[Fishing] Lobster/Crab fishing advice

[WiggyJiggyJed]

I recently decided to try fishing again. I put fishing on one of my toons, added the High Seas expansion and got a Tokuno ship.

I started doing the fishing quests and everything was going along swimmingly, then got a request for lobster/crab (don't remember which one now). ?!??!? After some research online to figure out how to catch crab/lobster, I went to New Magincia and got some traps. I decided to try it out at the docks and figure out exactly how it works. Boy, talk about tedious. I started out pulling the traps after each **bob**, before I discovered that you can let them go for multiple and catch more.

So, now that I have the hang of it, I sail out and drop a 4x4 grid of traps. Then I wait for about 5-7 minutes before pulling them up, doing some regular fishing in the meantime. Much longer than that and the trap loss rate is too high (20 minutes is about 80% trap loss); much less and there are too many empty traps.

Is this roughly what most people do for lobster/crab fishing? Or is there a more productive method?

Also, is there a way to macro pulling up the traps? Manually double-clicking each trap is a pain, but I have not found a way to macro it yet.

Thanks.

 

[Basara]

You can get lobsters/crabs in dungeons as well. So, as long as you have a supply of traps you don't need to sail as much.

There's several safe places for dungeon fishing in the underworld (some you have to teleport to).

But, the grand-daddy of them all is if you have "Time of Legends". ALL OF EODON is considered "Dungeon". So, you can use the traps in the rivers. There is a huge area between the Urali, Barakko and Sakkrha villages where the only dangerous things are vampire bats, or (if someone is doing the dragon turtle spawn) stuff attacking across the water. You can run traps out of a giant beetle, walking along the shore, and fishing for dungeon fish as you do so (if high enough skill), and not have to worry about maintaining a ship except for doing the quests (and fishing for ocean fish) themselves.

 

[WiggyJiggyJed]

Thanks for the tip. I hadn't considered lobster/crab fishing inland. And I was debating where the best "safe" place to fish in a dungeon would be. I had considered the entry to Shame L2, but the waterfront there isn't very big and you fish it dry pretty fast at GM fishing.

However, from a pure efficiency standpoint, this doesn't seem any better/faster at filling a specific lobster/crab order. I will definitely start throwing some lobster traps in the water when I'm shore/dungeon fishing. I can always use the stock for Quest orders.

Thanks.

 

[Basara]

The shore fishing only works in dungeons and Eodon.

One of the reasons I consider the Eodon rivers to be useful, is that I can go along the shore, place 20-40 traps or more (maybe fishing at one end or the other), then walk back to the start point, and start pulling pots. IF you maintain having quests from most of the possible cities, your quests quickly get to the point where the ITEM count (not the weight) of the fish overwhelms the max capacity of your hold, and you have to start storing your fish at home or in the bank.

There's 12 named crustaceans, 12 shallow fish, 18 deep fish, and 12 dungeon fish, not counting specials. That's 54. Using the EC's compartmented container gumps, or in the Classic Client, using the new container/bank gumps (crates, plain wood & metal chests), that's 4 chests/crates to store fish to keep them sorted (more containers than that if not using the new chest gumps). So at least 58 items.
8 Cities, at 6 lines each, is 48+8 (the 8 being the crates themselves). OR, 56 containers.

That's 114 items used of 125, BEFORE putting anything else in the hold. And even then, even the Britainnian ship will only hold a little over 1000 fish by weight plus other stuff (and if your ship is armed you'll need cannon supplies). There's some deep water fish I have 300-500 of EACH (and haven't fished specifically for deep water fish, except for the caddelite infused ones, in over 5 years. Mostly, I'm fishing up SOS, lobsters and crabs, because I don't want to do quests again until I get a stockpile of the named lobsters and crabs).

 

[Specialist]

when I do it I lay a grid 5x10 (50 traps) then after I lay the last line of five I sail back to the first line and wait 5-10 minutes then I go back thro and pick them all back up and empty then redo. I usually have around 200-300 traps In my boat then 50 in the water. When I finish pulling the traps back in I replace the lost traps from the ones in the boat.

 

[WiggyJiggyJed]

@Basara - I finally got around to doing some fishing in Eodon (business trips and Christmas holiday took priority). That is definitely the way to fish for dungeon fish; low danger and plenty of water. However, as for lobster/crab efficiency, it is only more efficient in the regard of having both traps in the water while casting for fish (much like casting while waiting for traps like I'm doing now).

@Specialist - it sounds like you do basically what I am doing, only on a slightly larger scale. I have increased to 20 traps (4x5), but otherwise I am doing basically what you describe.

I have decided that lobster/crab fishing is inherently inefficient, tedious and expensive compared to std. fishing. And if you hit an unlucky spot in the RNG, it seems even more so.

Is there a way to macro picking up the traps? I still haven't found a more efficient way to do that.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Malee]

I hear there is a macro you can do in EC but I only use CC so I cant help there sorry. Maybe googling uo enhanced client fishing may pull it up. Lobster fishing is just tedious but necessary to fill those orders. I like to fish for them in the lost lands near Papua. there is a good stretch where you can sail in a straight line. I sail slowly backward (or forward) and drop a trap as I go - I drop 100 at a time this way. I sail back to the start of the line and the traps are starting their second bob. I wait a minute and let them start their third bob. Once third bob starts I sail and pick them up. It may not be more efficient but it not quite as much sitting around starting at traps.

 

[WiggyJiggyJed]

I hear there is a macro you can do in EC but I only use CC so I cant help there sorry. Maybe googling uo enhanced client fishing may pull it up. Lobster fishing is just tedious but necessary to fill those orders. I like to fish for them in the lost lands near Papua. there is a good stretch where you can sail in a straight line. I sail slowly backward (or forward) and drop a trap as I go - I drop 100 at a time this way. I sail back to the start of the line and the traps are starting their second bob. I wait a minute and let them start their third bob. Once third bob starts I sail and pick them up. It may not be more efficient but it not quite as much sitting around starting at traps.

So I did some digging and I couldn't find anyone with macro code for the standard EC, but Pinco's UI has the code built in. I suspect that it is doable in the standard UI as it is just using LUA scripting, but I haven't felt like taking the time to figure out LUA. There is plenty of documentation on LUA itself (The Programming Language Lua), and it seems pretty straightforward (similar to many languages like Javascript or PHP...even c#) but I haven't found a lot of UO specific code reference.

For now I've installed the Pinco's UI and use it with my fisherman toon.

 

[Petra Fyde]

There's a video of how I do it, including the EC macros I use.

 

[Tarragon Slayer/MZB]

This looks excellent in comparison to nerve-wrecking lobster trapping in the Classic client. @Petra Fyde , would you mind much given a more detailed description what the macro's should contain? EC Macro's are a complete mystery to me. Thanks in advance!