Game Mechanics Quality of Life Improvements for Fishing and Fishing Quests

[Scarecrow]

So, I recently returned to Terraria, and for the first time since it was introduced, did fishing quests again... and MAN does it kinda feel like rubbish trashgarbage. I really want to like fishing in this game, but I have so many peeves with it that it's a chore. but your least favorite chore because it feels like it was designed to be nothing but annoying and tedious.

so here's my hit list




Part 1: The Angler and his garbage quests for trash

-This little twerp honestly grew to be my least favorite ncp in the game. I get that he's supposed to be a entitled prick, that's his character, but surprisingly it adds a lot to the whole not wanting to do these quests feel. I suggest that he progressively lightens up and becomes more friendly the more quests you do. He starts out as he is now, and eventually grows up. (maybe even literally.)

-My biggest gripe with fishing quests is the fact that you can only do one a day. While the time limit itself isn't that bad, I hate doing a quest at the start of a day, then needing to wait the whole rest of the day to do the next one. While it would be simple to suggest being able to accept multiple a day, I have a better idea and it ties into my next peeve.

-The anglers rewards are well... unrewarding. most of the time at least. I'm sorry but 2 pieces of apprentice bate, 75 silver coins, and a painting is not a good reward. of course these rewards are all based on rng, but it's weighted for disappointment. My suggestion is to be able to turn in to a maximum of 10 fish per quest.
each fish you turn in will give you better items each time. It starts with the apprentice bait and silver coins, but on the tenth fish you will always be rewarded an accessory. while this doesn't fix the rng nature of acquiring these accessories entirely, it does make acquiring them much less of a dreary spiral of disappointment. Every catch in between gives a higher chance for the higher quality bait, slightly higher coin counts, and better chances for accessories too.

-just as a bonus to make fishing quests a little more interesting is maybe each quest fish favors a certain type of bait. You will not be required to use the ideal bait, but it will make fishing up a quest fish while a quest is active much more likely. These ideal baits will be randomized per world, and the angler will offer a clue as to what it is when you accept a quest.




Part 2: Crate Potions

-Put simply, this potion is very underpowered for how expensive it is to craft. You need AMBER for it. I used over 800 desert fossils in an extractinator, and got 16. Those things are not common at all. (You also need death weed and moonglow but those are easy to get.)
For how rare it is, you'd expect to be able to fish up crates like a champ right? Wrong. It gives you a 10% higher chance to find crates for a whopping 3 minutes. wow 3 minutes for fishing. I generally am able to get 2 wooden crates within the buff timer. Granted I have only a 20% power rod, but this is also with master bait, fishing potion, and the angler earring. I have a few different suggestions for it.

A: change the crafting ingredient from amber to the neon tetra, as it has no use aside from selling for the same price as a bass
B: increase the duration from 3 minutes to 8 minutes. the same as the fishing potion.
C: instead of increasing the likelihood of a crate drop, make it increase the likelihood of higher quality crates
D: all of the above (though even one of these would make the crate potion worth making imo. all of the above would not hurt either.)




Part 3: Misc stuff

-Starting with trash items. while I don't mind fishing up junk, as it is humorous, I find it annoying that they have no use, no sell value, can't be placed, or anything. Their entire purpose is to clog your inventory, and waste your time and bait.
My suggestion is to either make them a gib instead of an item, so it doesn't go in your inventory (because who would pick up an old shoe anyways) or give at least some kind of use. even being able to place these objects would make them worth while for something.

-The line breaking happens infuriatingly often, and is only made more infuriating knowing there's an rng fishing quest reward that makes it never happen. so you MIGHT never have to deal with it
(but you probably will.)
my suggestion is to simply make it happen less often. according to the wiki it happens 1 in 7 casts. make it somewhere in the ballpark of 1 in 20.

that should do it.
Sorry if I came across as harsh in this suggestion, but I just came off of doing 5 fishing quests and getting like 10 pieces of apprentice bait, 2 gold, and a painting between them.

tell me what you guys think.

 

[SnailsAttack]

My suggestion is to be able to turn in to a maximum of 10 fish per quest.

What does this part mean? That if you catch 10 of the same quest fish using the piggybank/chest glitch and then turn multiple of them in to him then you get better rewards?

-just as a bonus to make fishing quests a little more interesting is maybe each quest fish favors a certain type of bait.

Maybe there could be some sort of biome-specific baits? Or depth-specific. Something along those lines.

I used over 800 desert fossils in an extractinator, and got 16.

According to the terraria wiki, amber has a drop rate of 1% for silt and dessert fossils. That means you should have gotten around 80, maybe 40 if rng was giving you a bad time. Regardless, I've never had a problem with obtaining amber. I guess I don't usually do that much fishing in my playthroughs though.

t gives you a 10% higher chance to find crates for a whopping 3 minutes. wow 3 minutes for fishing.

yeah this is pretty ty it should be like 25% or something and include neon tetra like you had said

Anyways, I like most of this suggestion. On the subject of line snapping, though, I think that the whole mess should just be removed and the fishing line accessory should instead increase your casting and reeling speed.

 

[Scarecrow]

What does this part mean? That if you catch 10 of the same quest fish using the piggybank/chest glitch and then turn multiple of them in to him then you get better rewards?


Maybe there could be some sort of biome-specific baits? Or depth-specific. Something along those lines.


According to the terraria wiki, amber has a drop rate of 1% for silt and dessert fossils. That means you should have gotten around 80, maybe 40 if rng was giving you a bad time. Regardless, I've never had a problem with obtaining amber. I guess I don't usually do that much fishing in my playthroughs though.

yeah this is pretty ty it should be like 25% or something and include neon tetra like you had said

Anyways, I like most of this suggestion. On the subject of line snapping, though, I think that the whole mess should just be removed and the fishing line accessory should instead increase your casting and reeling speed.

it would allow you to catch the fish as many times as you want while the quest is active. idunno how well it would interact with that glitch though. maybe it just deletes that particular quest fish from chests and such when the quest is done? though it would ruin their vanity value for item frames. frankly I just want to get rewards that make it seem like these quests are worth doing.
IMO, being able to stockpile quest fish doesn't seem like much of a bad thing if you have to use 10 for a guaranteed rare reward. it's not like you don't have to do the fishing anyways.

also
I kid you not, I got 16 amber out of like 816 desert fossils. I will do more experimenting with this. if I keep getting bellow the ballpark of 40-80 over and over, then the wiki has to be wrong on the percentages.

ALSO
removing the line snapping entirely would be fine too. I feel like it's there because it's supposed to be part of the experience, which is why I didn't suggest to have it removed entirely.

 

[Gotcha!]

1: Have to agree, it's not motivating to do his quests when he's being an all the time. Add to that the fact that you'll have a hard time getting the 3 cell phone parts from him thanks to random number generating overkill. I think they should at least give the player these 3 items in the same way the player gets the bunny mount, angler set pieces and golden fishing rod.
He certainly is my most hated npc.

2: I don't think the recipe needs to change. You have been severely unlucky getting amber.
But even so, yes, I'd like to see an increase in chests fished up with this potion, since right now I don't feel it makes much of a difference.

3a: I disagree with the trash items needing a function. The reason you're fishing them up is because the game is telling you the pool you're fishing in is too small. You should either enlarge this pool or go fish somewhere else.



3b: About the high test fishing line: I'd also love to see this being given to the player after a certain amount of fishing quests; same for the ear ring and bait box. He should give the fishing line sooner rather than later, because, yes, line breaking is incredibly annoying.

A different suggestion would be to have the Angler pay the player with tokens for every finished quest, and give the Angler his own shop where all his random rewards are for sale, buy-able with his tokens.
The Barkeeper has such a system, it shouldn't be hard to implement the same for the Angler.
And this would also make it possible to have the Angler sell fixed reward items, like the bunny mount, so that if a player loses his bunny mount for whatever reason, he could simply buy another one.

 

[Sigma90]

-This little twerp honestly grew to be my least favorite ncp in the game. I get that he's supposed to be a entitled , that's his character, but surprisingly it adds a lot to the whole not wanting to do these quests feel.

Agreed, the Angler is a turd.

-The anglers rewards are well... unrewarding. most of the time at least. I'm sorry but 2 pieces of apprentice bate, 75 silver coins, and a painting is not a good reward. of course these rewards are all based on rng, but it's weighted for disappointment. My suggestion is to be able to turn in to a maximum of 10 fish per quest.

The fishing quest rewards are bugged and (unfortunately) still have not been fixed. After 150 quests are completed, the game derps out and resets back to 0 quests completed for rewards. So the avid fisherman amongst us get junk for rewards.
(Exact details are in a bug reports thread: https://forums.terraria.org/index.p...g-quests-150-have-reward-chances-reset.24710/. Rather disappointing that this still hasn't been fixed! And I think it might be a 1.3+ issue, because I didn't have problems in 1.2.4.1... or I didn't hit 150+ quests before 1.3.)

each fish you turn in will give you better items each time. It starts with the apprentice bait and silver coins, but on the tenth fish you will always be rewarded an accessory. while this doesn't fix the rng nature of acquiring these accessories entirely, it does make acquiring them much less of a dreary spiral of disappointment.

Sounds reasonable. The more times you catch a quest fish in one day, the better the reward. I guess this could be done in a similar manner to the Pumpkin/Frost Moon events, where each waves slightly increases the drop rates.

-just as a bonus to make fishing quests a little more interesting is maybe each quest fish favors a certain type of bait. You will not be required to use the ideal bait, but it will make fishing up a quest fish while a quest is active much more likely. These ideal baits will be randomized per world, and the angler will offer a clue as to what it is when you accept a quest.

Personally, I'd rather leave things as it is with bait power. I'm lazy; I use worms for everything. I'd rather keep it that way.

-The line breaking happens infuriatingly often, and is only made more infuriating knowing there's an rng fishing quest reward that makes it never happen. so you MIGHT never have to deal with it

Line breaking should be removed entirely. It's a bad way of saying "nah-uh!" to the player and there's nothing they can do to change it. We already have luck involved for just getting a fish/item we want; we shouldn't need to depend on extra luck as to whether the game decides it doesn't feel like giving us the fish/item.

 

[Scarecrow]

Personally, I'd rather leave things as it is with bait power. I'm lazy; I use worms for everything. I'd rather keep it that way.

nothing about the way bait currently works would change. this is purely an addition only for quests. you would not have a harder time catching quest fish as you do now. the ideal bait just makes it even more likely to be caught.

also in case you didn't know, you can craft worms into enchanted night crawlers with a fallen star. they have an extra 10% bait power over worms.

 

[Sigma90]

also in case you didn't know, you can craft worms into enchanted night crawlers with a fallen star. they have an extra 10% bait power over worms.

I do know, but like I said: I'm lazy.
Enchanted Nightcrawlers would mean I have to collect Fallen Stars as well. For me though, Golden Rod + Worm is sufficient fishing power - I don't get junk and can usually get the quest fish after a few attempts. But I also build pools to meet the water requirements.

Preferred bait sounds fine so long as bait power doesn't change.

 

[chapapote]

The fishing quest rewards are bugged and (unfortunately) still have not been fixed. After 150 quests are completed, the game derps out and resets back to 0 quests completed for rewards. So the avid fisherman amongst us get junk for rewards.
(Exact details are in a bug reports thread: https://forums.terraria.org/index.p...g-quests-150-have-reward-chances-reset.24710/. Rather disappointing that this still hasn't been fixed! And I think it might be a 1.3+ issue, because I didn't have problems in 1.2.4.1... or I didn't hit 150+ quests before 1.3.)

Something I've always wondered... Those 150 quests, are they by character or by world?

 

[Sigma90]

Something I've always wondered... Those 150 quests, are they by character or by world?

Pretty sure it's per-character.

E.g. if you complete 9 quests with Character A and then switch to Character B and complete another quest, Character B doesn't get the Angler Hat. Similarly, if Character A completes 11 quests in World A and then moves to World B, he'll get the Angler Vest after completing 9 more quests.

 

[chapapote]

Damn. For me, it's either creating a new character or doing quests like crazy until the bug appears.

It's funny how people are complaining because they can't get the good rewards. My problem is exactly the opposite: I already have all of the good rewards (the accesories, the sponge, the fishing rods, etc), but I lack many of the bad rewards (one of the trophies, some of the decorative items). The angler is constantly giving the good rewards when I want the bad rewards to finish my collection.