Novice Ocean Fishing Guide by Caimie Tsukino

[Tyonto]

Firstly these are my opinions/personal recommendations (except on Snagging), but backed up by extensive testing.

Lulu's Tools:
- It should be mentioned that the bite times on Lulu's Tools are Teamcraft times. It says so on the site, but what this means is important. Teamcraft's bite times are from packet capture, while most players if using a timer are using macros. There is an inherent discrepancy from when Teamcraft starts counting for its timer and when macros do.
- Lulu's Tools also has some erroneous data in its bite times. TC's pcap tool just messes up sometimes and ocean fishing has a lot of errors in its data.
- Filtering by bait (changing from "All baits" to a specific one) should be mentioned to get the most accurate bite time, if relying on Lulu's times. In the spectral current this isn't that necessary for high-value fish, but it is absolutely for the normal zone (outside the current) and low-point high-yield fish in currents. Doing this still does not provide a fully accurate picture.
- I can explain this more in depth or prove it if you want, but will not right now for brevity. You can click on the spreadsheet which Lulu's links at the top which has bait-specific bite times for all of the fish using macro timings to see the differences. I can also explain these if needed.

Bait to spawn a spectral current:
- Krill is the best bait for Galadion. Krill has a significantly reduced bite rate on Tarnished Sharks, which can have a >30s bite time. Plump Worm has a very high bite rate on them while having a 0.2% higher Spectral Megalodon bite rate than Krill. This means that Krill overall gets you more Casts for the Spectral fish and the difference in bite rate is so negligible that Krill ends up being better.
The only exception to this is if the weather is Showers, in which case Tarnished Sharks don't bite so use Plump Worm. Since Showers only occurs 5% of the time, Plump Worm is a worse baseline recommendation.

Snagging:
- Snagging categorically is not needed. It's something you either flat out need to have on to catch a fish or you don't; it doesn't do anything else but potentially add a fish to a catch pool or allow you to catch maps. You can tell that no fish in ocean fishing requires Snagging because in the Fishing Log they all say "Special Conditions: None." If a fish requires it, it will say "Special Conditions: Yes."
The Special Conditions flag is only for Snagging and for the final four fish needed for the Skybuilder's fishing rod.

Points:
- If the goal is 10k and we are assuming the audience is Lv 90, saying that the goal should be to spend all your GP on one fish is not the most efficient advice for each stop. In some it's detrimental.
-10k is easily achieved through use of TH/DH on low-point high-yield fish like Merman's Mane/Ghost Sharks, Titanshell Crab/Mythril Boxfish/Jetborne Manta, Silencer, Oracular Crab, etc. This is "easier" than relying on high-point fish due to the difference in commonality. This is true even if the goal is 20k, provided there are multiple currents.

Pre-current strategy:
- I've mentioned this elsewhere and you've seen it but overall this is risky but stated here is viable. Recommending it for the first stop specifically is where it is most viable especially if the goal is 10k.
- Since P2 is recommended, the audience will be under Patience for a long time at least once. If recommending either version of Patience, that Spectral Butterfly/Sea Bo/Discus and Shooting Star/Ginkgo Fin are all Precision Hookset should be mentioned.

After current strategy:
- It's worth mentioning targeting fish for voyage missions rather than raw points unless in an extremely unfortunate scenario where it's not realistically possible to finish, but if prioritizing it throughout it's not difficult to finish all three pretty much every time.
- The normal zone is so low point that it is not worth investing GP for points until the end of the route, especially such a large amount. It's more worthwhile point-wise to target voyage mission fish if necessary/available, intuition trigger fish if not, afterwards. Investing so much GP will only be a net gain (and a marginal one) if there's no current at all, and finishing voyage missions will be a larger gain on average.

Best fish:
- This does not appear to factor in bite rates.
- Pretty much every bite time is inaccurate. I'm not going to detail them all but every blind TH/DH opportunity is off. The spreadsheet Lulu's links has the timings or I can explain them in more detail.
- Every high-value fish can be blind TH/DHed except for Aetheric Seadragon and Bartholomew the Chopper.

The Ciedalaes:
- Day: Devil's Sting is better than Callichthyid; it is higher raw point and has a higher bite rate. It can be as easily blind TH/DHed because of its bite time.
- In general: DH-IC-PC-TH is terrible to use here. Aiming for multiple TH/DHs makes this stop at least decent and potentially extremely good, on Meandering Mora/Devil's Sting depending on Time or on the low-point DHx4/THx7 fish. Titanshell Crab is the most viable low-point high-yield option (Mythril Boxfish/Jetborne Manta are too, and whether you deviate from Titanshell should be based on your missions/how difficult it will be to finish them at subsequent stops and time left in the current). Titanshell/Jetborne/Mythril can all be blind TH/DHed. All of these can bite on any bait but have specific preferences.

Northern:
- Sunset: Coral Seadragon can be blind TH/DHed. It is better than The Fallen One unless using Patience in the current.

Bloodbrine:
- Night: Skaldminni is much lower point that Quartz Hammerhead, but Quartz is so extremely rare (~5% bite rate) that it might be worth going for if you are close to your point goal and is a safer baseline recommendation.

Galadion:
- Day: Casket Oyster and Nimble Dancer have no overlap. It is not worth DH-IC-PC-TH on Casket Oyster; if it bites first use GP on it then aim for multiple TH/DHs. If Nimble Dancer bites first, then DH-IC-PC-TH.

Southern:
- Day: Not worth DH-IC-PC-TH Mythril Sovereign from how low-point it is. Worth mentioning Great Grandmarlin and TH/DHing it if you can Mooch.
- Sunset: Don't necessarily have to DH-IC-PC-TH though you can. Sea Nettle is high-bite rate and so are Roguesaurus. Sea Nettle's relatively low point yield compared to other high-value fish makes it worth going for multiple TH/DH on either of the 2 fish here.
- Night: Makeshift Bait is highly useful. Aetheric Seadragon can bite from 3.5 - 6s and is more likely at 3.5 - 4s. It always overlaps with Shipwreck's Sail but if wanting to TH/DH then there is a time that is "safer."

Overall:
- The low-point high-yield fish aren't bad and are viable options, but shouldn't be DH-IC-PC-THed and should just be TH/DHed. It is good to recommend switching to spending GP on them at least 45-60s through a 2m current to have the GP go towards something that is still good but just not the best, and if you get good large-sized RNG can be comparable. Every x4DH/x7 TH low-point high-yield fish can be blind TH/DHed.
This allows you to potentially still spend GP on a high-value bite if it's late. Ultimately this does mean that the point ceiling is lowered when you do this, but when the goal is just 10k it's overall safer than waiting until the end and increasing odds of just spending GP on trash.
- The Ciedalaes is not a bad area; it is both good and very reliable if you don't use DH-IC-PC-TH. It is also a great stop to make huge progress towards voyage missions in, which is incredibly useful if your third mission is high-yield and the high-value fish in subsequent stops are not of the bite strength it's for.

Voyage Missions:
- All of the three ocean fishing baits can catch every fish in the normal zone except for the Fisher's Intuition fish. As it's phrased it sounds as if this is not the case.

For both the voyage mission highlights I mention and the low-point high yield fish, I detail them a lot in this guide: https://guides.ffxivteamcraft.com/gu...fishing-points
The voyage missions, in both the Voyage Mission section and in the guides for each route. For what I mean about the low-point high-yield fish being good/easy to target and worth considering especially if the goal is 10k, it's also highlighted in the stops for each route.
For a guide for novices I'm not suggesting you go into this much detail, but more linking it to express what I mean about how voyage missions can relatively easily be targeted, and the viability of the other fish.