Let's do some fishing shall we!

Gedron

Master
Don't fret. Fishing will not be adjusted.

This server would lose about... 20-25 people just from Trinsic ALONE if it was adjusted. B^W would be gone - we find no excitement on land here, and highly doubt anything with the upcoming expansion will change that for the long-term. Too many people would go back to farming on land after discovering that fishing "ain't half bad", then realize they're back to the old grind that got 'em to try Fishing in the first place.

Plus with galleons coming in, it would make no sense to lower the reward while raising the risk. Remember the early days of Fishing here. The Black Wind cost us 88,000+ gold with a -30% faction discount. Do you know how much donation coins were going for back then?

40,000 gold coins. That's right, the plague of the seas was bought for, effectively, 2,000 donation coins. This was back when, at GM Fishing, it always took about 4 hours per MiB and the chests were extremely light.

They'll make this awesome. Keep fishing, keep getting your powerscrolls. The damn expansion cover is 80% water themed, you think they're gonna' nerf it now after Alan's hard work on the galleons? Alan would choke a *****.

Yeah I remember the days of the 100k+ ships. I'm anxious to see how much Galleons will be!! I would LOVE some pointers on fishing, you should write a guide Dewd. You're very knowledgeable on the subject and make it sound so much fun.
 

AnsemUO

Grandmaster
Yeah I remember the days of the 100k+ ships. I'm anxious to see how much Galleons will be!! I would LOVE some pointers on fishing, you should write a guide Dewd. You're very knowledgeable on the subject and make it sound so much fun.

Yes indeed. Please include some of your pirating privateering methods
 

Dewderonomy

Grandmaster
Yeah I remember the days of the 100k+ ships. I'm anxious to see how much Galleons will be!! I would LOVE some pointers on fishing, you should write a guide Dewd. You're very knowledgeable on the subject and make it sound so much fun.
Yes indeed. Please include some of your pirating privateering methods
I've seen so many posts about fishing and templates and such, but having a consolidated thread about seafaring would be nice and useful. I might do something after a few weeks of galleons so I don't have to rewrite it, and it'll give us time to see what's updated in the interim.
 

Defari

Adept
So I bought and placed my first ship (on this server) last night and when placing I got a "WARNING!!" message regarding the upcoming rules for sinkable ships. I figured I would share here if anyone is curious (might be posted elsewhere but I didn't see it).

Here is a summary of what it said -

ALL ships are "sinkable" when a certain amount of damage is taken. When "sunk" the ships can be boarded by all. When your boat reaches this point there are only 2 ways to repair it back to normal which includes the following:

- return to town (assuming you were killed when you're ship was "sunk"), purchase a "repair deed" and attempt to return to repair your ship. Of course this is dangerous as the people that killed you will most likely still be there...

- pay a "ransom" to the owner of the ship that destroyed your ship... No info was given on how this works (does the person that sinks your ship set the ransom amount similar to collecting heads of red-players or is it a set amount based on the value of the ship? we'll have to wait and see).

Also, if you ship is "sunk" and left in the open water, ANYONE can use a repair deed to claim your ship...

From the sound of it, pirating just got a whole lot more profitable while fishing... perhaps a bit less profitable lol.
 

Dewderonomy

Grandmaster
So I bought and placed my first ship (on this server) last night and when placing I got a "WARNING!!" message regarding the upcoming rules for sinkable ships. I figured I would share here if anyone is curious (might be posted elsewhere but I didn't see it).

Here is a summary of what it said -

ALL ships are "sinkable" when a certain amount of damage is taken. When "sunk" the ships can be boarded by all. When your boat reaches this point there are only 2 ways to repair it back to normal which includes the following:

- return to town (assuming you were killed when you're ship was "sunk"), purchase a "repair deed" and attempt to return to repair your ship. Of course this is dangerous as the people that killed you will most likely still be there...

- pay a "ransom" to the owner of the ship that destroyed your ship... No info was given on how this works (does the person that sinks your ship set the ransom amount similar to collecting heads of red-players or is it a set amount based on the value of the ship? we'll have to wait and see).

Also, if you ship is "sunk" and left in the open water, ANYONE can use a repair deed to claim your ship...

From the sound of it, pirating just got a whole lot more profitable while fishing... perhaps a bit less profitable lol.
0x2IUK4.gif
 

eppy

Grandmaster
Also, if you ship is "sunk" and left in the open water, ANYONE can use a repair deed to claim your ship...

From the sound of it, pirating just got a whole lot more profitable while fishing... perhaps a bit less profitable lol.

Well this makes boats completely useless.
 

Yoar

Adept
'Tis a sad day for the lone captain. I can't steal ship keys and now I also can't create wonderful boat blockades.

Guess I'll have to find another profession... Or a crew...
 

Malkraven

Grandmaster
i must agree with Eppy on this one im all for paying a ransom on a sunken ship and i like the pirate ideas but i don't wanna lose a 100k+ ship every time i die if people can claim your ship with a repair deed why even bother with ransom it. i just wont go to sea and i dont see many others bothering if they risk 100k per death.
 

Olivier

Master
I hope they introduce a rowboat then ;)

I don't mind the risk really, it's extremely rare that I stumble across anyone at sea currently, sure there might be an increase of pirates or "privateers" once expansion hits, but let's rethink; a boat costs between 30,000-50,000 gold and if you loose one boat / 50 MIB's it's not that big of a deal.

Who knows, maybe the seas will be crowded and no one will dare to take the risk to fish for treasures, but then the value of the fishing rares will rise at least!
 

Malkraven

Grandmaster
yea i wouldn't mind paying 30-50 ransom, but i want my boat back after :),

like this it seems they could just ransom sink ransom sink and then when u wont pay no more thanks ill take ya ship which bypasses the hole point of ransom, just give em the ship and go buy another that way they cant track you and kill you again..

and i expect gallons will be more than 50k
 

Struan

Expert
Certainly makes AFK fishing a much more risky venture.

Although I don't often come across others while fishing. Unless a whole lot more people hit the waves as pirates I think you would be pretty unlucky to get sunk even occasionally.

I actually don't expect this to have a too much affect on fishing. What I hope this brings is several opposing pirate/pirate hunter guilds and some big ship battles. I happy to "donate" a small boat or two to watch that.
 

Struan

Expert
It would be great if the Dev team turned up the spawn rate on random ele's, deep water ele's etc. Maybe even a small chance of a random leviathan spawn.

I think this would go well with upcoming changes.
 

Dewderonomy

Grandmaster
From what I understand, paying a ransom will be an automated system similar to the bounty/head ransom system, whereupon you'll get your ship back, effectively. You can opt, instead, to potentially sail back and fight over the wreckage, or even abandon it altogether for someone else to get. Either way, repairing the ship and claiming it will require a repair deed which is going to be purchasable, meaning any party (victim, victor, scavenger) will have to pay for their prize.

Keep this perspective in mind going forward, and it might give you a bit of an overall unbiased outlook on seafaring ahead (I'll dispense with the rewards for these risks as they're already fantastic, and will be getting better post-expansion):

1) Fishing you can be AFK like, 90% of the time and make the same amount of money as if you were constantly focused on the screen. Think about this: how often do you SEE a person at sea, much less be attacked by them? As a follow-up, how often are you actually attacked at sea? And finally, how often have you been KILLED at sea?


2) In contrast, compare that to any dungeon on UOF. Consider the PK attempts per hour on land to the PK attempts per hour at sea. Now compare the templates that you need to make money on land versus at sea. GM+ Fishing and maybe archery or magery. A template at sea can be the same used for doing t-maps on land. Double-whammy.

Now consider the land PvM. Tamers that you have to build up and grind to then go to the most contested locations on the server, not just by PKers, but also by other tamers. You're PvPing when you're not PvPing. You are ALWAYS fighting other players in dungeons, if at the very least just over spawn so you can make some gold. Then what happens when you get your pets stolen? That's rough. Sure you can pay the ransom but there's no guarantees since it isn't automated. And if they don't offer a ransom? That could be an expensive, rare colored, high end pet that's bonded gone in an instant. You can purchase a pet ball but that's donation coins and an additional investment (ball + powder).


3) Look at dexxers. If they want to kill ANYTHING they need a slayer. Plus they have all their gear, and the upcoming slayer armor is going to be difficult to create, which they won't be able to insure or bless. A dexxer gets rolled or attacked every hour in most places, and dying is an easy 5-10K if they're packing light; a suited dexxer could easily lose 2x-3x that much, and not even come close to making it back. If they lose all their gear, they actually start LOSING money and their previous investments (unlike fishing PSes, which aren't lost) cannot be regained without investing AGAIN to get it back.


4) Assume the prize system isn't automated or automatically offered (which I'm sure it will be, but let's just consider otherwise), if pirates only camped ships or tried to actually take them, it would require them to BUY a repair deed to seize it. So they have to invest money into taking a ship. "But that's still going to be less than buying a ship themselves!" True, but what are they going to do with that ship? Let's consider these are classics we're talking about taking here; if they have a galleon to sink her, they probably don't need a bunch of classics laying around.

Auction them? Sure, but for how much? If it's too costly (to make back the gold you invested in the ship and then enough profit to make it worth it for all the crew involved), then people will just buy a ship from a -25% faction city. So now they have a bunch of ships that people don't want to buy from them and they cannot really use, and you can't sell 'em back to NPCs. So there's that.


5) "But what if they sunk my galleon??" What if they sunk your galleon? It's a galleon! You set foot on a man-o-war, a ship that is designed from the ground up to be manned by a crew for the primary purpose of waging war. If classics were akin to solo PvM on land, galleons are likened to faction PvP (maybe not on this shard but overall on others). You know what you're getting into. You don't go solo AFK fishing on a galleon for the helluvit.

Again, it's a matter of perspective. There's a lot of talk about "PIRATES! PIRATES! PIRATES!" What about navies? Pirate-hunters? Pirates won't be the only ones with galleon access. There's the Tokunese junk (ship name, not "garbage") which might be a good investment for fishing crews to at least defend themselves from lightly crewed pirates (good for 2-3 man fishing teams). The bigger the ship, the more crew you will need to make the most out of it. I won't go into details (gotta' keep some things up my sleeve, after all), but there are significant differences between the classics and the galleons when it comes to basic operations, outside of what you may consider the "obvious stuff". I will let you all figure that out for yourselves, though.

"How can I defend against a galleon on a classic though??" A galleon cannot fire its guns without a crew, and cannon don't affect crew (to my knowledge - they might add it in later, though). Nothing changes in that regard. Fields, EVs, archery - use whatever you can to dissuade them from pursuing. List lazily to the left outmaneuver them when they are chasing you. A galleon can't sink you if the crew is all dead. You can't sink them back, but if you're worried about surviving, well, there y'go. You survived. Now call in a galleon to sink 'er!


So once more, do not freak out over this hehe. UO is about risk-vs-reward. The only ones who are at MORE risk now are the AFKers and the ones leaving their ships in the water over night (who were already losing a lot anyway), and quite honestly, those who actually buy galleons to take out to sea (it's a risk for them too, mind you). If more people come out to sea, particularly pirates, they will end up preying on one another, and pirate-hunters will inevitably become popular in the form of guild fleets and privateers (ahem). Your guilds should have navies ready to support its members much like they already have anti-PK crews to defend you in dungeons. If they don't have anti-PK groups, well, your guild sucks haha. Join another! And if you aren't in a guild, remember this is UO: there is strength in numbers.
 

a burglar

Novice
Good post, I am hoping they have some dirt cheap fishing smacks like 5k gold just big enough for 2 people to operate...

Afterall, why would a fisherman buy anything larger?

Example...

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Defari

Adept
A small fishing boat would be pretty cool.

Also a tug boat of some sort so I can move all these derelict boats off my MiB locations (sailed to 2 last night only to find boats sitting on top of the spots)
 

Olivier

Master
A small fishing boat would be pretty cool.

Also a tug boat of some sort so I can move all these derelict boats off my MiB locations (sailed to 2 last night only to find boats sitting on top of the spots)

The MIB's location is larger than you think, the area is huge actually, you'd probably need 20 boats at least to block it.
 

Defari

Adept
So you don't need to be at the exact coordinates in the SoS to fish up the treasure (just the general area)? This is great to know!
 
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