Big Fish and You - Patch 2.3

[Nukocafe]

Matriarch and Sylphsbane information updated. Dawn Maiden and The Terpsichorean added. Excel file updated. Thank you all.

Thanks for all your hard work!

[Uttahutta]

Caught Anomalocaris with 358 gather

[Moosi]

Caught Aetherlouse at 383 gathering said 382 was insufficient.

[Boilon]

Caught dirty herry at 377, so you can lower it down slightly from what you have.

[Desidious]

Caught the Captain's Chalice with 365 gathering.

[Torquere]

Southern Thanalan - Forgotten Springs - Iron Noose -Spinner(bait)(?) - Time: 10 pm to 12 am - Weather: Fog - Gathering Rate <360

[Desidious]

Just as easily caught the Olgi while using a sand gecko to get a mooch from the storm rider. And spoon worm for the fullmoon sardine mooch for the captain's chalice. Just throwing that out there.

[Uttahutta]

Just as easily caught the Olgi while using a sand gecko to get a mooch from the storm rider. And spoon worm for the fullmoon sardine mooch for the captain's chalice. Just throwing that out there.

This brings up a question I don't think I have seen an answer to. From what I can tell what bait you get to catch the HQ fish for mooching does not seem to affect what will bite the fish being caught with mooch, is this true? My second question would be is there a difference to the various sand baits? Is there less types that bite sand gecko vs sand leech for instance or do fish bite that bait faster than another?

[Cintra]

This brings up a question I don't think I have seen an answer to. From what I can tell what bait you get to catch the HQ fish for mooching does not seem to affect what will bite the fish being caught with mooch, is this true? My second question would be is there a difference to the various sand baits? Is there less types that bite sand gecko vs sand leech for instance or do fish bite that bait faster than another?

The type of bait will change the bite percentages of fish. Take a look at the ff14angler.com data for the Sagolii Desert. You can see the bite percentages by bait.

[Nyalia]

is this true? My second question would be is there a difference to the various sand baits?

I'm certain that the bait used to catch the fish you're mooching from is irrelevant to the success rate of the mooch. That said, some bait is better at catching the base fish than others. I use http://na.ff14angler.com to determine which bait is best for catching the base fish for a moochable big fish. Take the Magic Carpet for example. You need an HQ Storm Rider to mooch to the Magic Carpet. See this chart for what the best bait to catch the Storm Rider is: http://na.ff14angler.com/spot/30404. From that list, you can see that Sand Leeches have a 32.5% chance of catching a Storm Rider, where Sand Geckos have only a 15.7% chance. In other words, it'll take you (on average) twice as long to catch a Magic Carpet with Sand Geckos than with Sand Leeches because you'll be catching too many other things (mostly antlion slugs).

Something to beware of when using this site is that weather/time specific conditions are not taken into account, so the numbers can't be trusted for catches that depend on either. For instance, this gives a 3.9% chance of catching a Magic Carpet using an HQ Storm Rider as bait. That's inaccurate, because it includes times fishing during non-heatwave and times fishing during off-hours. However, the charts on that site are a great way of getting info on catching the base fishes, few of which are time dependent. Fullmoon Sardine is the main example of a time-dependent base fish.