Words of FISHING encouragement...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Mouseee, Apr 23, 2019.

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  1. Mouseee

    Mouseee Orbital Explorer

    I notice people consistently voicing frustration about fishing being “way too hard”, and I hope to offer some words of encouragement and shine some light on the situation.

    It is ALWAYS hard in the beginning, for EVERYONE. I mean IMPOSSIBLY hard. It doesn’t matter what device you’re on, your game settings, or any of that. Everyone experiences the same thing in the beginning. Some people just choose to walk away and not stick with it.

    This is the key... I was unable to catch a single fish...until my FISHING LEVEL finally went up. That’s what people don’t realize, and they give up before they have a chance to figure it out and see for themselves. Just like foraging and mining, your fishing level starts at 1, and can eventually go all the way up to 10 as you progress. No matter how hard you try, for at least the first 2-3 levels, it will feel like you are failing miserably. You will barely catch a single thing. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NORMAL! If you keep trying (even without catching anything) your level WILL start to go up! And the best news is: each time you progress another level, FISHING BECOMES EASIER! Shocker, right?! Really. It’s that simple. You’re NOT doing anything wrong. When you start the game from the beginning you need to just be patient, keep trying, and wait it out. I am on Fall, Year 9 in the game, and I don’t focus much on fishing. All of my other skills are at level 10, while my fishing is only level 8 simply because I don’t do it that much. But even still at level 8, it is rare that I can’t catch a fish. I manage to easily get almost every single one that bites. The controls are super easy to manage and I have no issues. I imagine level 10 is even easier. Just be patient and don’t give up because you feel like you’re not catching anything. You are still progressing. You need to fail first to succeed in this one. It’s all part of the process!

    I hope this motivates some people to stick it out and keep trying!
     
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    • ShneekeyTheLost

      ShneekeyTheLost Master Astronaut

      If you don't catch fish, you can't level your fishing skill. So... catch 22? That's the fundamental problem with the fishing minigame, it is easily the most difficult aspect of the game at the beginning, then trivializes toward the end.

      Honestly, what I'd do is have the fish's speed be a factor of the character's current skill, or simply scale what fish might appear based on character fishing level, with the level 0-3 fish being easier to catch, the level 4-7 fish being vanilla, then the level 8-10 fish being more difficult to catch than vanilla. That would give you ramping difficulties to go with ramping ease.
       
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      • Mouseee

        Mouseee Orbital Explorer

        In the beginning, I literally caught almost nothing. And my level still went up eventually. I may have caught a couple here and there, but the level really does go up, even without really catching much of anything.
         
        • ShneekeyTheLost

          ShneekeyTheLost Master Astronaut

          Your skill slowly went up because catching things other than fish grants a small amount of fishing experience. However, it would've gone up exponentially faster had you actually been able to land any fish.
           
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          • Mouseee

            Mouseee Orbital Explorer

            You may be missing (and maybe proving) my point. Exactly what I’m trying to say is: this is all part of the game. Like most other aspects of the game, it takes time to advance. What would be the point of even having levels at all, if we were able to just blast right through to the top? This post was meant to encourage players to continue trying, even when they’re frustrated. I never said it was fast or easy.
             
            • WhitneyFox

              WhitneyFox Void-Bound Voyager

              Fishing hack for anyone going the Community center bundle route. If you collect shells from the beach and get a crab from the mines (killing the rock crabs may drop one), you can complete the crab pot bundle and get 3 crab pots before you actually even try to fish. Then you can put those crab pots in the ocean and get catches every day. Your fishing level will go up without ever casting a line.
               
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              • One More Day

                One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                Crab pots won't work without bait.

                You need to be Fishing 2 to craft ordinary bait, or to buy it from Willy, so that means you still need to do some fishing.

                If you don't want to do any pole fishing at all, the only alternative is wild bait, and that means getting a 4 <3 relationship with Linus. But wild bait is relatively expensive for ingredients, requiring 5 bug meat, 5 slime and 10 fiber per craft, and you only get 5 pieces of wild bait from each craft. And because you won't be able to craft or buy more crab pots either, going the wild bait way caps you at 3 crab pots until you harvest 76 pots at 5XP each until you have 380 XP for Fishing 2. Even if you do all of them every single day, it'll take 26 days, virtually a full season, before you can craft or buy some more crab pots.
                 
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                • BentFX

                  BentFX Cosmic Narwhal

                  It's a bit more complicated than that. You can't craft or buy bait until fishing level 2. You can befriend Linus to get the wild bait recipe, but wild bait for ~50% trash items doesn't seem like that equitable of a trade.

                  Simple fact is, it takes about 8 fish, at most, to get to level 1. Then about 20 to get to level 2. It's best to just dig in at the mountain lake and learn to fish.

                  ...oop, looks like someone beat me to it.
                   
                  • ShneekeyTheLost

                    ShneekeyTheLost Master Astronaut

                    And I think you may be missing my point as well. It may be a part of the game, but the sheer amount of grinding for the sake of grinding to get the fishing game up to the point where it becomes remotely viable is directly and starkly in contrast with every other mechanic in the entire game.

                    Let's look at the other skills, and see how they compare, shall we?

                    Farming 1 is obtained literally on Day 5, almost without exception, the only thing you need to do is harvest the parsnips given to you on day one. As far as difficulty goes, it is trivial. Minimal effort is needed to obtain this level, you just plant a small plot of parsnips, and keep them watered every day. As you advance in Farming, you require more farming experience to gain levels, meaning planting more expensive crops, but it doesn't really get any easier or harder to continue leveling farming, especially after the sprinklers come online.

                    Foraging is obtained by picking things up off the ground, and it is entirely possible, even suggested, that you can get Foraging 1 on your very first day. Advances in your foraging skill don't really make it substantially easier or more difficult to gain more foraging experience, although it does make it slightly easier to chop down trees which can be a venue for grinding foraging if you so choose, which is substantially counterbalanced by the amount of experience required to hit your next level.

                    Mining experience is obtained by getting a pick and going into the mines, with the most experience being given for mining ore and gem nodes. This gets easier primarily with tool advancement rather than leveling up, although there is a small amount of endurance cost reduction, but it is slow and gradual, and low levels of Mining do not increase the difficulty of mining anything, it is purely tool-based upgrades, and even then it doesn't make things *easier* so much as requiring less endurance drain by requiring fewer hits to mine more difficult things.

                    Combat skill doesn't meaningfully add to your capabilities in combat, that is almost entirely gear-dependent. You can equip a high-end weapon right at Combat Skill 0 if you like. So your combat skill has almost zero impact on your ability to actually conduct combat within the mines.

                    Fishing, however, starts out as almost impossible to accomplish when you first start out, and has a steep gradient drop-off in difficulty as you advance in fishing skill. And, unlike any other skill in the entire game, failing the minigame grants zero experience while still requiring a time and/or endurance cost, making it one of the most punishing skills to try and level in the game.

                    There's a reason the fishing minigame is the single most modded mechanic in the entire game. The difficulty curve is completely backwards from everything else in the entire game, and all the encouragement you care to offer isn't going to change that. Neither one of us can put words in CA's mouth and say with any certainty if this was intended or not, however really it doesn't matter to me if it was intended, what matters is that it is broken. Which is why I wrote a mod to fix it, as did others both before and after me.

                    We have differing viewpoints on the topic. You take it as a challenge to overcome. I see it as a facepalm-worthy bug in the system.
                     
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                    • One More Day

                      One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                      This comparison of fishing with the other four skills makes a really good point, and tbh I'd never actually thought of it like that. To a certain extent you're right in your analysis, but I think it needs to be further qualified. I think your view only really holds true for novice players, because once you've put in a bit of practice, early fishing is comfortably the best option for getting your cash flow up and running, to cover expenses in the first few days. Many players do exactly that on second and subsequent farms. It's very reliable, and not really that difficult after all. With the exception of catfish, you'll catch every fish 100% of the time in spring. And even catfish won't always escape; sometimes you get a really docile one, or just time it right.

                      But that's probably leaping ahead again, so let's go back to the essence of your point, that fishing differs from the other skills, and I suppose the win-or-lose style of the fishing minigame does seem slightly incongruous. I still remember my first farm, and I recall that I found fishing so hard, so unfathomable, that I simply ignored it for ages, and I probably hit Farming 10, or at least got close, before I went back to fishing to try again. And eventually I got Fishing 1, then Fishing 2 and so on, until I maxed out my final skill. So, I can certainly sympathise with the "too difficult" viewpoint for newbies. Fast forward a bit though, and not so long ago I posted in another thread about hitting Fishing 10 just before the end of day 7. Then someone promptly came up with a better strategy than mine, and went and beat my time by about 3 hours, and that's probably not very close to the world record either, but the point is that it's patently not difficult once you know what you're doing.

                      Perhaps the problem is not that it's too difficult compared to the other skills, but more that the fishing interface is a lot less intuitive than swinging an axe, pick, sword or hoe, or using a watering can. And perhaps the problem is exacerbated by that interface being less than comprehensively explained by the in-game tutorial when you first come across it. If that tutorial was more detailed, and perhaps could be opened up again, to re-read it, maybe newbies might not struggle with fishing so much, or for so long.


                      The mechanic has been deliberately designed, and as clicking correctly gets the green bar behind the fish and subsequently catches it, that mechanic works as intended, so it's clearly not a bug. If we were to reduce it to such a binary choice, then I'd say that seeing it as a challenge makes quite a bit more sense, as it is something that can be overcome with a little bit of effort. And anyway, I don't see what's so wrong with having a challenge, and as CA is happy for his game to be modded, I don't see anything wrong in modding it to be easier either. One of your mantras is for people to enjoy the game their own way, and I, for one, will continue to do that.

                      usually with wall-to-wall fishing on days 2, 3 and 4 :D
                       
                        Mouseee likes this.
                      • UnexpectedParole

                        UnexpectedParole Phantasmal Quasar

                        I frankly still struggle to fish reliably. I've played hundreds of hours of this game. Fishing straight through day 2 to the mines open. over and over and over.

                        Due to the location of my laptop and tv and chair I have to use to use a mouse, and it's not great.

                        I think I had good luck during one run using a keyboard shortcut button, but I don't recall what that was. And spent enough time away from the game that I've forgotten what-ever I was doing "differently" than now when I try it.

                        I can't catch catfish even at higher levels of fishing, and certainly not on day 3.

                        But that's my mileage.
                         
                        • Mouseee

                          Mouseee Orbital Explorer

                          Thank you for this. I agree 100%.
                           
                          • Kurachi84

                            Kurachi84 Cosmic Narwhal

                            my brains are damaged, so my movement already is flawed badly
                            then the timer in SDV without mods is way too fast to be effectively fishing, if you also don't use a fishing mod
                            even with timespeed mod set to 20 ticks (means 20 reallife seconds being 10 ingame minutes) and fishing mod skipping the whole minigame, it doesn't do that much if i wanna be a decent fisher (with skill and the achievement) the first few days

                            i'm happier without stressing in the minigame PLUS the very fast timer (which i thought even before i used mods), as i bought the game for mostly relaxation
                            even without fishing and mods, i got stressed out by always being too late with questing and the mines
                            now i can catch fish i want (including for the quests that make you fish a few of one kind), and if i still have farming, foraging or mining to do, i can do that, too

                            i get you wanna try to make people like fishing and not give up, but also must remember the reason why people find it too hard
                            and i'm not talking about my brains, in this case (although it is the case for me)
                             
                            • WilliamZ

                              WilliamZ Phantasmal Quasar

                              I never found regular fishing difficulty, Summer fishes start to behave more aggressively so if you're starting your fishing carrer on Summer you're screwed.
                              I have only two concerns about fishing in Stardew:
                              1. Special fishes: they behave very randomly, the difficulty of the fish that we can check on wiki doesn't mean anything, like I said on other posts, I had a Pufferfish behaving more aggressively than the Legend;
                              2. Fishing tackles being the only kind of upgrade in the game that breaks, I would be fine if every equipment in the game required maintenance, but this arbitrary choice for only fishing tackles makes fishing extra hard and very unappealing for me, as if with fishing tackles you could make more profit than with crops, totally BS, their endurance fades so fast that investing on fishing tackles is only feasible when you're rich and by that point you don't require to use your fishing rod anymore.
                              What makes things worse is that fishing tackles really improve your experience with the fishing minigame, Trap Bobber is really helpful for example, but CA putting that barrier on fishing is clearly a flawed design choice.
                               
                              • Madam_Tigerlily

                                Madam_Tigerlily Intergalactic Tourist

                                I've been playing this game on ps4 for 2 years and still can't catch fish despite setting up a separate new game to only fish as practice. I've tried all the "tricks" and "tips" that I've found online (apart from finding a mod, if there is one for ps4) I find this aspect of the game extremely frustrating and disappointing as nothing I've tried works or levels up my skill.
                                 
                                • WilliamZ

                                  WilliamZ Phantasmal Quasar

                                  Trap Bobber is life, it really improve your experience by an amount that I can't express of how helpful it is, for you to have an idea I'm not the kind of player that can catch Catfish on day 3 and really have confidence with this fish when I'm level 5+ in fishing, but Trap Bobber really makes catch Catfish a walk in the park, I only used Catfish as an example but it helps you to catch any kind of fish without worry (except for the Legend).

                                  The problem is that it's a very annoying lure to make, so I'm always purchasing it from Willy.
                                   
                                  • Meka3715

                                    Meka3715 Space Hobo

                                    I'm new to Stardew Valley, so this post on fishing is VERY encouraging. I'm playing on PS4, so I'm not sure if it's easier/harder on PC versus console, but I'm not having much luck. I have caught maybe 3 fish, and I've been playing for 3 days and in Year 1, Summer month. I don't feel I'm making much progress, but it's so nice to see words of encouragement. Here's to me hoping that I can improve my luck as my skill level goes up.
                                     
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                                    • jmababa

                                      jmababa Orbital Explorer

                                      Low level Fishing tip: Fish at your farm and on unlucky days trash, joja cola, sewed, etc gives you 5exp and if you get fish the fish you might get does not move that much or stays at the bottom. Do this until you have 2nd fishing rod
                                       
                                      • Elenna101

                                        Elenna101 Scruffy Nerf-Herder

                                        Depends what farm you're on. Standard farm has nothing but trash. Monster farm has a few easy fish (I think the forest and hilltop farms are the same, but don't quote me on that). River farm obviously has all the river fish, which can include some hard ones.
                                         
                                        • jmababa

                                          jmababa Orbital Explorer

                                          Well at least trash has exp you can still get lvl 3 fast and hilltop farm has chub and bream in it I'm on hilltop farm
                                           

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