fish pond strategy

Now that 1.4 is out for a while, I think most people have some experience with the fishing pond. What do you think are the best fish to use?

Since the value of roe is based on the base selling price of the fish you are raising, it seems like lava eel is the best choice if you only care about money, because the lava eel has the highest base price of all non-legendary fish. It also has a chance of giving magma geodes and spicy eel, which is nice.

The blobfish also seems like a good candidate because you get a 100% to get 1-2 roe. Assuming the chance of getting 2 roe is the same as getting 1 roe, this seems like it might be able to outpace the lava eel, which has a much lower chance to produce multiple roe. There is also a small chance of getting a pearl or five warp totems, which is a nice bonus.

Do you use the pond only for money, or also for other means? like 'breeding' clams or corals to use for coocking or crafting.

 

Well, Sturgeon specifically can be used to produce Caviar, which punches above its weight as far as price goes, and is needed for the Final Bundle.

As far as other uses, I'd reiterate using it to breed coral for making Deluxe Speed-Gro or Beach Totems. Depending on the size of your farm and how many crops can actually take advantage of DSG, it can be a real profit booster!

 

Form a purely monetary standpoint, the best are indeed Blobfish and Lava Eel with Sturgeon lagging a bit behind. See the numbers here. Breeding coral for DSG is an interesting idea, but with Sandy's weekly discount, I personally wouldn't bother. Breeding Flounder, Midnight Carp, and Squid for the components to make Seafoam pudding is intriguing to me as well although by the time you get that up and running you might not be doing much fishing anymore.

I also like the idea of fish ponds as trophies. With a mod that allows you to place the legendary fish in ponds, having them each in a pond is just way more immersive than having them stuck in a chest or on a table somewhere.

 

I don't know why CA made fish ponds so restrictive... to me they would produce roe in the quantity of available fish, not just one! They slowly reproduce but why fish them if less fish=less chance to obtain roe? I don't know if it was because I was expecting too much of it, but I felt disappointed with fishing ponds, but at least they add a nice touch for the farm.

 

Stonefish and Woodskips are good picks for new farms potentially. You can catch both of those fish in Spring of year 1 while you can still make use the of loot drops. I wish the fishing ponds were a touch cheaper so I could put them in earlier but I think I could manage a couple mid summer for hopefully a small, steady supply of building materials? I'm starting a new farm soon so I'll definitely incorporate them and see how I make out--in theory it sounds good but they might not produce enough to make any noticeable difference.

I like the idea of farming mats for seafoam pudding and lucky lunches but the only food I use in any quantity is for speed buffs so in practice probably not that useful to me. Late game, coral, slime and bug meat are all still useful so maybe coral, slimejacks or the dorado/lingcod/pike ponds would be good. As a source of income the numbers seem really poor to me even for the best fish so I wouldn't have a farm full of them--just a few for novelty and decoration.

Woodskips:
1-5 Acorn 5%
1-5 Maple Seed 5%
1-5 Pine Cone 5%
5-10 Wood 8%
5 Hardwood 10%
1 Roe 66%
1-5 Wood

Stonefish:
5 Geode 5%
30 Stone 7.5%
1 Geode 12%
1 Diamond 1%
5 Copper Ore 10%
1 Roe 50%
1 Roe 25%

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around the ponds. If I'm not building for aesthetic reasons The 5000g price tag has me stalled.
Are these daily output per pond or per fish? <I read this as pond output based on number of fish, so seems like just per pond.>

And while I agree the output of both of these fish looks great choices for 1st summer and the fish are obtainable in spring one. I'm still at a loss when considering the input required for the quests.

I'd love more seeds or wood or more hardwood. But I'd love my 5000g and the 200 stone (and the 10 hardwood, mushrooms, oak resin, pine tar, jade or tea leaves.)

Woodskip roe figures to sell for 68g if I did my math right? And while that is a great E/g ratio, the g/e is ridiculous when factoring the cost to build and I I did spend 130E worth of algae and seaweed to build it.

So realistically is this a 5000g investment into getting a free 50e per day with the odd chance of 'cool' things to come from it?

Or, more likely a seriously long term investment as the source of coral, lobster, or ingredients for gifting or cooking. .

Like I said, still wrapping my head around them

 

LOL No, I think they're worthless from a min/max point of view but if I'm putting them on my farm--and I am--I'm just thinking of how I might use them to the best effect. Mid Summer is the earliest I can picture being able to put them in gold wise without impacting something else. Like I said, I think they should be a touch cheaper to make them worthwhile in terms of game balance.

I've built them on my Honeydale Farm for the Missing Bundle Quest but in year 3 they're pretty much decorative and there's nothing I really want or need to put in them at this point. I'm curious if they'll provide any practical value building them early on though so that's the point of experimenting. My build order is usually stable, coop, barn, house and then sheds. I'm thinking I'll slot a pond in before I start upgrading my house and see if it feels like they provide any benefit or if they should be regulated to the very end of the build order (with the Mill) when I'm pretty much decorating and looking to fill space.

 

I'm not a min-maxer. But I certainly would like a rate of return. And as you stated, there are so many things to buy, stables, coop, barn, kitchen, shed, tool upgrades, etc. That finding 5000g for a "well" that you can get much cheaper via the well that I don't know when to build it. It's almost like an expensive crab pot. "passive" fishing xp. at one fish a day... lol.

 

A crab pot is the perfect example--it's a shame you don't get a free fish pond for completing a bundle! In terms of usefulness, I'm hoping they turn out to be just like the crab pots. Not particularly impressive when looking at them daily but incredibly useful and handy overtime. I'll soon have more money than I know what to do with but maybe hardwood, geodes, stone, wood, seeds and the like quietly building up in the background will be worth the initial outlay when I go to build something later on?

 

I mean, maybe we're using things differently but I don't find crab pots useful in either the long or short term? Usually I just stop using them after getting all the crab pot fish for Master Angler.

IMO it's more comparable to the slime hutch - expensive initially, and not really worth much although it does give you a small steady supply of income, but fun as another thing to do. (Although the slime hutch is significantly more expensive initially.)

 

Crab pots are useful for so much! I keep three on the beach and three on the farm even in the late game. They're are a good source of easy fish early on for for quality fertilizer and sashimi (which is a loved gift and good free food for mining). There's crabs for crab cakes (which has the longest speed buff duration), lobster which is a loved gift and good for +3 fishing lobster bisque, shrimp for tom kha soup (another loved gift) and shrimp cocktail (+1 luck & fishing). And then there's snails which is a loved gift for Vincent now and used in escargot which is another +fishing food.

The trash is good for coal, wood, iron ore, cloth and quartz if you recycle it. Or if you don't cook, craft or gift stuff you can always just chuck everything in the bin to sell--it's not good money but early on there's like 4 or 5 of the fish that sell for 100 ish gold (with fishing perks) for a few minutes of your time.

 

That is a bit of my point really. I'll fill the crab pot bundle from foraging on the beach plus a crab from the mines and those 3 crab pots from the reward will go in the pond on my farm. I'll put a chest next to them, the reycling machine, and eventually the worm bin. The 'fish' are then used for quality fertilizer and the trash for refined quartz and cloth.

Otherwise they are pretty much a waste for my style.

 

Well I guess it's good that the traveling merchant sells the caviar for 1,500-2,500g for you guys then--that's a bargain without the expense or hassle. Personally, I really like the fish ponds and the little "We're doing fine!" messages and the little fetch quests so like Elenna101 said they're definitely a fun addition for me. If they turn out to be as useful (to me) as the crab pots I'll be even happier with them.

Hope everyone has a Happy New Years!

 

I don't see an issue with it since in nature different critters breed at different rates

Does that work? (Placing those 4 items together to automate them) Or does that require a mod?

Aged roe and caviar from Sturgeon, Blob Fish and Lava eel, and Oysters for warp totems and pearls

 

I do not automate them.

I walk over with my watering can, grab bait from the worm bin, fill to 4 bait from the bin if neccessary, pull the items from the pots with the bait active (does the empty and fill at the same time) fill the watering can, then I place a bit of recycling in the machine if there was one and then empty the fish/trash/recyclables etc into the chest and go back to watering crops.
The only automation I have ever used is the sprinklers auto watering my crops.

 

I ran into my first problem with trying to put in a pond sooner rather than later--the seaweed. I'm willing to spare the gold mid Summer but I didn't have any seaweed and didn't feel like I had the time to spare to go fish. I'm still going to try for one sooner rather than later to see if I find them useful/good to have but unless I've been lucky early on with fishing or foraging up some seaweed it's probably a late Summer/early Fall build at best for me now.