Fishing Like a Pro 1-100 by Pepen

Introduction

My name is Pepen and I've got quite a bit of experience with fishing in FFXI over the game's lifespan. This guide will be a WIP for the coming days/weeks. This is my personal route that I've always taken when leveling fishing and I believe it to be quite efficient and good at generating skill and gil over the long journey to from 0-100.

• Great-Blue This is a long running JP fishing resource that's been translated to English over the years. From my usage of it I have found it to be fairly accurate with it's information so I wanted to leave a link to it here for easy of access to the information.

Fishing Tips

• You can start fishing at any level with any job and it does not contribute to the shared 40 skill distribution between other crafts past 60 which means there is NO reason to have a "fishing mule"

• You're going to want to buy the level 1 fisher's 4 piece set as soon as possible, it's major contributor to your early success and will allow you access better fishing spots earlier than without it.

• While you can catch fish more than 20 skills above your current skill level, you are much more likely to get skill ups if the skill cap of the fish is within 15 skills of your own level.

• If you hook a monster or item you can tap your CANCEL input to end the cast to avoid fighting or losing time/space to unwanted items but doing this will expend your bait.

• You get whatever you put into it when it comes to fishing like any other craft the benefits will come over a long period of time before you can build your empire.

• The fishing system is quite simple to understand, when you land a fish you'll see a stamina bar appear above your character's head along with silver and gold arrows. Simply tap your MOVEMENT input in the corresponding direction of each arrow, the silver depletes some stamina and the golden arrows deplete a significant amount of stamina. Once the stamina bar is empty you can hit the CONFIRM input to attempt to reel the fish in and if done correctly you will pull up either a fish or a miscellaneous item. Failing to deplete the bar before hitting CONFIRM will cost you your bait/lure. If your skill is significantly lower (more than 30) than the skill cap of the fish you may get a "lack of skill" message. This guide will avoid almost all of these situations. Fish that are way out of your skill range will be impossible to reel in so you can safely CANCEL those.

• Get Lu Shang's ASAP. It is the penultimate fishing rod second only to Ebisu which does everything Lu Shang's does but better and is totally unbreakable. I will be covering how to fish for this rod while getting skill ups in this guide and please keep in mind that this section will be a bit slower for skill ups as a result but fishing is a marathon not a sprint so that's okay.

Fishing Messages

You will get various messages when something catches your line they are as follows:

   Small fish: "Something caught the hook!"
   Large fish: "Something caught the hook!!!"
   Non-fish targets: "You feel something pulling at your line."
   Monsters: "Something clamps onto your line ferociously!"

About Lu Shang's Fishing Rod

This can be an incredibly time consuming task to obtain as you need to complete The Rivalry/Competition quest to obtain it which requires a combination of 10,000 Moat Carp AND/OR Forest Carp to be turned in. Yes, that's right TEN THOUSAND. Be aware that this rod CAN break but if you obtain one at the recommend time by using this guide you will never have to worry about it breaking all the way to 100. It will only break when fishing up legendary fish for the Ebisu Fishing Rod quest which will be outside the scope of this guide.

Why do I Care?

• This rod can catch both small and large fish efficiently so you won't ever lose any catches to "This fish is too big/small for this rod" messages.
• Most fish in the game can't break it or snap the line aside from legendary fish (skill 100+)
• It's also much easier to catch most fish with one of these rods which boosts your gil per hour later.
• It is required for maximum efficiency @55+ skill as there will be many times you'll lose fish due to line snaps or too big/small messages that will be unavoidable.
• From my own testing (and stubbornness) I have found that attempting to level fishing from 55-100 without Lu Shang's will actually take LONGER than just buying or catching the 10,000 carp due to the aforementioned issues.
• It's really not as bad as you might think to obtain all of the carp.
• Virtually required if you ever want to obtain the ultimate fishing rod, the Ebisu.

Bait vs Lures

Bait

• Bait is inexpensive and easily accessible to newer players due to being sold by many NPC vendors across the world.
• Bait will be used when you can isolate a target fish that cannot be done with lures, Moat Carp for example. It will also be used instead of lures to prevent losing them to line snaps or rod breaks as bait is very expendable and lures can be expensive to replace.
• The disadvantage of bait is when you have to cancel your cast you will lose it and at worst it could cause a supply issue.

    Little Worms- These will be your bread and butter early on, sold from various NPCs for dirt cheap ~3 gil/ea
    Insect Balls- You will upgrade to these shortly after you start your fishing journey. If you can afford them on the Auction House these are preferred to little worms but don't worry they will pay for themselves soon after you start.