Fishing: Overhaul Feast of Famine

The quest "Feast of Famine" needs some rework.
This quest could benefit from modernization to make tracking progress more useful.

Fishing was retooled in the recent expansion, but the quest remains unchanged.

Recommend adding tracking to this AND/OR lore from the Fishing master.
This quest plays like a relic quest, but is not given the attention is needs to be completed.

The weather chains are complicated to deal with with real life constraints.
Recommend an item to negate the weather chain restriction (Ex. Clear to Blizzard) or a lore guide to help clarify the weather/weather chains.
After completing every general open world quest available in the game, this one quest remains as an outlier for difficulty and mis-information (out of game based on pre SB-fishing).
Recommend moving this to a special quest type similar to those of the fishing beast tribes.
Also, recommend that the legendary fish should not be sellable or desynable like most quest items.

This quest is entirely fine as is. It's not supposed to be easy

It's supposed to help you dip your toes into the waters that is Big Fishing.
If you don't like this quest then you will know that Big Fishing isn't for you, where some fish have conditions much harder to achieve than that.

I finished the series, but think it may be too hard for newer players who stumble upon it.

Out gearing the quest does help a lot in terms of being able to catch things easier. but it still largely comes down to patience and pure rng. i had some of them i had no issue with but other people i knew did and some that i did have issues with but people i knew who had no issues. big fishing is very much a game of patience and sometimes trying multiple times because there is an element of rng to it. i've been doing big fishing for around three years now, and even with my gear some of the fish just are a pain sometimes and it takes multiple goes and tries to get it. there is a tracker website that has the uptimes, weather conditions, and time window conditions for every big fish in the game, which helps a lot in coordinating being able to actually line up real world times you're free and eorzea times.
the quest itself is fine though, while i had one fish that gave me some issues for a few days, it was fine. big fishing isn't easy in any way, and some of the later ones are much harder to get (cinder surprise comes to mind, i believe it's still the rarest one to get). i don't think being able to nuke a weather condition for a fish via a skill is really the greatest. part of what makes big fishing fun for me is the conditions to which i have to follow to be able to catch it. it's supposed to be challenging but also rewarding. the fishing community in game is always a lot of help, and there's tons of resources even for new players who may want to try to do feast of famine as well as maybe get into big fishing.

You know what? No. The quest should be revamped.


That quest is sitting on my journal for more than 3 years already. I read about all of the fishes. I know what to do to catch every single one. I go to the right places when the window is open. I put the right baits. The fishes never bite. The windows close. Rinse and repeat.


Like, you have to stop everything to go to a window that it's at least as rare as a S Rank window and TWELVE FORBID you're doing something else. Only to come back with empty hands and a basket full of useless fishes.

Is that supposed to be fun?

I looked last week and I realized that the half of the fishes that I have were all HQ because that's a thing that existed at the time. I'm a goddamned Lv 90 fisher with Lv 90 equipment, and I still can't catch a dumb fish that was added before Heavensward was even a thing?

No. I won't stand it anymore. Redo the quest NOW.

Or redo the job, I dunno. Add a button where you spend some of the new buff points to signal that you're going for the big fishes and to make the crappy ones to stop baiting for a goddamned minute. Or make the baits more useful, like, baits from higher levels catch very specific fishes from the spot or tackles that only entice certain sizes or shapes or even times.

Give me something to end my misery!

the fish have actual uptimes and at the very end of the day it's still heavily rng. sometimes you won't get anything during the window and sometimes you get everything. i've done the questline three times and i think nepto is the only one i sorta have issues with cause its lower uptime. but also at the same time someone mentioned above, there are big fish much more unforgiving to try to catch with even smaller windows of opening. if you don't find it fun, then you don't have to do it. big fishing is optional. but it's also not supposed to be easy. it's a challenge. cinder surprise is harder to catch than anything in feast of famine and it spawns so sporadically and with 0.1% uptime. but fishing is still rng and luck even if you do everything right. that's just how it is. the quest doesn't need to be revamped to be some simple and easy thing. big fishing isn't supposed to be easy. and if you don't enjoy it simply because of the rng aspects that go into, then i don't know what to tell you. i would honestly be annoyed if they changed how the quest works. there's lots of skills that can help you especially at level 90, while doing the quest. it took me a month to finish it when i did it the first time, but that that was fine cause i knew it wasn't going to be as simple. fishing, most ironically, takes patience. you won't always get the fish the first try and have to just try and it's fine to just leave it then try again later i do that with a lot of the harder fish to catch. fisher doesn't need to be redone either.

if the quest annoys you just don't do it. because it's not supposed to be simple and it's not supposed to be easy. it's still rng and luck. i don't know why people want skills to cheese getting big fish when we already have skills that do legit help with it. but it doesn't remove the rng factor. the fish have uptimes and sometimes just don't bite. there's a good portion of them that have time and weather conditions too. and the fishing community has a tracker with all big fish in the game and tells you their bait, weather, and time conditions. its a great tool and helped me a lot when i did feast of famine the first time. but just because the quest is a challenge doesn't mean it should be dumbed down to nothingness. cause in real life too, sometimes fish just don't bite.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alenonimo

Give me something to end my misery!

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Open your Quest Journal, select the quest then hit the Abandon button and confirm you wish to abandon the quest.

Your misery is over. I did the exact same thing a few years ago and I've never regretted it. Big game fishing isn't for me unless I'm extremely bored and out of other things to do.

The last thing you should ever do is force yourself to complete content you do not enjoy. You're not helping yourself, and you're sending a message to the developers that you're okay with that type of content because all they're going to know is that you did it. They're not going to know how you felt while you were doing it.

A friend of mine, who has been playing since 1.0, told me a few months ago that the only quests she had left in her log were Feast of Famine, and Skysteel Weapons. I also had Feast of Famine in my quest log, so I suggested we work on it together. After appx. a week of 2-3 hours per day, we both finished it.

Granted, we were both 90 FSH with around 2600 gathering (I had i590 purple scrip gear), but I was honestly surprised considering the reputation the quest has.

yeah it's a lot easier with 90 stuff for sure. but even then sometimes the little buggers still don't bite and it takes a few treis. ive found just walking away from it for a few weeks and coming back i end up with better luck. it's not so bad now but you do have to be a bit patient sometimes about it. but knowing the fish have actual % of uptimes actually explained a lot in terms of why it's a pain to catch some of the fish and why it takes longer. pair that up with the fish with short time windows they're up and it does take some time. it's a lot of rng and still mostly just gotta have a bit of patience and knowing when to take a break and just leave it for a bit is good too.

I left it in my journal for 3-4 years. Only took me like a week or so to clear if I actually tried to do so.

It won't finish if you don't put in any effort. Yes RNG will potentially extend that estimate, but that's fishing.