Clearer indicators of where you can make a fishing hole

[SpanishMoss]

Right now when attempting to attempt to make a fishing hole in an unsuitable location, you are given the unhelpful message "find suitable ice". 
What ice counts as suitable? Color? Proximity from shore? Size of the body of water? 

I instead think that the error message should not exist at all, it should just allow you to attempt to place the fishing hole, but be red where it's not possible. The current system makes it so you have to randomly wander around periodically checking by stopping, opening the radial menu, and trying to place one, forcing you to constantly stop and check.

Additionally, there a plenty of places where a fishing hole would be useful, but it's just not possible to place one, like the pond in front of Bricklayers retreat. If I can only place it on big bodies of water, those big bodies usually already have fishing huts!

[Enigmaecho]

2 hours ago, SpanishMoss said:

Right now when attempting to attempt to make a fishing hole in an unsuitable location, you are given the unhelpful message "find suitable ice". 
What ice counts as suitable? Color? Proximity from shore? Size of the body of water? 

I instead think that the error message should not exist at all, it should just allow you to attempt to place the fishing hole, but be red where it's not possible. The current system makes it so you have to randomly wander around periodically checking by stopping, opening the radial menu, and trying to place one, forcing you to constantly stop and check.

Additionally, there a plenty of places where a fishing hole would be useful, but it's just not possible to place one, like the pond in front of Bricklayers retreat. If I can only place it on big bodies of water, those big bodies usually already have fishing huts!

I agree, it would be lovely to have the system expanded in the future some things are quite confusing at the moment, for example as moss said the pond in front of bricklayers or in front of the cabin in at the inlet are both of similar size to pensive pond but not suitable similarly there’s huts along the river in keepers south but you cannot fish in the far range branch beneath the surfeit trestle and there’s so much open water in inlet muskeg and hushed river that aren’t acceptable confusingly, climbers cave and the loitering marsh are the ones that I really want to see but really I feel like any body of water that’s large enough to appear on the charcoal map should be able to be fished 

[ajb1978]

23 hours ago, SpanishMoss said:

What ice counts as suitable? Color? Proximity from shore? Size of the body of water? 

Depth. I've found this very intuitive and although I have certainly experimented all over the place, I have never been unsurprised by the results.

Then again I've also done a fair amount of ice fishing myself IRL, so I know not to even try streams or bogs.

Edited July 30, 2023 by ajb1978

[SpanishMoss]

3 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

Depth. I've found this very intuitive and although I have certainly experimented all over the place, I have never been unsurprised by the results.

Then again I've also done a fair amount of ice fishing myself IRL, so I know not to even try streams or bogs.

While that makes intuitive sense, how does the game determine what is "deep" when the lakes and water areas don't actually have depth? Again back to my question: is it color? proximity from shore? Size of the body of water? Or is it only in predetermined areas? It's totally unclear, and it should be changed in-game to be less restrictive, and easier to figure out what counts as suitable. 

[ajb1978]

7 hours ago, SpanishMoss said:

While that makes intuitive sense, how does the game determine what is "deep" when the lakes and water areas don't actually have depth? Again back to my question: is it color? proximity from shore? Size of the body of water? Or is it only in predetermined areas? It's totally unclear, and it should be changed in-game to be less restrictive, and easier to figure out what counts as suitable. 

Probably manually mapped, in a fashion similar to how weak ice is mapped. For example in coastal regions if you use cheats to bypass weak ice, you can actually walk on the "water" beyond the weak ice segments. Similar to weak ice where you use your eyes and go "I'm pretty far from shore, I'm likely to encounter weak ice soon," you use your eyes to go "This looks like a pretty big lake, I can probably fish here."

Realistically speaking, you probably COULD fish in most of the streams in some fashion or other, if it were summertime. But when everything is half frozen and the main bodies of water are locked off from each other by frozen tributaries, you really gotta look for deeper water. Just trust your gut!

[UTC-10]

It would certainly help if areas that had suitable ice would also have spots/areas within those areas where one could sink a New Fishing hole.  Pleasant Valley's river - Thomson's Crossing to the Long Curve - used to have five places/stretches where one could actually use New Fishing and now there are none - they only show red not any green.  This does not even count Pensive Pond which has no green areas even right next to the existing ice fishing hut though, of course, the ice fishing hut is still usable.  

So far Blackrock didn't have any New Fishing spots.  I had hoped for one or two spots given the constricted waterway (the river chasm) but nothing.  

Ash Canyon had some stretches on Angler's Den (I actually fished a bit) and I think on Bitter Marsh (though I didn't go and try New Fishing there).  

See how this goes.  

 

 

[hozz1235]

I agree with this request.  There is no correlation between where thin ice is and where you can/can't fish.  Heck, we can walk on ocean ice where the water could be 100 ft. deep but break through a bog where it's likely less than 5 ft.

Streams have just as much fish as lakes do.  I think it just comes down to game balance and where HL thought ice holes can be placed.

[SpanishMoss]

On 8/8/2023 at 7:38 AM, hozz1235 said:

I agree with this request.  There is no correlation between where thin ice is and where you can/can't fish.  Heck, we can walk on ocean ice where the water could be 100 ft. deep but break through a bog where it's likely less than 5 ft.

Streams have just as much fish as lakes do.  I think it just comes down to game balance and where HL thought ice holes can be placed.

While I understand game balance, and reasons why some areas can and can't be fished, trying to find said areas is frustrating and confusing with the current system 

[hozz1235]

21 minutes ago, SpanishMoss said:

While I understand game balance, and reasons why some areas can and can't be fished, trying to find said areas is frustrating and confusing with the current system 

Agreed 100%.

[Enigmaecho]

On 7/31/2023 at 5:24 AM, ajb1978 said:

Probably manually mapped, in a fashion similar to how weak ice is mapped. For example in coastal regions if you use cheats to bypass weak ice, you can actually walk on the "water" beyond the weak ice segments. Similar to weak ice where you use your eyes and go "I'm pretty far from shore, I'm likely to encounter weak ice soon," you use your eyes to go "This looks like a pretty big lake, I can probably fish here."

Realistically speaking, you probably COULD fish in most of the streams in some fashion or other, if it were summertime. But when everything is half frozen and the main bodies of water are locked off from each other by frozen tributaries, you really gotta look for deeper water. Just trust your gut!

My gripe with this pushes against that realism vs functionality argument, yes it makes sense in some cases to say yea that’s probably not deep enough but in many many other cases, quite a few mentioned in this thread, it doesn’t, places that have boats implying they are deep enough, places that are larger or same size as places that have existing huts, areas that already have huts, it’s arbitrary, I do agree that the locations were probably hand mapped like the thin ice and that was probably a factor in the initial system design but with that I think while it’s a more detailed task to hit smaller zones like bottom of ravines, marshes and ponds I don’t think  it’s  unreasonable to want to have the system opened up and make it more accessible and worthwhile, it’s a nice addition to change the diet or fish somewhere different and I like it but there’s not really a spot where they’ve added that there isn’t other wildlife near or other fishing huts in the region the most beneficial I’ve found thus far is long term days challenge in crumbling highway or winding river 

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