My Whopper of a Fish Story
Fishing in New World has evolved dramatically since the game was introduced. I recently ran an experiment to better understand the current state of the angler arts in Aeternum.
My journey
I went to a 3-star, untouched saltwater hotspot in Cutlass Keys and fished until it was exhausted. I used Exceptional Fish Bait (large boost for rarer and bigger fish), my best pole, and wore my fishing gear set. This provided the following cumulative buffs: Lucky Waters x4, Lucky Day II, Lucky Night II, Daytime Colossus, Saltwater Colossus, various Reach buffs x2 (not needed), and Freshwater Colossus x3, (not applicable). I have 3 ultimate trophies providing another “+15000 luck”. Luck is explained very poorly by AGS (see a player attempt here), but I think that is a 15% boost.
The hotspot lasted for 29 catches, about 17 minutes, but there is also time needed for travel, equipping, and getting a feel for the casting distance.
What I caught
Here is a list of what I caught.
For the fishing xp, I also gained one aptitude skill crate: an epic package of specialized fishing materials, containing 33 Exceptional Fish Bait, 3 Vials of Suspended Azoth, 1 Drop of Azoth Oil, 1 Mythril Fishing Pole Charm, 2 Orichalcum Fishing Pole charms, and 1 Pattern: Fishing Clothing.
Making a living
Pricing the outcome accurately is very challenging for two reasons. First, the El Dorado economy is distorted due to low population size (May, 2025). The trading post therefore sometimes shows unrealistically high sell offers, and there is no market whatsoever for some items.
Second, some items like oysters can be sold as is, or salvaged. My results are based on salvaging everything except legendary fish. The salvage yielded a variety of materials, including valuable items like Pearls, Frogfish Tails, and Sumptuous Rabbit, along with numerous cheap items and significant quantities of Iron Ore and Fibers.
Finally, some items (such as a fishing clothing pattern) may be intrinsically very valuable to you, but not sellable to others. These were unpriced.
The total selling price for everything was 4114g on El Dorado and 5683g on Valhalla
The 6 legendary fish alone would sell for about 1400g on both servers. The aptitude crate was worth 706g on El Dorado or 368g on Valhalla. The total selling price for everything was 4114g on El Dorado and 5683g on Valhalla. Prorating this as hourly income, this suggests that you might be able to earn around 15000+ g/hr from fishing, which is better than, or extremely competitive with, any other gathering/refining strategies I know.
Of course, this assumes that you can sell everything at market price, which is unlikely since the sell offers may be unrealistic in some cases, and because there may be no buyers. In my experience, the buy offer prices are an even worse indicator of value because players normally make outrageously low buy offers, preying on suckers and people desperate for quick cash. Pricing my results using buy offers would drastically reduce the apparent income. I also ignored trading fees and the cost of consumed bait. It would be interesting to try this again on a populous server, and confirm that items can be sold at market price.
The Verdict
My conclusion is that fishing may be a viable moneymaking activity on a populous server where you are likely to sell your catch. Even if you only sold half your catch for 7000g, that’s good for an hour of work. Of course, doing your ‘daily’ activities like corruption breaches, faction bonuses, expedition bonuses, juniper berry bags, ‘cache-of-gold-n-matter’, and so forth shouldn’t be neglected, but if you have the time, I would add fishing one hotspot to your daily list.
Special thanks to “Azrael’s Tear” on discord for pricing my catch on Valhalla.
