Sidereal Whale is genuinely awful

[ultima100]

The devs just did their jobs. They want to keep players subscribing until the next expansion and the result for the fishing-lover players is this unbelievable RNG. They do not want you to be fun, they want you to suffer. The legendary fish things have always been like this. Opabinia, the Ruby Dragon, Lancetfish, all of them took me more than 8 months (in case of the Ruby Dragon it took me over a year). It clearly shows that the devs do not care how long it takes for you. They want to torture you and if you still keep subscribing, they made their jobs done.

[Astrahime]

Two questions: is ruby harder and will this be easier later

Let's compare the 2 fish with crowdsourced data.
1: Uptime.
Ruby: 0.3% uptime
Sidereal: 0.5% uptime
- Their windows are about as common as each other, Sider just has longer uptime due to having the full 0-8. In practice they're equal because Phallaina, the fish that gives you the intuition, is 0-4.

2: Mooching
Ruby: According to Teamcraft, a Ku'er mooch has a 74% chance to be another Ku'er, a 2% chance to be the Dragon, and a 24% chance to slip. Blue Bobbits, the bait used to get a Ku'er, allegedly have a 62% chance to slip, though this might be inflated due to players not reeling in non-!!! bites.
Sidereal: Again according to Teamcraft, a Horizon Event mooch has a 31% chance to be a Triana (Which has led to people in the fishing community making a meme out of it), a 35% chance to be an Unbegotten, and a 4% chance to be the Phallaina that people need. This is in addition to the 30% chance to not get anything, but this is again probably inflated due to players not reeling in the bite that they know isn't the Phallaina. There isn't enough data on Whale's bite rate yet for me to pass judgement on this.
The highest chance to hook in a Horizon Event is with Stardust, at roughly 22.2%, adding another layer of RNG onto this.
- This is comparing 2 completely different things.

3: Preparation
Ruby: It's pretty simple to set up 10 Angler's Art stacks half an hour before the window, then slap a Coeurl Snake Eel, use Patience II, and try to moochloop till you get the Dragon, using Makeshift Bait if you currently have a Ku'er on your hook and Patience has worn off.
Sidereal: Show up 12 hours early and try to get Phallaina. Try again in the next window. Try again in the next window. Try again in the next window. Try again in the next window. Cry. Actually get Phallaina this time and realise that you need to stay in this area for the next 4 hours. Get the 2 Unbegotten if you didn't get them already, and 2 of the 3 EBEs. (Anyone who tells you that it's impossible to get Phallaina without catching the 3 EBEs early is bad at fishing and doesn't own a stopwatch.) Get the rest of your AA stacks if you still need to by hooking up ! bites or !! bites you know aren't EBE due to how long it took for it to bite. Stop fishing so that you don't hit Amiss. Play another game while you wait for the window to show up. When the window starts, hook up an EBE, then immediately Surface Slap it and use Patience II. Hook up the !! bites you know can be Horizon Event and hook in the !!! bites you think are Sidereal, using your Hi-Cordials or AA stacks on Makeshift Bait so that you can have a 100% mooch-able uptime. If you want to make the chance even higher, start around 3:30 ET instead of 0 ET so that you can't be jumpscared by the Phallaina that you didn't catch 12 hours ago.
- Sidereal is harder.
(1/2)

[Astrahime]

(1/2), sorry for editing your quote because this is 5+k characters total

4: Can it be made easier?
Ruby: Makeshift Bait got added. While Fish Eyes did get reworked, it doesn't affect Legendary Fish and Jailing with a Ku'er is both downright insane and won't help you due to Amiss.
Sidereal: If they make Fish Eyes work on ShB or EW fish, Jailing with a Phallaina will be extremely expensive outside of its window, but still possible. (This would have the side effect of making a lot of ShB/EW Big Fish easier, and make Ronka the easiest Legendary Fish ever by removing the difficulty of catching both the Priest and the Serpent in the same window. Yes, this is possible as-is if you get the Priest at the end of the window and wait till 10 ET again because Amiss isn't triggered on Mooches, but this would make it so that you can set it up whenever.) This might affect EW fish in 8.0 if they decide to make Fish Eyes "No time needed for current expansion -2 fish".
Another way they can make this easier would be to make Surface Slap have 2 stacks when used, making it so that it's possible to use on Mooched fish and thus making it so that you can't get the same Mooch twice in a row. This would both make getting the intuition (By being able to slap the Triana), and the Whale itself (Again by slapping the Triana) easier. (This wouldn't make Ruby easier unless they make it so that you can slap 2 different fish, or remove the part of Surface Slap that prevents you from mooching after slapping.)
- Sidereal would require a complete rework of a skill to be made easier rather than the simple addition of a new class trait.

Given that several people are jailing for this, maybe it'd be better to compare it to a fish that requires Big or extremely rare fish for its intuition. Shadowbringers has the Aquamaton which needs the Shadeshifter, and Lancetfish who is the reason why "Jailing" is even a term in the first place. Stormblood has the Drepanaspis, but it has a much higher uptime. ARR has the Namitaro which requires switching baits and has the second lowest Intuition duration of any Big Fish, and was the lowest prior to 6.55. Sidereal is still harder than all of these.

[Astrahime]

They do not want you to be fun, they want you to suffer. The legendary fish things have always been like this. Opabinia

Opabinia isn't that hard. It's the highest uptime Big or Legendary fish that's been mentioned in this entire thread. Raim, Charibenet, and Sea Butt all have harder (read: you can't get int in 1 DH) intuition requirements, lower uptime, and Sea Butterfly requires 2 different fish for intuition at that.

[Sepher]

Yeah, I haven't complained about any other fish, but the fact that people feel it is necessary to subject themselves to hours of Ultima Thule jail is a pretty big indicator that something is off about this fish. The Phallaina rate needs to be bumped up. This isn't fun or engaging, it is just a big time waste.

At least when it is Ruby and other rarer fish, you actually spend the time actively fishing for it.

[Astrahime]

The Phallaina rate needs to be bumped up. This isn't fun or engaging, it is just a big time waste.

It's one of the 4 Big Scrip Payout fish, so it's going to be rare/low rate.
Heavensward (Barreleye) - It's in a Legendary Fish's pool, but it just bloats the mooch table. Also it's the most common of all of these according to Teamcraft lol
Stormblood (Sculptor) - It's in a Legendary Fish's pool. Also everything except 2 of the 4 fish you can get from regular bait is a !!! bite and one of them overlaps literally everything's window. The only reason why you don't see as many people complaining about Stethacanthus is because Double Hook can be used on Sculptors alongside Collect to jail for it. That's right, you need 2 of the things for intuition, though despite Sculptor needing a weather condition, Steth doesn't.
Shadowbringers (Aapoak) - this unironically took me more time to get than a few of the ShB Legendary fish but it's not in a Legendary Fish's pool so who cares
Endwalker (Phallaina) - Enough has already been said about how much of a mistake Limne 3-Beta's pool is.

[VictorSpoils]

Now imagine listening to Ultima Thule's BGM for that many hours. It's bad enough just passing through there for hunts.

[Lydia77]

Ive been fishing since ARR and its too late for me to give up. right now this whale is the last fish i have to catch. And i am NOT looking forward to it. I tried it twice so far and decided that 3 hours of prefish should be enoth. i can try Elpis salad 2.0 meanwhile. i was wrong. ive met people who were siting in the zone for 8+ hours. This is not right. Ofc 3 windows didnt bring me Phalla (why would they) and it went for 13 days vacations. and next window is in the mid of my work day so i cant even try it.
All i have to do now is to wake up 7-8 am to have 7 windows to get Phalia. then i can get last Ungewhateveritsname to triger intuition. Should i wait till the No-Phalia-Window?
Maybe i can ignore 1% extra bite chance. Maybe i cant ignore 1 mooch chance in 12 minutes. Do i feel lucky, punk? Do i?
I mean if i fail there is always the next chance. just sit in a zone for 1-8 hours for another try if your life allows it.
Your boyfriend wants to do stuff? too bad! fishing! Your friend asks you for help? screw her! ill sit in this place unable to do anything at all for hours just to have a CHANCE to fish the big fish. Its not a problem at all!
And that is in case you were ABLE to get the damn thing. Ive heard stories of people who failed to get Phalla in 10 windows.
Sure fishing is fun!
-Sa'eln Wolndara. Former fisher queen who gave up her title jest because of these *fair* fishies
P.S. Thule theme SUCKS after 2 minutes of listening to it.
Next hated theme is Ruby Sea

[Raenra]

The prep for this one, and a lesser extent Gharlichthys (which only took ~2 prior windows), is the worst part.
It's Saturday, the window starts in two hours. Gave myself 10 windows to catch it, and got it in the second. 8 hours of weekend prime-time sitting afk in Thule. Yee-haw.
Did I start too early? Honestly no. It might take 2, or it might take 10 windows to catch Philaina.

All other RNG aside, I feel this degree of expected prep is getting in the way of actually playing the game. I hope it doesn't become the norm in DawnTrail.

[Lydia77]

reporting:
window 1) (after 13 days) took me 6 hours to get phalania. then 3 hours of siting there before my work shift. 4 mooches. nothing. 7 other people got it made sure to link it in chat so we can be even more miserable
window 2) took me 2 hours to get phalania. 7 mooches. nothing.
window 3) (just now) took me 5 hours to get phalania. i missed my count and accidently got 2nd ebe ruining my prefect prefish. Started intuition at 3 AM to be safe. Very first mooch gave me !!!. Phallania. for the split second i thought its over. 6 other mooches didnt bring me anything. 11 other people got it

And then we have some fishing content creator or something saying i dont have to jail myself there. Sure. I might as well not go for the damn thing at all. Just hope to get 5% catch or wave goodbye to 90% of whale windows. Mb its fun for some people and their content for some people to see but i jsut want it done. its the very last fish in the game for me and i WANT IT BE OVER ALREADY.
I swore i will not leave that cursed island untill i catch the whale and i will stick to it. If devs think its how it is supposed to be - i will follow.
670 star dust later.....
PS Gharlichthys is not that awfull. First of all prefish is not that bad. And then you can collectable hold triple hook untill the actual window. And after that its a simple !!! bite (not a mooch) with 2 or 3 other fish in the pool

-update: it was 9 hours and i still didnt get phallania >.<
-update: 13 windows. 13 hours. still no phallania. 7 mooch per window average. fish is TOTALY fair
-update: 15 hours

well in the end it took me 18 hours to get phallaina. we shall see if the whale will cooperate. fun times!