Fishing? Is it broke?

[Forgotten]

Hiya, newb to the shard. I enjoy t-map hunting and fishing up serpents and such. However, I'm at 88.6 fishing, and not a single serpent or anything else other than fish or shoes, for that matter. Is this a useless skill on this server?

[Opaloka]

No its not broken or useless
However i do recall people saying the rate of pulling up serpents is very low
Personally ive only fished for meat so far (from the shore) and i dont believe you pull serpents from shore fishing.

There seems to be a good trade of Fishing powerscrolls here on pandora, so i doubt its a useless or broken skill as people would not buy and sell the Fishing powerscrolls (ive no idea if these scrolls are obtained through fishing itself, heartwood or champion spawns though)

Theres also white pearls, which can be traded for oceanic coins, and i believe big fish can also be traded for ocoins.
There are lots of things to buy using ocoins, from decoration to useful clothing (and the promise of more being added on a sign near the docks)

So i think its far from broken/useless

I do recall someone saying sea serpents spawn in one of the old britannia dungeons (tram and/or fel) and these could be killed for nets if thats what you want the sea serpents for, but ive never gone looking myself, nor can i say for certain which dungeon it is, but i *think* it might be Wrong or Shame - thats based on my bad memory of a chat i only half read weeks ago, perhaps someone can confirm it for you

Anyway not much of a reply but it may help you realise there is a place for fishing in Pandora

[fruitbodywash]

I've heard that you can't fish up serpents any more.  I got all the way to 100 with no serpents, but aside from them spawning in dungeons (lower shame at least) they also have large spawns throughout the ocean. if you have a handful of SOS or MIB (message in bottles) sailing around to fish them up then you are bound to come across a spawn.  Also, the krakens drop fishing nets, which will spawn serpents and krakens if cast into the deep ocean.  Good luck (there are 16 pcoins in the chests, plus large gems and gold)

[Forgotten]

So you don't fish up serpents, how do you get the MiBs and fishing nets in the first place then, since I read on another forum post that you can't fish those up either??

I'm in the high 90s now, nothing but fish and some seaweed, no pearls, nothing else.

[fruitbodywash]

sail around until you find the spawns of them. or go to lower shame dungeon and kill a few there.

[Forgotten]

sail around until you find the spawns of them. or go to lower shame dungeon and kill a few there.

No disrespect intended, but that means fishing is useless. That's a dealbreaker with me for the server, which is too bad, but it's what I enjoy the most out of UO. I'm really surprised at this, as everything else on this server seems to be well thought out. A thought for future things to work on, since I know alot of people love to fish.

[Belegerandh]

No, it's the same everywhere, even OSI when I was there. Kraken and SS get stuck often when they spawn in Shame but not always.

Sometimes they spawn in the wizard towers too.

[Forgotten]

Not the same on other freeshards, and it's even claimed on the Wiki that you can, in fact, fish up serpents, nets, and MiBs.

I quote the Wiki:

Fishing up treasures:

Above 75 skill:

Message in a Bottle aka: MiB
When used it will turn into a Waterstained SOS . Or if you're lucky it will turn into an Ancient SOS , which about 1 in 25 does.

Metal and Wood Chests
Treasure chests are fished up by the use of a Waterstained SOS from a Message in a Bottle. They are the only treasure chest that can be taken and used for home storage. These chests will carry a treasure rating of 1 - 3.

Ancient Chests
This chest is fished up by use of an Ancient SOS. The chest is a level 4 treasure chest and always colored white. Inside these chests will also be a Fabled Fishing Net that will summon up a large group of sea monsters including the Leviathan.

Above 80 skill:

Special Fishing Net
These can be found as loot on sea serpents or in fished up treasure chests. When used, the net appears to throw out many fishing lines and a set of nasty monsters will spawn, consisting of Water Elementals, Sea Serpents, Deep Sea Serpents and Krakens. There is a chance for it to spawn in one of the 14 special colors:

White Pearls
Used to make Pendant of the Magi, Arcanist's Wild Staff, Lightweight Shortbow, Spellblade of Defense, Luckblade, and the Adventurer's Machete. It is also an Imbuing ingredient needed to imbue the any of the regular Slayer properties onto weapons. These can be sold at a fairly decent cost.

Big Fish
A rare fish that one can use to exchange for Oceanic Coins!!

Delicate Scales
Used with Imbuing skill to add Use Best Weapon Skill (UBWS) property onto weapons. (Not really usefull on this server!)

Above 90 skill:

Treasure Map
You can fish up a level 1 or level 2 treasure map that is for a land adventure of very easy standards. Most new players can handle the spawns from a level 1 treasure map.

All you can fish up are Big Fish. That's misleading. Either the Wiki ought to be fixed or fishing ought to be fixed. I'm having no problems fishing up serpents on the shard I'm on right now. I'd rather be doing it on Pandora.

[King Kong]

Well thank you for wanting to fish on Pandora more.

And there are future plans for fishing. -- But should by no means be a deal breaker on what "shard" you play.

[Jupiter]

MiBs are much easier to get by using nets than trying to fish up a SS. I tend to farm nets off the krakens in shame. Once i have about 100 nets, I go out to see and cast them. If you pull up a kraken, there is a chance you can get a MiB on them as loot. In about an hour of doing this i got 26 MiBs...So the MiB system we have here works perfectly if you know where to go.

Secondly, fishing is not useless. It took me awhile to realize that you can't fish up SS (with MiB loot) and i got discouraged from fishing. But because Pandora allows the use of macros for ressource gathering. You can use your fishing skills to gather many usefull things. You can fish up white pearls (I think you have to be GM fishing) which can be traded oceanic coins, worth 10k each or can be used to buy some sweet things in the ocoin docks. Big fish can be traded for ocoins aswell. Also, many of the named fish can be cooked into pies that have some neat abilities when eaten. And lets not forget that many of those fish can be made into deco items once mounted.

...Haza for fishing! I'd like to have some sort of fishing bod system, and SS brought back aswell, but its not a waste of skill by any means if you utilize it properly. Every skill is diffrent and needs a bit of understanding to make it work like you want it to...Lastly, may i suggest using those ocoins you can earn to get a quiver of sea horse. it let you ride a sea horse at sea and makes doing SoS a dream.

[fruitbodywash]

not to mention what you get from fishing up the SoS's As she said, using the nets gets you the krakens and sea serpents, and they add up fast. I have so many right now, and sell them on my vendor for about 1K each. (I also sell the MiBs, they drop often enough in treasure boxes). Since you need fishing to fish those up, I'd say its important to have.

[King Kong]

The publish tonight or tomorrow will open the door for Fishing to return to normal, yes you will fish up MiB's much easier.

[Jupiter]

Love the fishing update, just one little question; Will MiBs be fished up on sea serpents that you'd have to kill and loot, or just fished up into your pack?

[King Kong]

If fished, fished up in pack like anything you fish up

if you kill a sea serpent and he has one, you will have to loot it.