Fishing skill-ups need an increase

This is a plea to the developers. Skill-ups for fishing need to acquired more frequently.

With recent changes, anyone crafting with a crystal can now (with enough proper inventory), simply macro /lastsynth and spam the button with regular frequency without having to stop to load items into the dialogue box. A welcome change, to be sure, but now crystal crafters can skill up even faster than anyone ever could with fishing.

I am bringing about this request with the recent update to Mog Gardens that increased the ranks to an available 7. With Rank 7 nets, Pioneers can now fish up rather heavy big fish, which would be great to start gutting in Selbina. Getting fishing skilled up to 30 to unlock this quest is proving extremely frustrating.

The recent UI change to fishing has actually made it quite enjoyable, and my keyboard's NUMPAD salutes you for it. However, skill-ups are still just as painfully evasive as usual, and that's if you even qualify for it.

With crystal crafting, you are eligible for a skill up if the following conditions are met:
1) The synthesis recipe is higher than your current skill level
2) Not so high up that the game rejects your attempt

With fishing (and I say fishing is a craft because it's under the CRAFT SKILLS menu), you're eligible for a skill up only if the following conditions are met:
1) You didn't hit your fatigue limit
2) The fish is higher than your current skill level
3) (With the new UI), you can actually deplete the fish to 0% health to land it
4) It was actually a fish, and not an item or a monster


Point 4 is my sticking point against crystal crafting here. When crystal crafting, you are eligible for a skill up whether or not you make the item or shatter all the ingredients into oblivion, provided the 2 points are true. With fishing, you are only eligible for a skill up if it's actually a fish. This doesn't happen with crystal synthesis. The things you are crafting (or desynthing, even) don't suddenly turn into monsters to try to kill you, or become something else lower level.

That means, with fishing, you CANNOT get a skill up when:
1) You didn't catch anything
2) Something's pulling at your line (most people cancel these because of fatigue)
3) Something clamped on your line feriouciously (cancel again)
4) You lost your catch (didn't deplete)
5) Line snap / rod break (uncertain here, haven't had any in a while)

Even with accepted rod + bait combinations at favorable locations, you can get a run of bad luck and not be eligible for a single skill up over the same length of time a crystal crafter got 2 full levels.

Skill-up frequency needs to change, for fishing, for the better.

As an aside, I'm aware that fishing in Adoulin areas with Ionis can help with the skill-ups. However, despite my best attempts at science, the only fish I can find in all the Senroh Sea are Mackerel, Senroh Sardines, and Quus. If anyone has any tips that a level 14 fisher can catch for skill ups, I'm all ears.

Actually some of your info is off.


Getting to 30 should take you 4-5 days unless you get a skill up ring so it's not that bad. While crafting you can skill faster at lower levels at higher ones it's not contest fishing wins mightily.

For crafting you can attempt a synth 15 levels away... however you can only skill up off of breaks if you are within 5 levels of the cap. And well odds of failing increase heavily the farther you are away from the cap. Fishing you can catch pretty much any level fish at any level and possibly skill up though the odds go down somewhat if the gap is too big.

Your second set of points seem to be just repeating the first set so idk why you make it sound like it's more. Also you can skill up on failed catches whether it's from snap/breaks or too smalls. In fact purposefully going for too smalls to skill up without gaining fatigue. You also never have had to get the fish to 0... it's just a lot better chances.


At 14 iirc Pipira till about mid 20s then go to crystal bass till 35 then shall shell till 53 then off to nashmau. It's fully possible to get from 0-88 in under a month doing only about 2-4 hours a day

Thank you for clarifying a few things, and for your insights on fishing stuff. However, my points still remain.

1. Crystal synthesis is faster than ever. Fishing "synthesis" has built-in delay between attempts
2. Crystal synthesis isn't trying to kill you (fishing up monsters), nor does your synth suddenly turn into a lower level object (fishing up trash), thus negating a chance at a skill up.

For the amount of time it takes to skill fishing, one can gain very steady advances with a crystal synthesis craft. Why does this wide gap exist? Is it necessary? All I'm trying to say is that Fishing should have more frequent skill ups simply because the amount of time it can take to land a single fish is far greater than synthesizing a single item.

It exist because there is no constant cost or hard constant getting hard to get items.

I see this comparison mostly of people who have never really leveled crafting much. Trust me take most crafts past 60-70 and you will wish it was as fast and easy and cheap as fishing. Go past 100 and you will want to shoot yourself in the head. Especially certain crafts like gold or alchemy where it can literally take you several hours just to get the materials or farm the gil for the materials for a single synth. In the long view regular crafting is much worse it's just low levels it really excels

There are many people on these forums asking for an increase in fishing skill ups, and two people saying it's fine as is, I think it's safe to say the current rates are not fine as they are.