Fishing RNG... Really!?

[Eye_Gore]

if you had an off hand all the caps would be increased accordingly and you wouldn't have more chance to it. But nice try

But I would have another slot basically to stick some high level matetia on it instead of trying to over meld the over meld.

I almost burst out laughing when I read this - off-hands are the farthest thing from free. Crafting and Gathering off-hands may well be the most expensive single piece of equipment to meld in the entire game.

At this point that I'm at in game, it won't cost me anything to make an off hand unless it had some primal or high end 4 star material needed. But since no other ilvl 55 off hand has that, I doubt I would need any of that and I could make it.

[LineageRazor]

At this point that I'm at in game, it won't cost me anything to make an off hand unless it had some primal or high end 4 star material needed. But since no other ilvl 55 off hand has that, I doubt I would need any of that and I could make it.

The trouble with this is that if there WAS an off-hand, all the fish would have higher stat requirements to cover it, PLUS require painful melds just to get on-par with where you are right now:

SE Dev Chief: Okay, word from above is we need to give FSH an off-hand. Forager's Net, or whatever.

Dev 1: Won't that make fish too easy to catch? Gather off-hands give 72 Gathering stat, and that's just the NQ version! Newbie fishers will be able to catch three star fish without even trying!

SE Dev Chief: Naturally, we can't allow that. We'll need to boost the catch requirement for all fish by an appropriate amount to account for the new gear. For endgame fish, we'll need to pump them up by at least 82. But then, we need to account for Materia...

Dev 2: Well, stat caps for Gatherer off hand can get as much as much as 14 additional Gathering...

SE Dev Chief: Well, we don't want to kill them. Let's set the new gathering requirements at plus 94. They can manage that with just two Tier IV materia melds.

Dev 2: Sounds good! We'll get right on it.

Dev 1: Man, just think... We're adding a new piece of gear to FSH, and not only doesn't it help them in the least, they need to get an expensive piece of gear AND meld it with pricy materia just to get to where they were before! Glad I'm not a forum monitor; this isn't gonna be pretty...

[Garlyle]

But I would have another slot basically to stick some high level matetia on it instead of trying to over meld the over meld.

You're still forgetting that catch requirements would adjust for that. You'd be paying more just to be at the same point you're at.

Either way, higher Gathering literally has 0 impact on whether a given fish can be attempted to be caught - only which of the three results you get: "Your gathering is insufficient to land this catch", "It got away", or "You caught an x!".

If the fish doesn't want to show you could have 999 Gathering and it would make 0 difference to your ability to actually catch it.