fish your 8 forward and if you don't pull up a serpent after fishing for a while go 16 back. When the serpent is caught just continue in the direction of the serpent "run".

Day 4: Started at 96.3 and after 8 hours of macroing ended at 98.6.

Day 5: Started at 98.6 went all the way to GM after 3 hours work.

Loot acquired: 28 regular nets, 1 teal colored net, 34 level 1 maps, 2 level 2 maps, 1 level 3 map, 872 serpent scales, and 1 MIB. Although Horned Hides do spawn on serpents I didn't collect them so as to keep my weight down and reduce the amount of times I had to recall to the bank. Maps were mostly level 1 as shown, but occasionally I would pull up a serpent with two maps on him, one would be a level one and the other was a level 2 or 3.

Time Spent: 31 total hours

Resources used: I used approximately 200 of each reagent for killing off serpents. Of special note I believe that people stating you break fishing rods with use can now be confirmed as myth. I am still using the rod I started with.

As for those of you who want GM without bothering with the loot, through speaking with Wargrind on the boards I have learned that you can go from 30 to GM by sailing due north on a server line. This is still considered shallow water so therefore you don't pull up serpents. From what I've gathered he only took 4 days as opposed to my 5. So unless you want the GM title quicker I say stop, take your time, and get paid while you gain skills.

- Spion Kopp