My hands are still shaking.... But whether it's the first ever or not, the question can finally be answered...
Gentleman, the Void Lobster exists. And he's a bugger to catch!
Yes, he's also likely to be one of the SMALLEST lobsters ever caught too! But what a few hours of incredible drama though; It started at the weekly Europa Auctions, and the generosity of a young Lady Foxglove, who donated 26 new Lava traps, and 100 Void Lobster bait for this poor fishermatey's year long quest to prove the existence of the Loch Lava Monster. But half way through the auction list we suddenly got the server down warnings. Would the bait be reverted? Would we all re-spawn as lobsters ourselves, trapped in an endless quest to use Fish-tickling to catch Mesanna in human sized traps? You never know with these emergency patches...!
But fortunately the servers were down only an hour, and saved at shut down; no items lost, no auctions ruined... and thus on with the Big Boy Fishing Pants and into the Stygian Abyss it was!
What can you expect if you are ever lucky enough to get the traps and the bait? The piles of traps can all be baited at once; and as far as I can tell, keep the bait active through each cycle. As mentioned above, you still get the "No Fish Biting Here" message, and this is true even when the traps are baited. When a trap is removed it loses the bait and has to be rebaited, which with the lack of Void bait in the loot tables (see my sticky here in this forum) is likely to prove extremely expensive. It makes more sense then to leave the traps in until destruction if baited.
Which you'll get a lot of... I was there for another 30 odd minutes watching the traps cycle, and had lost another 5 already. Idly chatting in General, the famous Generosity of Europa struck again; Captain Degeulo was, despite my insistence that I was snowed under from the auction previous, donating more snow tiles and lava traps for the effort. I was at this point getting pretty fed up, as there didn't seem to be any way to tell it was even working. When, suddenly just as I finished saying "I'm pretty sure it's broken"....!
I
seriously recommend getting the Enhanced Client and the Pinco UI if you're going for the rare lobsters. As you can see, it'll mark any trap within Line of Sight that has bobbed and captured a lobster. It was quiet where I was, OR SO I THOUGHT, and without any other reaction from the traps in lava, it was obvious it must have been there ... at which point I must admit, I started to panic. Oh my gosh, lobsterlobsterLOBSTER!
Which trap was it? Looking at the shot now, I'm pretty sure it was one of a very long lasting wave. It was way beyond 5 ticks, possibly around 7-8 ticks it had been in the lava. I promptly declared Degeulo my "lucky captain" because the instant he donated more traps, the famed Void Lobster approacheth! I quickly pulled that one trap, and left the others in. Why? I don't know, MUST SAVE LOBSTER! I tried to insure it, but it wouldn't insure. Scrabbling around, I found a Bag of Sending and sent him to my bank box... you never know when the fates will change their mind.
And whilst I was doing it... SOMEONE WAS WATCHING ME!
One of my friends on Europa had stealthed down to observe my every move; I don't know he's there, I'm still twitching around at this point trying to find cotton wool to cram my new void buddy into... But I'm glad I got to share the moment, even if a stolen moment, with another of Europa's decent denizens...
So just how rare are they? It's hard to say with just one. I'm at 120 fishing, using the full Fishing suit, and with baited traps. I used 13 traps unbaited total earlier, with let us say 3-5 cycles for each one, giving maybe 36 - 65 tries at a minimum; I wasn't keeping track of how many I replaced after a few cycles and used again but a rough guess I would double that total. Then I tried again, with bait, and ran another 5 traps at least 3 waves until destruction (which came either 1-3 cycles in, or deep beyond the 5 expected; they either seemed to live forever or go under far too quickly, but that may just be my perception).... All very unscientific, sorry! But I'd say even with suit and bait, I'd be surprised if the odds aren't extremely small... you'll need to risk traps sitting for a long time to pull one. Is it possible to get one on the first tick...?
Maybe. Don't bet on it though!
Now what do with all the traps and bait kindly donated? Well, if the donators don't want them back, I'm thinking the kind thing to do would be to pay them forward to other Legendary Fishers. The fishing quests currently are an ungodly grind, and the chances of ever seeing enough traps and bait (or Charbydis bait and getting an Oracle for that matter) are pretty slim. But we've all dreamed of this last rare beastie, so why not share the opportunity to catch one?
