Sportfishing

Find the birds, hook a trophy, and win a reel-fight minigame to land it - then haul the catch home for treasure-tier gold.

Overview

Sportfishing is trophy fishing, and it is nothing like dropping a line off the dock. You sail out to a feeding frenzy in the open ocean, hook a big fish, and then fight it in a reel minigame - a DDR-inspired set of fast-paced actions, set to commands or on-screen button pressing, to actually land it. Win, and you carry the catch home strapped to your back to cash in at a Prize Fish Buyer.

The gump shows you what to do, but you answer on a clock, and every hooked fish can still get away if you fumble the fight.

Finding a Frenzy

Sportfishing only happens at a feeding frenzy - a patch of ocean where seagulls circle overhead. Those birds are the marker; spot the flock and you have found your fishing ground. A few things to know about frenzies:

• There are always 10 active somewhere in the world. When one dies, the game tops the pool back up within a minute, so there is always fishing to be found.
• They spawn well out to sea - at least 100 tiles from any land, so you need a ship to reach them.
• Each frenzy lives about 30 minutes before it disperses and the gulls scatter.

Casting & Hooking

Fish within 50 tiles of a frenzy and your line switches into sport mode. Inside that range you catch no ordinary fish and no junk - normal fishing is suppressed and you are only ever fishing for the big ones. Each cast has a 5% chance to hook a sportfish; miss and you get the line "Nothing bites and you cast again" and keep going. A plain cast takes about 10 seconds to resolve, and a better pole shortens that (see Fishing Poles).

The moment you hook one, the fight gump pops up and the fight music kicks in. Now the real work starts.

The Reel Fight

The fight is a reaction minigame. The fish has a fight bar that starts at 100%, and the gump shows a set of action buttons with one lit up gold as the action it wants right now. The required action changes every 1.5 seconds (and never asks for the same one twice in a row). You answer with a bound command:

• Hit the correct action inside the window and you knock 4% off the fight bar.
• Hit the wrong one, or miss the window, and the fish recovers 1%.
• Drive the bar to 0% and the fish is landed.

But you are on a clock of your own: each fish gives you a fixed number of chances, and higher tiers give fewer. Burn through them before the bar hits zero and "the line snaps and a big one gets away." The basic fight uses four actions - Big Reel, Pull Left, Pull Right, Give Slack. The top two catches (marlin and great white) use a harder eight-action version that adds Rod Up, Rod Down, Hold On, and Short Reel.

Bind these to hotkeys before you sail out. With a 1.5-second window, a fight is unwinnable if you are typing the commands by hand.

The Five Catches

Every hook is one of five species, at an even 20% chance each. Each fish is landed at a random weight in pounds - it turns up in your hands as something like "a great white (97 lbs)." The higher the tier, the fewer chances the fight gives you, so a great white is both the rarest prize to draw and the hardest to actually land.

Fishing Poles

You fish with a sport fishing pole, a carpentry-crafted pole made from wood. The wood tier is what matters: each step up shaves a second off the 10-second cast, from plain wood down to a 3-second cast on the best wood - through Oak, Ash, Yew, Heartwood, Bloodwood, Frostwood, and Perilwood. A faster pole means more hooks per hour, and a frenzy only lasts 30 minutes.

Sport poles start at 250 durability and have about a 5% chance to lose a point each cast, so like all gear on the shard they wear out - see Durability. Poles can also be enchanted with fishing enchantments.

Carrying Your Catch

Land a fish and it is immediately shouldered, exactly like a trade pack. You cannot take it off - the only ways to part with it are to turn it in, stow it in a fishing boat's hold, or die. Carrying one has a cost:

• You carry one fish at a time. A dedicated fishing boat's hold can stow up to four.
• It slows you down - forced to walking pace on foot, and to a reduced run while mounted.
• If you die, the fish drops locked, like a trade pack - only a double-click re-shoulders it.

Sink a fishing boat and its stored fish spill onto the water outside the wreck, still lock-guarded, and they decay after about 15 minutes if nobody claims them.

The Prize Fish Buyer

You cash a catch in at a Prize Fish Buyer. Stand within a tile, off your boat, and double-click the NPC (or hand the fish over). A fish turns in for rewards equivalent to a treasure map of the same tier: a great white pays out like a level-5 map. The gold goes straight to your bank and the rest of the loot drops into your pack.

The one to chase is the Master Prize Fish Buyer on Tortuga. Every turn-in there has a 25% chance to double the reward. A normal payout is either a treasure chest of the fish's tier or a straight gold purse (from 6,000 gold for a tuna up to 10,000 for a great white), and a doubled roll pays two chests or twice the gold.

There is also a rare bonus layered on top that scales with the fish's tier: Marlin Flash, an exclusive fishing-cloth color found nowhere else, and on the rarest rolls a Marlin Flash dye you can put on your hair, beard, backpack, spell hues, or a ship paint. Every fish you land also counts toward the Trophy Fisher leaderboard, and the gold you bank feeds the Tycoon board.

Tips

• Bind your fight commands to hotkeys before you leave port. A hooked fish will not wait for you to set up, and the window is only 1.5 seconds.
• Craft the best pole you can - a Perilwood pole casts in three seconds instead of ten, which is more hooks per frenzy.
• Take a fishing boat if you can. A four-fish hold means you fill up before you have to sail back.
• Do not fight a great white the way you fight a tuna - the top tiers give you fewer chances, so clean, on-time inputs matter more.
• Sell on Tortuga for the shot at a doubled reward - but the ocean there is lawless, and you are slow while you carry the fish.
• Sportfishing feeds the Mariner and Treasure Hunter Quartermasters if you want your sea time counting toward more than one system at once.

Exact percentages, timings, and reward tables are set in-game and get tuned. This page describes how the system behaves; confirm the live numbers on the water.