Legendary Fish Stethacanthus

Ok here i am having 201/204 Big Fish in this game cought but this fish is a joke.

You need 2 Sculptors to trigger Fisher's Intuition. Sculptor is allready a super rare fish. I have been sitting at Loch Seld for over 30 windows now and was only able to doublehook ONCE to get the intuition. And even if you get your 5min. Intuition Steth is a rare bite and has a high escape rate - so pls pls pls nerf this.

I know legendary fish should be hard to catch but this one is definetly over the TOP.

Please reconsider the Intution Buff triggered by a single Sculptor to give us at least a chance to hunt him down.

Yours sincerly very annoyed
Catori

Same. Spending GP to double hook a thing on a quite random timer makes this doubly annoying...

I know people have gotten lucky enough to catch Stethacantus, even I have gotten that buff once although it escaped, but having one last chance at a window and not enough GP to double hook that very last catch is terribly disheartening. Plus, the fact you need Fish Eyes is already enough, I feel... Even Opabinia wasn't this bad since the hropkens were long windows.

I fully support this post. I have spent around 40 windows in total and have seen three Sculptors. I wouldn't mind Sculptors being rare, but the fact that they share random timers with Pearl Eyes is absolutely ridiculous. Combine that with the fact that the window is sometimes over 15 hours apart, and that for me during the last 2 weeks a lot of windows have simply been at night, it's a bit ridiculous. Give us a more accurate timer for Sculptor so we can at least determine if we have it hooked or not.

This does not need a nerf. It's only been out for a couple of weeks, these fish are meant to keep us busy until the new expansion. I know plenty of fisher mains who are happy and excited to try this one, especially with how easy SB fish have been in general.

I'm on the same boat as these fellow fishers. The reason this fish is so unfairly difficult is because we are unable to tell whether we are hooking a pearl eye or a sculptor, thus almost always wasting 400 GP to Double Hook pearl eyes while already being under tight GP management due to having to maintain Fish Eyes. And this leads us to spend a good portion of the (already semi-rare and short) windows waiting to recover GP to Double Hook again.

The most reasonable way you can help us while still maintaining the challenge factor, is by changing the legendary tug on pearl eyes to a medium one. This way we don't have to throw away our GP and be unable to proceed. This is quite sensible considering pearl eye isn't even a particularly large fish.

I was almost going to make just this very thread myself! Stethacanthus ( I call it Stethacantcatch) has just one too many strict variables working against it to be reasonable, even by legendary fish standards. I've caught all the legends so far except this one and the Ruby Dragon, and the Ruby Dragon is just because I've literally only had one window for it since the patch. I've been to dozens of thunder windows and gotten the intuition buff twice, but never had the fish actually bite. And by far the most annoying thing is the big fish tug on Pearl-eyes, as well as the WILDLY variable bite-time of the Pearl-eye making it impossible to predict.

I put up with all the fish previous to and alongside this one and have had no complaints, but this one is just one step too much. Remove just one of the following limits and it would be a perfectly reasonable, and still perfectly challenging, fish:

1. Change Pearl-eye to medium tug. Probably the best solution. The thing isn't even a big fish by any standard.
2. Make the Pearl-eye have a reliable bite time so it is easy to count and know you have one instead of Sculptor. Right now the thing can bite anywhere from 18s-31s, which overlaps with the Sculptor's 25s-31s making it impossible to tell what you have.
3. Chance Sculptor requirement to 1 instead of 2. While this would be nice, I actually like having a real use for Double Hook for once this expansion, and would really just prefer being able to get the thing more reliably.
4. Make Sculptor bite more often, or widen the weather/time window so we have better odds of actually getting the intuition buff at all.
5. Keep all that the same, but make Stethy basically a 100% mooch off the Rock Saltfish when its buff is up and 100% catch-rate when it bites. Or just anything above 80% even.

If any one of those things were changed, I would have had this fish already, and I suspect many other hardcore fishers who have been banging away at it would too. As it stands now, Shadowbringers will be here before most of us ever even get a bite, and the other 5 legends will be ancient history.

I can't help but wonder if the people in this thread were around for or remember ARR.
I sometimes feel Patience gives fishers an illusion of autonomy, perpetuating delusions that fish should be easy to catch.
Fishing has always been a niche, RNG-laden class that really fit a relaxed and patient playstyle.

Makes me wonder if you guys just picked the wrong class and realised it far too late. SB fish will probably be nerfed eventually, anyway.

I have earned the Master Caster title in ARR before Patience was introduced and I'd never call fishing difficult. I see quite some misrepresentation of what fishers most likely want.
I do not think anyone in this thread has the grand delusion that fishing should be an easy catch. What is brought forward is a slight alteration to a fish that just has too much RNG going on. Not that it should be made easy.

There are a multitude of factors leading for this fish to be unfair.

- The time windows. Very rarely is this fish up in quick succession. In fact, I'd say on average there are 5 hours between fishing windows.
- When these fishing windows do arrive, half of the time they only last 2 eorzean hours. Which is 6 minutes.
-As if logically follows, this forced people into double hooking the fish in order to trigger the intuition. Which proposed the following problems:

Since the cast timer of Pearl Eyes seems to range from 17-34 seconds, there is no indicator at all what Sculptor is. All we know so far is that the minimum hook time for Sculptor is 24 seconds. They are both legendary tugs and thus we are forced into double hooking into the blind.
Now this would be okay if the other factors such as very small and little occurring windows would not be a thing.

On top of that, even though the Intuition is 5 minutes, a lot of people report they just get Pearl Eyes anyway, which is fine in itself. But there seems to be no balance at all to this fish.
Normally there is always some factor. For example the fish in the Fringes with the low hook rate is available every hour. The Unconditional, even though a very small window and very rarerly occurs have a pretty common bite rate during that window and is a straight catch. Ruby Dragon, there is also a decent shot.

In other words, all the fish so far have requirements that always make you feel like you have a shot because there is always some factor in there that is redeeming. Be it common windows, common bite during that window, easy to camp out the fish you need to mooch (prism lake) to trigger intuition ...

Stethacanthus has:

- Long intervals between windows
- Usually fairly short windows 6-12 min
- Mooches off of very rare fish
- Mooch has no real indicator of what is what
- Very long mooch rates and a 12 - 18 second cast for Salt Rockfish, also possible to get the legendary turtle tug or white sea horse!
- Needs fish eyes

The only redeeming factor is has currently is a 5 min intuition. Which to me seems barely enough. I would prefer at least some more common windows to catch Sculptor. But that's just me. I do not wish to make fishing "easier" I wish to imo streamline it more with other legendary fish. Because in my opinion, this fish really isn't at the moment. I would also be in favour of reducing the Intutition Window for a less obscured Sculptor catch.

I've been fishing since 2.0, and I have gone through all the pains of fishing for all the various fish out there, as they were released. I have many "fond" memories of trying to get an HQ Olgoi-Khorkoi, or doing the infamous triple mooch (without Patience or Mooch II!) for Frilled Shark, or watching as The Matriarch (we called her The Bitch back then) got away for the thousandth time in ARR. I remember the huge amount of time it took me to finally nab the Sea Butterfly in HW. The difference here is that all those things were reliant on basically one RNG factor, and I felt like as long as I kept plugging away, I'd get it. It took me about a month to get Sea Butterfly, but that is only because it bites so rarely. I knew I'd have a very common weather and time window that would roll around nearly every hour and an intuition requirement that I could reliably hit every time it came around, so I just kept showing up, kept getting the buff, and kept casting, each time knowing I had a perfectly real shot at that cast being "the cast".

With this fish I don't feel that way. I will continue to show up and do my duty to the fishing RNG god each window, multiple times per day, but I feel like I'm playing the Jumbo Cactpot here, with no real chance in sight. And I've actually won the Jumbo Cactpot before!

I think anyone defending the layered unfairness of this fish A). have not actually sat down and made a real attempt at it to see what we are talking about, B). have rosy-tinted glasses about how "hard" the good old days were, when they actually weren't, or C). are one of the what, five lucky souls who hit the lottery on it and think it was easy because they got crazy luck.

You guys (the complaining ones) are right about this: Improbability is not difficulty.

But also, there's that illusion of autonomy I was talking about. Fishing has never been difficult, nor has it ever been remotely fair.
And I'm honestly with you in some regards. For one, I'm not against the fish being made more common (nor am I for it). I'm also not an enormous fan of the way fishing is balanced around abilities like Patience, Fish Eyes, and now Double Hook.
That's what makes it feel like you should be in control in the first place, when you clearly aren't. If they were going to address anything, I'd like it to be this.
The game's doing a worse job of making itself feel fair than it was a month or so ago, the odds are more tangibly stacked against you, and I feel for you. It stands in direct opposition to a clear desperation to wrap up the fish log quickly. A desperation that I, admittedly, don't have.

All that said, it's been a couple weeks, Buds. The fish aren't going anywhere. Keep at it. I believe in you.
Try not to get too worked up over fish, of all things.

It's about having way too many layers of bad on top of each other in contrast to other fish, including legendaries. I think I have summed up all the things that make this fish brutal. I don't believe there is any fish out there that has so many RNG factors in it. That is what the discussion is about. I am not under the illusion that I am in control. I can only influence my luck so far and that's it. I don't think anyone here is contesting that. I also don't think it's a matter of desperation at all, nor is it the needing of filling that log up as quickly as possible. I have no problem at all missing The Unconditional again in two days even though I spent around a dozen hours testing it. Because the fish itself gives you a fair shot.

Is there any fish out there that combines all that Sthatacanthus does? I don't believe it does, which is why some people, including myself at least want this fish revised and hopefully ever so slightly reworked.

Make Sculptor less rare and reduce the IT window to 3-4 minutes
Increase the frequence for the right weather
Medium tug on Pearl Eyes

These are all seperate options that I personally have in mind to make this fish in line with all the other legendaries. If it doesn't happen, that's fine with me too. But I fully understand how people feel the way they feel about this particular fish and after having spent over 30 windows on it myself with not even one intuition window, I can't help but agree and hopefully SE does too. The reasons are there, I gave them.

- Long intervals between windows
- Usually fairly short windows 6-12 min
- Mooches off of very rare fish
- Mooch has no real indicator of what is what
- Very long mooch rates and a 12 - 18 second cast for Salt Rockfish, also possible to get the legendary turtle tug or white sea horse!
- Needs fish eyes

No other fish has all these things combined as far as I'm aware. That'll be the end for me of the discussion. I have put forth the reasoning as to why I feel the fish is off. It's not the end of the world if it remains the same.

I'm holding the Sea Butterfly, the worst fish I had to catch, as my measuring stick for determining how unreasonable Stethacanthus is at the end of the day. I know how many windows Sea Butterfly took to catch for me(over a hundred), and how long I spent going to those windows (over a month). If in two weeks and fifty more thunder windows Stethacanthus is as illusory as ever, I will not be surprised or amused and I will be all the more ardent about having something, just one little aspect of the catch, adjusted. Because, as you said, and as is the crux of the complaints so far, we lack control on this particular fish. Give me a medium tug on pearl-eyes and I'll be happy. That wouldn't actually change the rarity or functional difficulty of catching Stethacanthus at all. It would just give us more control over how we catch it and how we use what skills and knowledge we have to make RNG work for us as best we can, which is always what fishing has been about.

Also add the fact that with 1411 gathering, Sculptor can also get away. So that's
- Long intervals between windows
- Usually fairly short windows 6-12 min
- INT off of very rare fish x2
- Mooch has no real indicator of what is what
- Very long mooch rates and a 12 - 18 second cast for Salt Rockfish, also possible to get the legendary turtle tug or white sea horse!
- Needs fish eyes
- Sculptor can get away at 1411 gathering.

I mean, is that really not a bit too much? I don't know. I guess it's up to SE. I won't throw in the towel just yet, but I sure am close.

dunno, I prefer stetha over unconditional, which never bites and has a 2 min window per week

I guess we all have our horror stories. For me, I am over the discussion and will put myself over it. I still hope, having summed up all these factors, which do not seem to be present in other fish in the game, that SE can affort a minor tweak easing it a little. If not, I'm fine with it. We keep going.

That's the point - i also have a lot of lucky catches and a lot of horror stories.
But even with Opabinia i know what i was hooking and yes i did spend a lot of windows without even getting intuition. And still if i got it i had to to pray for platinum fish and i had to pray for opa to bite.
1 or 2 RNG factors is ok BUT i still think steth is over the top.

Anyone able to read Japanese?

https://jp.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../blog/4079059/

Seems to suggest Steth can only be caught from 16:00 to 18:00

I'm dreading this one... I'm still recovering from catching a Sculptor for my fishing log, I can't fathom proc'ing intuition off something that rare.

I've only seen a handful of windows to even try and that itself is another concern, though I suppose it could be worse.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...70/unknown.png

At least he DOES exist 19 Seconds Bite for me

I got lucky and caught my Stethacanthus today. Having done so I feel what I can add here might have some merit.


With this catch I have only two fish left to have all of them, I'm missing the Ruby Dragon and Unconditional, so I have experience with all the other fishes and can make what I think is a good comparison with Stethacanthus.

Most of the tricky fish call for one to develop a strategy to max your chances at getting at least a shot at them. Each seems to have a way to tip the odds in your favor for at least getting that one chance a window at least, and then it's a matter of stacking try after try until the slot machine pays off with the fish in your sack.

I think the problem most fishers are having with Stethacanthus is that no fish has ever been so hard to find a working strategy for that offers that feeling of at least regular tries for it. Everything seems tipped against one.

Mostly its a GP management thing. You need to put up Fish Eyes for the sculptor. There is 350GP every 3 minutes. Then you need to catch the Sculptor which usually involves a 100GP Mooch 2 and if you are lucky enough to get one and tell it from a Pearl Eyes thanks to their heavily overlapped catch timers that is another 400GP there. Now you have your 5 minute intuition (Or you held it to 4PM with the collectable trick) to try and pull the Stethacanthus up. You need to get patience 1 or 2 up and manage the hook costs. Even chugging Hi-Cordals every time they are up it's a real trick to manage this. This is the skill part of the fish. I and others figured this plan out, or one like it. The plan is all the control we get.

It's doable, because I managed it, and others have also. But it feels unfair at a few points.

1) The honest rarity of a Sculptor bite. I went well over 40 windows before I saw my first of these.

2) The Sculptor and Pearl Eye overlap. They both are in each others pull in window and are both big fish, they cannot be distinguished and as a result it's easy to blow 400 irreplaceable GP and get Pearl Eyes. That pretty much shuts you down for most windows effectively. And it happens a lot.

3) The windows for trying this entire juggling act can often be most of a day apart. So it's hard to build up shots at Stethacanthus.

The third point is not such a big deal in my eyes if its the only factor. Both the Unconditional and Ruby Dragon have this feature. But with them you almost always get one or two shots at the fish in the window. You can Mooch for the Ruby two to five times if lucky, you tend to get one Unconditional bite per window. You feel like you have a shot while you are there. And you have some control over it. I can mooch 2 for the Ruby, I can hope I real in the Unconditional. So it feels fair, if not a bit frustrating at the window lengths. But I feel eventually the slot machine will pay off. Just tries, and they are not demanding.

Points 1 and 2 though are different. If Sculptors were a bit more common, then you'd have more shots to double hook them in a window even with the pearl eyes in the way, and thus more tries at Stethacanthus. Or if you could tell a Sculptor from a Pearl Eyes (Perhaps by Pearls being medium tug fish) then you'd not be wasting 400GP and shutting yourself down for a window by something you cannot control.

Either one of these would balance the fish more in my eyes.

For my catch everything just lined up perfectly.

Fish eyes up. Hi-Cordial to refill GP, Cast, right fish to mooch caught, Mooch 2, 29 second wait for a bite It should be Sculptor it was. Double hooked. Had glove on so I could hold them to 4PM, clicked no and got intuition and had full GP thanks to the wait. Patience 2, Hi-cordial, cast, get the right fish to mooch with powerful hook and it was HQ, Mooch 1. Legendary Bite, Powerful Hook and surprise! Stethacanthus!

I just used up a years worth of luck. And I do feel that. I had a plan, but my plan could die on the reefs of bad luck at every turn, and not be recoverable. A dot more control would feel good. I'd like to feel that something I did was a factor along with the luck.

No other fish I caught felt like this. So I get why folks in this thread feel as they do. And I'd support a change to make things more balanced for my fellow fishers in days, months and years to come. It seems right.

Heck perhaps in some expansion we'll see a Veteran Trade for regular fishing. Then we can banish those Pearl Eyes and make Stethacanthus as simple as many of the HW problems became with Mooch 2.

Good luck folks!

Really guys! I have caught every single fish in Eorzea so far - except this one! I'm definetly not that impatient kind of fisher moaning around after a few attempts but this one is about to make me quit fishing. :mad:

First of all: Pearl Eye with a bite chance (or let's call it risk) of ~96.1% - yeah, thanks!
2nd thing: huge amount of random factors that impact your gp management, like
- timing of catching your saltfish
- timing of mooch II usage
- timing of cordials usage
- pearl eye ruining your maybe last cast within a patience (II) window or so

I tried uncountable times and still had not more than 3 intuition buffs. One of them ran out before Stetha's window. The other ones (when I already had made that experience) only brought up some nice pearl eyes.

I don't think this fish is impossible to catch and some of you guys already have which proves there are some Stethas out there. But it feels like having a better chance of winning the cactuar jackpot than catching this.

IMO giving the pearl eye the medium tug would do it. That's it for now.

Grats to those who already caught this and good luck to everyone who's still attempting like me...

You can use the collectability window to hold onto the HQ sculptor until the stetha window opens. This made it much easier on the timing part, since you can catch the scultporx2 during one window and hold it until the stetha window opens. I believe this is how I eventually got the dang thing.

You'd think this would be exact intended use of Surface Slap, but no.

This fish is still incredibly problematic. I have every other big fish in the game, except this one. I long for the hours of suffering at Opabinia, because at least that had more than a teeny window.

Has SE ever addressed this yet? I'm dreading this and have yet to even get a sculptor, let alone two for the intuition.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by NeonWindbreaker

Has SE ever addressed this yet? I'm dreading this and have yet to even get a sculptor, let alone two for the intuition.

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Yeah you use Double Hook instead of Hook.
The difficulty of this one comes from the GP use of both Fish Eyes and Double Hook. On top of the low bite rate.
It’s kinda unique in that sense, and while I haven’t caught it yet myself, I actually really like the setup.

The one time I did get the Sculptors I couldn’t land the Stethacanthas! ;-;
It’s down to this and The Ruby Dragon for me.

Yeah I know about the double hook, I'm talking about the low bite rate of it.

When I caught mine we discussed this on the fish discord group, and our opinion was that once you double hook the Sculptors that the bite rate for Steth is pretty decent. Most of us landed it on our first or second window that we got the Sculptors.

The Ruby Dragon was the prize winner for annoyance in the last 6 fist of the 4 patches. It's bite rate is incredibly low, and the mooch fish canniblaize into chains that almost always end in a get away of them. Add in Windows that are often pretty far apart and it has been a stopper for many.

Steth is like a dream compared to Ruby Dragon. The ku'er escape rate is a pain in the tail and some windows they don't even want to bite at all.

This is what worked for me - Follow these steps exactly:

Sculptor 1200-1800hrs

1) TP = Lochs - Porta Praetoria / Hole = Loch Seld
2) Bait = Silk Worm > Rock Saltfish (med tug 12-14 sec)
3) Get there BEFORE 1200hrs & pre-cast Chum, Activate Collect
4) Use Fish Eyes @ 1201hrs, pop Cordial, cast & ignore all but (med tug 12-14 sec)
5) Mooch/Mooch II Rock Saltfish
6) Use Double Hook only AFTER 24 sec, valid catches are also at: 27, 31, or 34 sec
7) If Sculptor caught, keep Collection window visible until 1600hrs

Stethacanthus 1600-1800hrs

1) TP = Lochs - Porta Praetoria / Hole = Loch Seld
2) Bait = Silk Worm > Rock Saltfish (med tug 12-14 sec)
3) With Sculptor caught, keep Collection window visible until 1600hrs
4) After 1600hrs choose NO on collection to get FI buff (5 mins) for Stethacanthus
5) If Mooch II avail, cast & mooch Rock Saltfish
6) Otherwise use Patience II, cast & mooch Rock Saltfish
7) Stethacanthus hit right after 21 sec for me

This fish is still problematic, plz fix this SE

SE, please fix Sculptor its too rare

simply because a fish needs more than 10 windows doesnt make it too rare. Steth is fine as it is :shrug:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nuuskamuikkunen

Fishing has always been a niche, RNG-laden class that really fit a relaxed and patient playstyle.

Makes me wonder if you guys just picked the wrong class and realised it far too late.

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RNG is ok, but the amount Fisher has just makes me feel like I'm wasting my time. I figured it would be relaxing, but after failing to catch something for so long I'm just stressed thinking "am I doing something wrong?"
Especially since I've found a lot of misinformation and conflicting info about how fishing works. Some swear that if you try and catch a boss fish with a lower iLVL it helps you for certain reasons and other people say that's bunk just get your stats up and others say the bonuses your stats give you cap around 15% for Fisher and if your stats are at that exactly you get better RNG and RRRNNNGNGGG!

How it works:

Better stats give you better chances up to a cap. Every fish has a gathering cap. On white fish hitting the cap means you can't loose them. Most green fish have a built in escape percentage at their gathering cap. Ever fish for Ninja Bettas? HQ will cap at 15%.

Going past the cap neither adds nor subtracts anything. Well, pentamelding gear does subtract gil ...

I will keep all this in mind.
Thank you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Espritduo

You can use the collectability window to hold onto the HQ sculptor until the stetha window opens. This made it much easier on the timing part, since you can catch the scultporx2 during one window and hold it until the stetha window opens. I believe this is how I eventually got the dang thing.

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I have the feeling that with how they want to rework cellectability items in 5.3, this trick will no longer work then...

Does this still work with the changes to collectables?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ICountFrom0

Does this still work with the changes to collectables?

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Yes it does. Fisher actually did not got any changes to the collectable system.