Every master can fish. All it takes is a fishing rod in the right hand and some water within reach. The rod decides which catches are possible at all. The Fishing skill decides how likely the better ones are.

Casting and Striking link

1. Cast. With a rod in hand, click on water up to 8 m away. The master casts instead of walking there, and a bobber lands on the water. Each cast costs the rod 1 durability.
2. Wait. After a random 3 - 15 s, something bites and the bobber plunges under the surface.
3. Strike. Click the bobber within 1.5 s of the bite. In time, the catch lands in the bag. Too late, it gets away.

Only water too deep to wade holds fish. A strike before the bite only pulls the line in empty. Walking, attacking, using a skill, crafting or putting the rod away reels the line in, and the cast is lost.

A catch gives the master gathering experience of 2 * catch level + 5, the same as any other gathering. Junk counts too.

What Bites link

For now every lake, river and sea shares one catch table. Water kind, biome, time of day and weather may change it later.

A bite is drawn from the table in three steps:

1. The rod filters. Entries above the rod’s max catch level never bite.
2. The skill weights. Entries up to the master’s catch level cap keep their weight. Above the cap, the weight halves for every 5 levels over.
3. One draw by weight picks the catch.

  weight = baseWeight * 0.5.pow(max(0, level - cap) / 5.0)
  

The cap is 10 without the Fishing skill and 20 per rank with it. A catch ten levels over the cap bites at a quarter of its usual weight. Forty levels over is 1/256 of it, which is as good as never.

Catch Table link

A fish’s catch level is its item level. Treasure has a catch level of its own, because a pearl is no harder to hook than a fish, only rarer.

Fishing Rods link

A rod is a one-handed tool, so every master may hold one whatever their professions.

The willow rod is made from what lies on the ground, like the first tools. A master’s first rod therefore never waits on a shop or on a find.

The bamboo and ash rods are also meant for merchants. Shops only stock commodities today, and a tool is not one yet, so until it is, both come from a discovered blueprint only.

The rod limits the catch and the skill shapes the odds below that limit. Neither alone is enough: a steel rod in untrained hands hooks mostly boots and perch, and a master at rank 5 with a willow rod never sees a fish above level 25.

Not Yet link

• Catch tables that differ by water kind, biome, time of day, weather or how rich the water is in fish.
• Bait.
• Bestias that fish, or a bite that turns out to be a hostile water bestia.
• What is inside a sealed bottle.