Fishing

You can spend time fishing to gain some food and raise your Survival skill (cap: 100).

Locations

There is currently one fishing location available: just a few minutes walk from your house in north Redhaven is the Red River, and on its banks right near you there is a perfect fishing spot, so you don't need to travel further.

Equipment

This location happens to be right next to Redhaven Market, from which you can buy a cheap set of simple fishing gear for just $25; very convenient.

You may wish to buy five sets though, as your Followers can assist you fishing.

Followers

Each Follower with a fishing rod will add +5 to your success chance if they have Survival 40+, or +10 if they have Survival 90+.

Followers also add to your catch: each +5 bonus from Followers adds on average about 1/3 of a ration per session. So having competent fishermen assisting you should add 1 to 3 rations worth of fish per hour, depending on their skill (assuming you are successful).

Notice that the help of four followers will not mean you catch five times what you would on your own; even four expert fishermen assisting will on average less than double your haul. On Raana, fishermen together do not catch as many fish as they would if fishing spread out separately. However Raana has dangerous aquatic and amphibious creatures as well as bandits, so it is safer to fish in a group.

Followers also bring conversation, to keep you entertained. Perhaps if they chatted less, they might add to your haul more.

Note that Followers do not have a chance of improving their Survival skill while fishing with you.

Sessions

You can go fishing at any time of day or night. And you can do four sessions per day. You don't have to do all four sessions in one sitting; you can break it up.

Each session takes an hour - plus 30 minutes if you snag your line. The first 30 minutes of each session are spent using your Survival skill to try to figure out the best technique to use at that moment, given the weather conditions. The second 30 minutes resolve the results.

Techniques

You have a choice between fishing near the shore, casting further out into deep water, or drifting the lure using a float.

• Shore fishing can bring in black-striped eels, stormfish, slimy, four-feet-long "sea serpents", or shoaling baby fawnfish.
• Deep fishing can catch larger fawnfish, shiny, dagger-like rifle fish, and more sea serpents - including some up to 10 feet long.
• Drift fishing can catch maximum size fawnfish; shoaling riflefish, medium sized sea serpents, good for soup, and large, red-striped smourn, popular for its salmon-like flavor.

Note that deep fishing and drift fishing bring in bigger hauls on average. Also note that drifting has a chance of getting you snagged, in which case you will lose an extra 30 minutes un-tangling your gear. So if your Survival skill is not up to the task of judging which technique is best suited to that moment, it is probably best to try deep fishing.

Tactics

If your skill roll is successful (chance = your Survival skill), the help text will tell you which of the techniques is best to select at that time. It will also tell you what you think your rough chance of success is when using that method at that moment - which will be between 65% and 95%.

If you choose this recommended technique, you will have a very good chance of catching fish. This chance is based on the 65-95% figure, but may work out higher than that in practice.

If you failed your Survival roll so have no idea what method is best, you have to guess which of the three fishing methods to try. If you guess correctly, you will get the same yield as if you had determined the method successfully using your Survival skill.

If you guess or choose one of the wrong methods for that moment, you still have a chance of catching something, as follows:

• Shore fishing: you will get nothing but slimy sea grass.
• Deep fishing: A 25% chance, or 50% if you have Survival 70+, to land a 4 foot "sea serpent" (3). There is also a tiny chance that you may drag up some valuable durasteel from a wreck.
• Drift fishing: A 25% chance, or 50% if Survival 70+, to catch a nice fawnfish (2).

Results

If you use the best method for that moment (whether guessed, or determined by successful Survival roll), and are also successful with it, you have a roughly 5% chance to increase your Survival skill by +1 (cap: 100).

You will also of course catch some Raanan "fish" (probably). If your session is successful, you will obtain 1 to 9 rations worth of fish from it. And, unlike the game carcasses (meat) obtained by hunting, this is much quicker to convert into food, so you do not need to spend extra time at home converting it; "fish" turns straight into rations.

The amount of food you obtain from your 1 hour fishing session (+30 mins if you get tangled) is determined by how much your modified chance roll succeeded by. The calculation is complicated, but your Survival skill adds to the result directly, plus you get +0–40 from followers as mentioned above – plus you get extra if you catch particularly big fish, or many smaller ones: +20 for smourn, +25 for fawnfish, and +40 for the bigger sea serpents. The end result delivers as follows:

chance result	rations obtained
<10	1, 1 or 2
10–24	1, 2 or 3
25–49	2, 3 or 4
50–69	2, 4 or 5
70–89	3, 5 or 6
90–99	6, 6 or 7
100+	6, 7 or 9

Enjoy your fishing!

Notes

Variables: ownfishstick

Links: Survival (MC), Survival (NPCs), Fishing Gear, Rations

Source: Updated for game version 0.8.5