The state of fishing (V.256+)


Scyzara

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To be honest, fishing hasn't been my favorite (or prime) source to acquire food in previous versions either - but I really liked going fishing once or twice per month to get a bit of variation in the daily chores. At the very least, I used up the (premade) fishing tackles I found while exploring. Getting trapped inside a fishing hut during a blizzard wasn't too much of a problem back then (at least during the day) because you could still keep a fire burning and forage wood from inside the fishing hut in emergency situations.

The deep forest update included two changes that imho (probably unintendedly) made fishing almost a no-go if you want to play efficiently now. It might even be a kind of death-trap for new players who don't know the game mechanics yet and believe fishing might be secure way to gain your daily calories.

I'd like to emphasize that I - in principle - really like both the new wood foraging system and the fact that you can repair clothes with a fishing tackle. But the combination of these two changes somehow gives me the feeling that it would be a terrible waste of resources (both scrap metal and time) to ever go fishing.

"Why does it feel like a wast of time?" you may ask. Well, I for one am a rather careful person and thus feel the need to prepare a fishing hut with a stockpile of sticks or firewood that equals a fire duration of at least 8 hours before I go fishing. Just in order to be safe if a blizzard starts while I'm in there.^^ *

In other words, fishing for one day not only requires the obvious scrap metal resources (to craft the hook + open the fishing hole) AND the time you spend while fishing, but FURTHERMORE another day's work to collect sticks and/or dismantle limbs or furniture.

I'm not sure how fishing could be made more attractive again (maybe less hunting prey combined with more calories per fish? Or an indirect way of fishing similar to placing snares?), but I'm a bit unhappy with its current state.

Just wanted to give this feedback to the Devs and ask how other players feel about the current state of fishing.

*I know this isn't necessary for cutting-edge-gaming and walking home straight through blizzards because you know the map by heart, but I assume most players would rather try to avoid travelling through blizzards anyway.

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I realize that i tried to fish once, a long time ago, and i never tried again.

In fact, I never needed to.

Each time I go on the mistery lake, there are wolves here too. They provide much more stuff, in a most exciting way... Why bother with fishing then?

Even in stalker diificulty, I never found myself in a situation where fishing would be vital. There are too much stuff elsewhere.

Maybe if we *have to* eat some different kind of food than only meat to prevent some illness this could be a way...?

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Things to improve it -

Allow a system to freeze foods outside in the snow, or smoke meat, to make hoarding food valuable.

Make fishing an active minigame instead of a progress bar.

Make fishing an active thing where the player is free to do other activities in the hut whilst he waits for a bite.

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I am in agreement with Scyzara. Before the Deep Forest Update I would fish as the main source of my food while I was at the Mystery Lake Camp. Gathering enough wood to keep warm for 8 hours of fishing was easy. Since the Deep forest update I have not fished once. Gathering enough wood for a day of fishing is just not worth the resources it would bring in.

I also like the new wood foraging system. But I feel like it should take less time to gather some kinds of wood. For example, when you break a apart a branch it takes 10 minutes for 2 sticks. I have done a lot of camping in my life and any small branch can be broken down in seconds by smashing it against a tree or even over your knee.

I think to make fishing viable again they could do one or two things. The time for gathering wood (for logs and branches) should be reduced slightly so we can stockpile enough wood to keep a fishing shack warm for a day of fishing. And/or they could increase the amount of calories on fish so that it becomes a viable source of food.

For the past 2 weeks I have been playing on Stalker mode. I'm in my 4th game on stalker mode and I have only found a hatchet once. So gathering wood has been a giant struggle for me lately.

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Fishing is just a drawer you open over and over again hoping to find a fish inside, a drawer that takes resources to look into, and in my opinion has always been utterly broken, at least it was every time I tried it; worst way to get calories. There is no gameplay associated with it, just RNG. A slot machine that eats tackle instead of money way more often than you get to eat fish.

And I don't believe anyone who says they can survive on just fish until I see it on video. Start a new game on ML, voyageur or stalker, fish calories or no calories. Go fish, maybe catch one, line snaps. :lol:

So now you either have to go look for tackle or scrap/hooks and line or wait around for a gut. And then you maybe catch another fish or two before the line snaps again. That's if you don't starve to death by then. It's just not worth it.

Especially since there's never a shortage of deer, wolves or even bears, not on the map as a whole even but around the fishing huts themselves. So it makes no sense to sit over a frozen hole waiting for the line to snap when there's meat walking just outside the hut.

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I don´t thing that fishing in it self is bad as it is now, it is just that other methods of getting food is so much more effective.

(as I discuss in my thread Game to easy, Stalker needs way less animals )

if the amount of animals in general would reduce, fishing would suddenly be a interesting way to get food, until then it is at best a distraction from the every day routine.

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I like the concept of fishing in the game, but the calories just aren't there.

Boosting the calorie rewards to the "low-end" fish or introducing a new "mid-level" fish would help.

If it didn't involve too much programming effort, it might be nice to have a fishing mini-game, maybe something to do with reeling in the catch, but I can't think how to do without showing the character's hands.

And what the heck are we using for bait? Is that another potential use for rose hips?

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I've always liked fishing in this game. I hear everyone's complaints and I agree, but to say it's calorie negative has never been true for me. And this:

Go fish, maybe catch one, line snaps. :lol:

This just doesn't seem to happen to me. I have lines break, sure, but I typically fish once every 10-20 days or so, for a 12-ish hour period, and I I usually sacrifice 3-ish pieces of scrap metal for a game lasting into the 200-300 days. I really enjoy those days spent fishing. Everyone is right, it is not the best source of calories, and it takes scrap metal, so if you're going for maximum efficiency then it's not smart to fish. But I love spending the first day gathering tons of wood, loading up the fishing hut, then going back to bed, waking up 2 hours before dawn and getting to my hut, fishing all day long. It is far from calorie negative: I show up nearly starving, leave at the end of the day at 2500 calories and usually have 2-3 big 1200+ calorie fish to bring home. It's a really enjoyable change from the normal hunting.

I think the main problem with fishing is twofold. First, other game is way too easy to find and harvest, we've screamed it out loud in tons and tons of threads, the devs definitely hear us. It needs to change for plenty of reasons. Second, fishing requires scrap metal, making it an unnecessary waste of the most finite resource. Maybe a solution to this (and this isn't my idea, but I couldn't find it in forums anywhere) is to have two kinds of scrap metal: light and heavy. Light scrap metal is a plentiful resource, you get it from canned food, from cars, from houses, etc. It's everywhere, and you use it to make fishing hooks (and very little else). It's not infinite, but it's more on par with cloth in terms of quantity. Then heavy scrap metal is what we all know and love, the highly scarce metal that is used to repair tools, keeping us worried about finding it and running out of it. With these two changes, I think everyone could learn to love fishing. There is still the fact that it's a "container you click for fish", but that part doesn't bother me at all.

I like the ideas of fishing traps that I can set and check later, but I don't think they're "necessary to fix fishing". They would be a nice perk.

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+1 to the discussion

Something needs to be done initially for the heating, since you have no control over the weather changes and even worst you dont see those changes while in fishing mode.

Also Fishing menu remains the same as it was initially. Needs to be more interactive somehow.

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great suggestions, I agree fishing does need refining. I like the idea of light and heavy scrap metal, light being used for fishing hooks. else if not just more overall scrap metal to be found.

As mentioned by others maybe it just a matter of increasing the calories for each fish!

Nutrition Facts

Salmon, Atlantic, raw

Amount Per 100 grams

Calories 208

so a 1kg fish should == 2080 calories

but then again catching the hard to find whopper prize 5kg fish would == 10400 calories. (but then again its very hard to catch)

I can see why the balancing act of this game can take a while, cause if you adjust one thing it could potentially effect a lot of others.

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A couple of folks have mentioned it, but I want to add my voice to the choir. There is, in my opinion, nothing wrong with the fishing mechanic as is. Yes. It's a slot machine, but so what? Every drawer is and I like that. The problem with fishing is the metal consumption. And the quetion that screams out to me every time I play is this: If I have tools and a workbench, why on earth can I not fashion hooks and arrow heads from tin cans?

I love the idea of Light Metal from cans and Durable Metal from sturdier sources.

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I don't see the need to add doors to the fishing huts. Once the character is fully dressed, in clothes that are in good condition, midday temps aren't that bad.

I would like to see a stool or wooden chair added to the huts, and/or the shelves made harvestable, so we can get some reclaimed wood for the stove.

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I want to start by saying I've only played the game for a couple of days at this point. That being said I come from a cold place in northern Minnesota and ice fishing is one of the ways we pass the time during our annual long dark. While I understand the need for balancing game play mechanics every ice house has a door even the portable ones similar to tents have flaps. We spend our winters here fishing the coldest days fishing in tee shirts in our warm houses. Also developers might want to add a tip up to the fishing gear which is a type of afk fish snare.

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